The story of Mulan, a legendary Chinese women warrior, is known to many. Before she goes off to war, secretly taking her father’s place and impersonating to be a man, Mulan is having difficulties to finding who she really is. Society expects her to be all lady like but Mulan sees someone else inside of her as she looks up to her reflection, waiting to see who she really is inside. In the chapter, “On the Rainy River”, of book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien unfolds his secret story to the readers about the time when he has to decide whether to follow his moral judgement, which tells him to resist the draft, or to give in to social pressure and fight in a war he doesn’t believe in. At first, he decides to resist the draft and runs away …show more content…
to Canada, leaving his life behind, and he lives with an old man named Elroy for a few days. In the chapter, O’Brien displays to the readers that courage and taking risks is the key to finding your true self by using loaded diction, rhetorical questions, and symbolism.
To start, the chapter begins with O’Brien letting the readers know that the story he is about to tell “is one story [he has] never told before” (37). Here, he is immediately adding that loaded diction, informing the readers that this story is very sentimental to him. This was a very big turning point in O’Brien’s life because he thought that running away from his problems and his life would solve everything make him forget about the war, but little did he know that this in fact has made him think about it even more. As his story goes on, he starts to ponder on the war more and more ever since he has gotten the draft. O’Brien describes the time when he first got his draft, he explains, “I remember opening …show more content…
up the letter, scanning the first few lines, feeling the blood go thick behind my eyes” (39). O’Brien is shocked when he gets the letter because he thinks that he is “too good for the war. He thinks that he is “too smart, too compassionate, too everything” (39), he has achieved many things in his life so far that the draft must be some sort of mistake. O’Brien begins to pour his emotions out at the paper, thinking, “I [am] no soldier. I [hate] Boy Scouts. I [hate] camping out. I [hate] dirt and tents and mosquitoes” (39). The use of anaphora here emphasizes his hatred of war. He clearly hates everything about war. Him hating the main just of war tells the reader that he doesn’t think he’ll survive. He gets even more angry about the draft. “There should be a law,” O’Brien believes, “If you support a war [...] you have to put your own precious fluids on the line” (40). Getting the draft got him very angry, he thinks that the government thinks he isn’t worth anything and just wants to kill him off in the war. Later on in the chapter, O’Brien goes very heavy on his emotions. After living with Elroy for a few days, him and O’Brien go out fishing on the Rainy River. Elroy quietly starts fishing as O’Brien starts to notice “a sudden tightness in [his] chest” (53). He takes a moment, observing everything and taking it all in. He looks upon the Rainy River, staring at his reflection and begins to get “chunks of [his] own history [flashing] by” (55). O’Brien exclaims, “My whole life [seems] to spill out into the river, swirling away from me, everything I [have] ever been or ever wanted to be. I couldn’t get my breath; I couldn’t stay afloat; I couldn’t tell which way to swim” (55). Again, O’Brien uses anaphora to stress his emotions not about the war, but about his internal conflicts. At this moment, he is realizing that running away from his life isn’t solving his problem, in fact, it is making him more emotional about them as he sees people on the Rainy River yelling out, “Traitor! [...] Turncoat! Pussy!” (57) right at him. Because of the embarrassment feeling he has due to these thoughts, he finally decides to “go to the war — [he] would kill and maybe die — because [he] was embarrassed not to” (57). In addition to his emotional thoughts, O’Brien uses rhetorical questions many times throughout the text to show the reader his internal conflict with the current choices that he was making. After running away from home and spending a few days with Elroy, O’Brien notices, “In all that time together, all those hours, he never asked the obvious questions: Why was I there? Why alone? Why so preoccupied?” (47). O’Brien is not only pondering on the choices that he is making, but wondering about the man whom he has lived with for days. He is surprised that Elroy didn’t even ask him in the first place why he was there. He might have known why but never acknowledged it or brought it up in any way. Later in the chapter, when O’Brien starts to pour out his feelings onto the Rainy River, he questions, “Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you’re leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?” (54). As O’Brien is writing this, he is beginning to question the readers. He’s setting up an image for the readers and putting them in his shoes, asking them what they would have done if they were in his position. O’Brien is doing this because he really wants to stress his dilemma and wants the readers to feel what it is like to be held in this position. Having to choose between two things that you don’t want to face, embarrassment or possible death. Through the constant use of rhetorical questions, O’Brien emphasizes his wild emotions and thoughts to depict his current negative state. Continuing on to the story of when O’Brien is on the Rainy River, he uses symbolism to convey his internal struggle.
