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Tim O'brien, How to tell a war story and new historicist criticism
Tim o'brien's life
O'brien character analysis
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Tim O’Brien
“Intellect had run up against emotion. My conscience told me to run, yet some irrational and powerful force was resisting, like a weight pushing me toward the war. What it came to, stupidly, was a sense of shame. Hot, stupid shame. I did not want people to think badly of me.” (Tim O’Brien; On the Rainy River).
Tim O’Brien is a twentieth- century author, he was born October 1 1946 in Minnesota. After O’Brien graduated from Worthington College, he received his draft papers for Vietnam. O’Brien served as a ‘foot soldier’ from February 1969 to March 1970. He was awarded the rank of sergeant and received the Purple Heart after sustaining a grenade wound. After serving O’Brien went onto graduate school at Harvard University, where is received an internship at the Washington Post. O’Brien’s writing career took off in 1973 when he released If I Die In A Combat Zone, Box Me Up And Ship Me Home, the book was about his experiences at war. Although it is not all rainbows and butterflies, O’Brien experienced depression, and personal desperation approaching suicide, without his army friends he felt alone and scared. He called himself a coward, a deserter of conscience, for not defying the draft. Luckily O’Brien found happiness when his wife Meredith gave birth to their two sons, Timmy, and Tad.
I am pretty sure when the president of the United States and the people in the Pentagon decided to send their troops to fight in Vietnam, they did not think that the veterans would write, and would become a famous literature writer. (Zins)
Tim O’Brien holds a unique ability to show the realities of everyday life for many veterans. When you listen to him speak you get a feel of what it is like to be a soldier at war, not only ment...
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Kaplan, Steven. "The Things They Carried." Understanding Tim O'Brien. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. 169-192. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 79. Detroit: Gale, 2005.Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
Lindbloom, James. "Gadfly Interview with Tim O'Brien, 3.99." Gadfly Interview with Tim O'Brien, 3.99. Gadfly Interview, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2014
O'Brien, Tim. "'The Things They Carried,' 20 Years On." Literature Resource Center. Literature Resource Center, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
"Tim O'Brien." Contemporary Popular Writers. Ed. Dave Mote. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997. Literature Resource Center. Web. 6 Apr. 2014.
Zins, Daniel L. "Imagining the real: the fiction of Tim O'Brien." Hollins Critic 23.3 (1986): 1+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Apr. 2014.
In The Things They Carried, an engaging novel of war, author Tim O’Brien shares the unique warfare experience of the Alpha Company, an assembly of American military men that set off to fight for their country in the gruesome Vietnam War. Within the novel, the author O’Brien uses the character Tim O’Brien to narrate and remark on his own experience as well as the experiences of his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company. Throughout the story, O’Brien gives the reader a raw perspective of the Alpha Company’s military life in Vietnam. He sheds light on both the tangible and intangible things a soldier must bear as he trudges along the battlefield in hope for freedom from war and bloodshed. As the narrator, O’Brien displayed a broad imagination, retentive memory, and detailed descriptions of his past as well as present situations. 5. The author successfully uses rhetoric devices such as imagery, personification, and repetition of O’Brien to provoke deep thought and allow the reader to see and understand the burden of the war through the eyes of Tim O’Brien and his soldiers.
Tim O’Brien is a very gifted author, but he is also a veteran of the Vietnam War and fought with the United States in that controversial war. Tim O’Brien was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1968. He served as an infantryman, and obtained the rank of sergeant and won a Purple Heart after being wounded by shrapnel. He was discharged from the Vietnam War in 1970. I believe that O’Brien’s own images and past experiences he encountered in the Vietnam War gave him inspiration to write the story “The Things They Carried.” O’Brien tells the story in third person narrative form about Lt. Jimmy Cross and his platoon of young American men in the Vietnam War. In “The Things They Carried” we can see differences and similarities between the characters by the things they hold close to them.
An interesting combination of recalled events and editorial commentary, the story is not set up like a traditional short story. One of the most interesting, and perhaps troubling, aspects of the construction of “How to Tell a True War Story” is O’Brien’s choice to create a fictional, first-person narrator who might just as well be the author himself. Because “How to Tell a True War Story” is told from a first-person perspective and O’Brien is an actual Vietnam veteran, a certain authenticity to this story is added. He, as the “expert” of war leads the reader through the story. Since O’Brien has experienced the actual war from a soldier’s point of view, he should be able to present the truth about war...
