The point of stories it to tell a tale and inflict certain emotions onto the reader. Tim O’Brien uses this in his novel The Things They Carried. These stories were fictional but true, regaling his experiences of war. In the last chapter he writes that stories have the ability to save people. He does not mean “save” in a biblical sense, but as if a person saved the progress on a game they have been playing. In a written story, the details are permanent. One can not will the words to change in every copy of the same story. The author’s words are fixed and how the author created the story is how the story will always go. While it is true a reader -- or even the author -- could create an alternate reality where the story divulges from the original plot, the people in the story are typically the same. In fact, the more people think about the character, the more the character seems to come alive. Tim O’Brien gave his fallen comrades and even his first love a second life in his novel. In the final chapter Linda says “Once you’re alive… you can’t ever be dead” (O’Brien 244). When a person is alive, they interact with a variety of individuals and become a central part in some of their …show more content…
he can create a new world where soldiers never died and there never was a war to be fought. Through the magic of storytelling, “[O’Brien] can still see Kiowa, too, and Ted Lavender and Kurt Lemon and sometimes [he] can even see Timmy skating with Linda under the yellow floodlights” (O’Brien 245-46). He created a new world where soldiers never died and there never was a war to be fought. In this story, there was no deaths to be sad about, and there was no funerals to attend. Each of O’Brien’s vignettes saved a different moment. Just as in save files on a video game, if a reader wants to read about their favorite characters, they are able to open up the book to the right story and begin it
There are many meanings inside stories; “Gregory” by Panos Ioannides is a heart-wrenching short story that follows the protagonist through the execution of his friend. E.M. Forster explains a want to keep friendships strong even at the expense of one’s relation to one’s country. The main character in “Gregory”' has multiple thoughts showing a tie to what Foster explained, as well as the internal fight that happens when one has two forces pulling at one. The Narrator wants to follow his gut and skirt tragedy, but in the end he wants to save himself from his superiors.
In the novel, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien shares several different experiences during the Vietnam War that had a great impact on the soldiers that fought along side him and himself. Although not all the stories are connected to one another, some intertwine. Attempting to show the reader who he is then and who he is now throughout the book, O’Brien flips back and forth between the past and the present: sharing his experiences during the war and his current time being a post-war father. War takes a toll on a man in more ways than one. Many seek comfort in bringing personal items with them to battle to remember where they came from and what they have to look forward to when returning home.
In the book “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien uses imagery, figurative language and repetition to convey his message. O’Brien’s purpose for story telling, is to clear his conscience of war and to tell the stories of soldiers who were forgotten by society. Many young men were sent to war, despite opposing it. They believed it was “wrong” to be sent to their deaths. Sadly, no one realizes a person’s significance until they die. Only remembering how they lived rather than acknowledging their existence when they were alive.
In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses many themes to help draw connections between the book and the reader. O’Brien’s “On The Rainy River” chapter contains countless motifs that make this chapter so compelling. “On The Rainy River” describes his decision whether to enter the draft or to flee to Canada where he would not get condemned. The main theme in this chapter is embarrassment. First Lieutenant Tim O’Brien goes insane from the embarrassment he would face if he did not enter the draft.
Death is one of life's most challenging obstacles. Tim O'Brien was exposed to more than his fair share of death. To manage the emotional stress, he developed methods of coping with the death in his life. O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried, demonstrates his attempts to make death less real through psychotherapeutic tactics like telling stories about the dead as if they were living and conceiving the dead as items instead of people.
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.
Author Tim O 'Brien has received many honors and much recognition for his book, The Things They Carried, which is based on his personal involvement in Vietnam. He was drafted in 1968 and served in the 23rd Infantry Division, which is otherwise called the American Division. A unit from this group had been charged with the slaughter at My Lai about a year prior to O 'Brien 's entry. Originally from Minnesota, O’Brien was born in 1946 making him about twenty-two years old when he was drafted (PBS 2013).