When arriving to the Rainy River, O’Brien describes the scenery saying, “... it occurred to me that at some point we must’ve passed into Canadian waters, across that dotted line between two different worlds, and I remember a sudden tightness in my chest as I looked up and watched the far shore come at me” (53). O’Brien sets up an image for the readers to see that they Rainy River separates Minnesota from Canada, showing that he is standing right at the middle of both of his problems. Standing in the middle represents the emotions that overwhelmed him in this moment, the tears that he shed and the sadness that he lost control of. He has been separated of the two different lives that he has, and whichever one he chooses has its consequences. In the chapter, O’Brien explains that when he looks upon the Rainy River, “[he] sees [his] parents calling to [him] from the far shoreline” (55), he continues to see all of his loved ones and everyone he has known before in his life. The hallucination of the crowd is displaying O’Brien’s superego of what is the right choice for him. If he goes back home, he will face a brutal amount of embarrassment, everyone seeing him as a coward. Ever since he has gotten the draft notice, the thought of it gets him anxious and fear the war even more. If he goes to war, everyone will see him as a hero, but O’Brien thinks that he will be
going to commit suicide because he thinks that there is no way of him surviving in war. On the Rainy River, Tim O’Brien sees beyond more that his reflection. He sees his loved ones, his life, his current internal struggle, and the choice that would be better for him. His reflections not only show who he is, but what will become of him if he makes the wrong decision. Through the use of loaded diction, rhetorical questions, and symbolism, O’Brien gives his story and the river a very deep meaning, as it has chosen his path for him. He sets up an image for the audience so they can feel what he is going though in this moment. His reflection made him realize that running away from his problem has made things worse, and in order to fix it, he had to go with what society wanted in the first place.
Before O’Brien was drafted into the army, he had an all American childhood. As talked about “His mother was an elementary school teacher, his father an insurance salesman and sailor in World War II” (O’Brien). He spent his tour of duty from 1969 to 1970 as a foot soldier. He was sent home when he got hit with a shrapnel in a grenade attack. O’Brien says as the narrator, “As a fiction writer, I do not write just about the world we live in, but I also write about the world we ought to live in, and could, which is a world of imagination.” (O’Brien)
Tina Chen’s critical essay provides information on how returning soldiers aren’t able to connect to society and the theme of alienation and displacement that O’Brien discussed in his stories. To explain, soldiers returning from war feel alienated because they cannot come to terms with what they saw and what they did in battle. Next, Chen discusses how O’Brien talks about soldiers reminiscing about home instead of focusing in the field and how, when something bad happens, it is because they weren’t focused on the field. Finally, when soldiers returned home they felt alienated from the country and
“Chunks of my own history flashed by.”(O’Brien 55) Instead of actually sinking into the river, he figuratively sinks into a “wave” of his past, which describes many people in his life. “ I saw a seven-year-old boy in a white cowboy hat and a Lone Ranger mask… I saw a sixteen-year-old kid decked out for his first prom, looking spiffy in a white tux and a black bow tie, his hair cut short and flat, his shoes freshly polished.” (O’Brien 55) O’Brien begins to see himself through memorable moments in his life. A moment after he begins to enter into a giant hallucination, “I saw my parents...my brother and sister, all the townsfolk, the mayor and the entire Chamber of Commerce and all my old buddies. Like some outlandish sporting event:... A squad of cheerleaders did cartwheels along the banks of the Rainy River....A marching band played fight songs. All my aunts and uncles...a nine-year-old girl named Linda…little kids without arms or legs...they were all whooping and chanting and urging me toward one shore or the other.”(O’Brien 55-56) O’Brien sees these people, and gives him more pressure to whether or not he should join the war or escape the draft. The intense hallucination, which even made him see children without limbs, placed a huge weight on his decision. The feeling of shame projected from these people pressured O’Brien to join the war. “All those
Tim O'Brien is confused about the Vietnam War. He is getting drafted into it, but is also protesting it. He gets to boot camp and finds it very difficult to know that he is going off to a country far away from home and fighting a war that he didn't believe was morally right. Before O'Brien gets to Vietnam he visits a military Chaplin about his problem with the war. "O'Brien I am really surprised to hear this. You're a good kid but you are betraying you country when you say these things"(60). This says a lot about O'Brien's views on the Vietnam War. In the reading of the book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O'Brien explains his struggles in boot camp and when he is a foot soldier in Vietnam.