Robinson, Daniel. "Getting It Right: The Short Fiction of Tim O'Brien." Studies in Contemporary Fiction. 40.3 (1999): 257. Expanded Academic ASAP.
The novel, “The Things They Carried”, is about the experiences of Tim O’Brian and his fellow platoon members during their time fighting in the Vietnam War. They face much adversity that can only be encountered in the horrors of fighting a war. The men experience death of friends, civilians, enemies and at points loss of their rationale. In turn, the soldiers use a spectrum of methods to cope with the hardships of war, dark humor, daydreaming, and violent actions all allow an escape from the horrors of Vietnam that they experience most days.
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a very uniquely written book. This book is comprised of countless stories that, though are out of order, intertwine and capture the reader’s attention through the end of the novel. This book, which is more a collection of short stories rather than one story that has a beginning and an end, uses a format that will keep the reader coming back for more.
Through The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien moves beyond the horror of fighting in the Vietnam War to examine with sensitivity and insight the nature of courage and fear. Included, is a collection of interrelated stories. A few of the stories are brutal, while others are flawed, blurring the distinction between fact and fiction. All the stories, however, deal with one platoon. Some are about the wartime experiences of soldiers, and others are about a 43-year-old writer reminiscing about his platoon’s experiences. In the beginning chapter, O’Brien rambles about the items the soldiers carry into battle, ranging from can openers, pocketknives, and mosquito repellent o Kool-Aid, sewing kits, and M-16 assault rifles. Yet, the story is truly about the intangible things the soldiers “carry”: “grief, terror, love, longing… shameful memories (and) the common secret of cowardice” (Harris & O’Brien 21).
The Things They Carried. N. p. : Houghton, 1990. : ill. Print.
O'Brien, Tim. "The Things They Carried." X. J. Kennedy, Dana Gioia. Backpack Literature An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. Joe Terry. Pearson, 2012. Print. 10 Feb. 2014.
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.
O’Brien’s unique verisimilitude writing style fills the novel with deep meaning and emotion. Analyzing the novel through a psychological lens only adds to its allure. Understanding why characters act the way they do helps bring this novel to life. The reader begins to empathize with the characters. Every day, the soldiers’ lives hang in the balance. How these soldiers react to life-threatening situations will inspire the reader. Life has an expiration date. Reading about people who are held captive by their minds and who die in the name of war, will inspire the reader to live everyday as if they are currently in the
The impact of the Vietnam War upon the soldiers who fought there was huge. The experience forever changed how they would think and act for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons for this was there was little to no understanding by the soldiers as to why they were fighting this war. They felt they were killing innocent people, farmers, poor hard working people, women, and children were among their victims. Many of the returning soldiers could not fall back in to their old life styles. First they felt guilt for surviving many of their brothers in arms. Second they were haunted by the atrocities of war. Some soldiers could not go back to the mental state of peacetime. Then there were soldiers Tim O’Brien meant while in the war that he wrote the book “The Things They Carried,” that showed how important the role of story telling was to soldiers. The role of stories was important because it gave them an outlet and that outlet was needed both inside and outside the war in order to keep their metal state in check.
In his assessment of storytelling, O’Brien highlights the challenges of telling stories by including many tales that take place after the Vietnam War. For example, back in America, the soldier’s of Vietnam found
“War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead,” (80). In the fiction novel The Things They Carried, the author Tim O’Brien reminisces fighting in the Vietnam War and the aftermath of the war with his platoon mates through short stories and memories. He goes in depth about the emotional trauma and physical battles they face, what they carry, and how Vietnam and war has changed them forever. O’Brien’s stories describe the harsh nature of the Vietnam War, and how it causes soldiers to lose their innocence, to become guilt-ridden and regretful, and to transform into a paranoid shell of who they were before the war.
In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien structure his novel in order to help aid in developing the theme. The book is comprised of 22 short pieces that reference one another, each story is capable of standing alone. However, O’Brien structed this novel to combine each of the stories and teach a broader lesson. He uses a purposeful lack of organization, repetition, and abnormal transitional chapters in order to do so. His theme that war burdens, both physical and emotional, are too much for soldiers to handle, is reinforced through the structure of his novel.