In The Things The, O’Brien talks a fair amount about himself. It becomes clear that he was affected greatly by his experiences of the war and that he still has to try to cope with them everyday. Also clear is that he leaves whether or not the characters of this book are real or not as ambiguous. He leaves this ambiguous to make the point that the truth of the story doesn’t matter. What actually matters is the feelings his characters make him and the readers feel. He makes this clear by dedicating his book to his characters, by writing a conversation between himself and one of these characters, and by actually telling us that what is factually true doesn’t matter, rather an emotional truth does matter. Also clear is that in order to cope with the guilt from the war, Tim O’Brien writes The Things They Carried.
In Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried, starts off with a lineup of items that each soldier must "hump," meaning to carry, during the Vietnam War. He lists and explains the necessities, various weapons, ammunition, grenades, claymores, helmets, flak jackets, can openers, C-rations, insect repellent, cigarettes, jungle boots, medical supplies, photographs, letter, as well as personal items, memories, histories, emotions, and most importantly their own lives. On top of everything, O'Brien reveals that the soldiers also carried with them were their stories: “stories for joining the past to the future"1, stories that can animate bodies and “make the dead talk,"2 “a true war story that is never about war,"3 and “stories that are strange, improbable and that last forever, that swirl back and forth across the border between trivia and bedlam, the mad and the mundane."4 The novel gives an in depth view of the war through the soldiers eyes being in Vietnam while the textbook, Give Me Liberty by Eric Foner, observes the war from afar through the eyes of the government and the civilians in the United States. The Things They Carried is not about the Vietnam War itself, but the experiences that soldiers faced while fighting the war, the culture of being a soldier, and the way the Vietnam war transforms a solder that American civilians cannot understand.
Storytelling’s impact on people who use it has been life saving in certain cases. By asserting the existence of different perspectives, writers get to suppress their own opinions in order to sympathize with others. (insert thing about meta-fiction) With this idea in mind, author Kate Taylor wrote the novel Serial Monogamy, a meta-fiction of a writer recalling the story of her husband’s affair and her deal with terminal breast cancer, all through her telling of Dickens’ secret life and tales of the Arabian Nights. In Serial Monogamy, storytelling makes people more understanding as they explore new perspectives.
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.
The word "hero" is so often used to describe people who overcome great difficulties and rise to the challenge that is set before them without even considering the overwhelming odds they are up against. In our culture, heroes are glorified in literature and in the media in various shapes and forms. However, I believe that many of the greatest heroes in our society never receive the credit that they deserve, much less fame or publicity. I believe that a hero is simply someone who stands up for what he/she believes in. A person does not have to rush into a burning building and save someone's life to be a hero. Someone who is a true friend can be a hero. A hero is someone who makes a difference in the lives of others simply by his/her presence. In Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried, the true heroes stand out in my mind as those who were true friends and fought for what they believed in. These men and women faced the atrocities of war on a daily basis, as explained by critic David R. Jarraway's essay, "'Excremental Assault' in Tim O'Brien: Trauma and Recovery in Vietnam War Literature" and by Vietnam Veteran Jim Carter. Yet these characters became heroes not by going to drastic measures to do something that would draw attention to themselves, but by being true to their own beliefs and by making a difference to the people around them.
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.
According to the professor and fiction writer Bret Lott, what makes a story a “good story” is having writing that makes someone consider all possibilities, supernatural or not and by having a story with details that are meaningful to the person writing it. In Lott’s introduction he says, “We are writers who, by the power of Christ, are trying to smash the gates of serious literature with the joy and light and hope of a personal, saving, supernatural God” (3). Lott shows that a good story makes one really have to consider if a supernatural God plays a role in it. For example, one of Lott’s stories was about his prayer being answered by God. The prayer was answered when one of Lott’s students asks, “If I were to read a book from the bible, which
A narrative is specified to amuse, to attract, and grasp a reader’s attention. The types of narratives are fictitious, real or unification or both. However, they may consist of folk tale stories, mysteries, science fiction; romances, horror stories, adventure stories, fables, myths and legends, historical narratives, ballads, slice of life, and personal experience (“Narrative,” 2008). Therefore, narrative text has five shared elements. These are setting, characters, plot, theme, and vocabulary (“Narrative and Informational Text,” 2008). Narrative literature is originally written to communicate a story. Therefore, narrative literature that is written in an excellent way will have conflicts and can discuss shared aspects of human occurrence.