Think that O'Brien is still suffering from what he experienced in Vietnam and he uses his writing to help him deal with his conflicts. In order to deal with war or other traumatic experiences, you sometimes just have to relive the experiences over and over. This is what O'Brien does with his writing; he expresses his emotional truths even if it means he has to change the facts of the literal truth. The literal truth, or some of the things that happen during war, are so horrible that you don't want to believe that it could've actually happened. For instance, "[o]ne colonel wanted the hearts cut out of the dead Vietcong to feed to his dog..
O’Brien looks back into his past, to the time when he was called to serve in the Vietnam War. O’Brien’s initial
O Brien 's point of view is an accurate one as he himself because he is a Vietnam veteran. The title of the short story is meaningful because it describes each soldier’s personality and how he handles conflict within the mind and outside of the body during times of strife. The title fits the life as a soldier perfectly because it shows the reality that war is more than just strategy and attacking of forces. O’Brien narrates the story from two points of view: as the author and the view of the characters. His style keeps the reader informed on both the background of things and the story itself at the same
I wonder what it was like to witness the Vietnam War firsthand in combat. Well, in the short story, “The Things they Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, the theme was portrayed as the physical and emotional burdens that soldiers had to deal with during the Vietnam War.
The Things They Carried is a funny little book in the sense that it isn’t told how most books are. It goes from war to camping on the borderline of Canada, back to war, and then into present day times. It works marvelously well, showing you what actually happened and then what he thought about what happened and what he could have done to change the outcome. There are many things that I think people can learn from his experiences in the Vietnam war and the way he tells those stories and lessons really bring you along for the ride.
He states that as a soldier, there is so much to soak in from war scenes that it all becomes a muddled mess. Therefore, the story of the moment can be different from each soldier’s perspective due to the parts where each man puts in his own ideas. This leads to some speculation as to whether or not O’Brien’s stories are true or false.
The novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’ Brien takes place in the Vietnam War. The protagonist, Lieutenant Cross, is a soldier who is madly in love with a college student named Martha. He carries around photos and letters from her. However, the first few chapters illustrate how this profound love makes him weak in the war.
Everyday individuals face decisions in which they must choose whether to do what is appealing to them or to choose a more suitable and compliable choice. In the fictional work of ‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’ Brien, certain characters such as Tim O’ Brien himself must face decisions similar to these. The novel demonstrates that when an individual is faced with a decision in which there is a choice that he may have to conform, the individual tends to conform due to not wanting to embarrass themselves or to not be portrayed as a coward to others. However when the individual is challenged with these types of decisions, the choice does not matter since the outcome will be what the individual was trying to avoid. That is to say that in the excerpt “The Rainy River” Tim O’ Brien was going through a conflicting decision on whether or not he should go to the war. Yet, as we see it turns out that either choice will lead to either shame or cowardice. If he goes to the war he feels that he will be a coward and that he gave up his own morals and values and accepted something he does not believe in, but if he does not go to war he will be shunned by society and will be labelled as a coward because he will not fight for his country.
Most of this story revolves around experiences that Tim O’Brien has had. And he certainly has changed from the beginning of the story (speaking chronologically) where he was no more than a scared civilian, who would do anything to escape such a fate as the draft. He would eventually become the war-hardened slightly cocky veteran that he is now. But it is only through his experiences that he would become who he is today. Through all the things he has witnessed. Whether it be watching curt lemon be almost literally "blown to heaven" to having killed a man and making assumptions about who he truly was. He made not have been most affected by the war, but it was he who was described in the most detail, due to the fact that he was describing in first person
Tim O’Brien wrote the novel The Things They Carried in 1990, twenty years after the war in Vietnam.In the novel,Obrien takes us through the life of many soliders by telling stories that do not go in chronical order. In doing so we get to see the physical and mental things the soldiers carry throughout the war in Vietnam.Yet the novel is more than just a description of a particular war. In the things they carried Tim O’Brien develops the characters in the book slowly, to show the gradual effect war has on a person. O’Brien shows this by exploring the life of Henry Dobbins, and Norman Bowker.
In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, numerous themes are illustrated by the author. Through the portrayal of a number of characters, Tim O’Brien suggests that to adapt to Vietnam is not always more difficult than to revert back to the lives they once knew. Correspondingly the theme of change is omnipresent throughout the novel, specifically in the depiction of numerous characters.