The book that I have recently read was “The things they carried”. The book was written by Tim O’Brien who was once a US soldier. The book is about the Vietnam War which was started around 1955. Tim himself was a soldier fighting in the war who had survived. He writes the story fictionally but the names of the characters are of real people. The book is a series of short stories and the situation in the story reflects horror of the war. There are three areas of conflicts that occur in the stories which are physical, psychological and environmental.…
The story begins with the items that were carried by the soldiers to make their life in Vietnam a little more tolerable. Lt. Jimmy Cross carries letters from a young girls named Martha, Henry Dobbins carried extra food, Dave Jensen carried all the necessary items to remain in good hygiene, Ted Lavender carried tranquilizers,…
1. The book I selected was Myrer, Anton. Once an Eagle. New York: HarperPerennial, 2002. Myrer enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and participated in the invasion of Guam where he was wounded and later discharged. Interestingly, he was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, not far from For Devens. This book has been described by some as an anti-war novel. Given the experiences of the author, there are understandably many real and graphic descriptions of the effects of war on the Soldier, physically and mentally. As the Foreword of the book stated, “no one who has experienced combat directly, or even vicariously, would seek it.”…
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is quite a different novel from most and stands out from the variety of other books concerning the Vietnam war. Unlike most books which are classified as fiction or nonfiction The Things They Carried is surreal and fits neither category. O'Brien uses the Vietnam war as his baseline for his story The Things They Carried but he exaggerates and throws bits and pieces of fiction in there to make the story more enticing. It makes you wonder did what I just read really happen? Fitting into no category but rather a book written by a soldier to show the horrors and work that occurred made O'Brien simply want to share his experience with the world, and as such deviating from a generic…
“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien puts the reader in the mind of a few characters who fought together in the Vietnam War. Throughout the story it becomes apparent that these “men” are nothing but children, children who have no business being in the jungles of Vietnam. A war with an unclear purpose in a very foreign land is one that children are least suited for. They do a very unsatisfactory job fighting the war, and the war just leaves them incredibly scarred for the rest of their lives if they make it out alive.…
All the characters in “The Things They Carried” carried different things that meant the world to them. All of the soldiers were terrified of death and were even more scared to show it. They joked after each enemy bombing that they almost peed their pants and such. They really almost did each enemy encounter, and they all knew it. They would turn into a young man and fear for their life, and ask god to please take them far away from this horrible place, but when the firing stop they would stand up and turn into soldiers again. All of these young men carried the emotional baggage of men who might die. They all carried thoughts of grief, terror, love, and longing. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardness. These young soldiers killed, and they died, all because they were embarrassed not…
First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is a good example of how the stories in The Things They Carried are love stories. Lieutenant Cross loved a girl named Martha and the chapter ¨Love¨ is based on his love for her. Jimmy Cross also has emotional ties to the soldiers in his squad. When one of his soldiers, Tim Lavender, takes a bullet in the head and dies the Lieutenant can't handle himself and takes full responsibility. ¨The lieutenant is in some deep hurt. I mean that crying jag - the way he was carrying on - it…
The story conveys physical, mental and emotional strain that soldiers must endure during times of war. The reader is asked to consider each and every aspect of war and what soldiers leave behind them as they go overseas. The Items They Carried, talks about items issued to them by the military and the personnel items they carry. The story began with Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who carries with him letters and photographs of Martha, a college student in New Jersey. Throughout the story, Lt. Cross carries her letters and photographs signifying a bond and love her has for Martha. Lt. Cross is constantly daydreaming and…
The fiction novel written by Tim O’Brien called The Things They Carried uses a lot of nonfiction stories within the novel. O’Brien also uses characterization of the soldiers in the platoon to illustrate the emotional weight that they carry. Tim O’Brien in The Things They Carried mentions,” By and large they carried these things inside, maintaining the masks of composure”(21). He focuses on Jimmy Cross, Mark Fossie, Kiowa, Curt Lemon and several other soldiers in the platoon including himself.…
Kiowa is in awe of Lavendar’s death because he was the only one to see it happen. He and the others realize that death can take them at any time, even when they think they are safe. Kiowa could not get his mind off the event and repeats the story to the other men, revealing his thoughts and fear of death. In order to deal with death, he dehumanizes Lavendar by comparing him to cement, thus making death seem less personal. Even though Kiowa is portrayed as not feeling emotions, it is this detachment from death that enables him to hide his fear.…
What do you carry? Your honor, your love, your sudoku book, or a packet of cigarette? They carry all of them at Tim O’Brien’s masterpiece, “The Things They Carried”. By the way what does Tim O’Brien carry? He carries different writing and storytelling techniques. For Tim O’Brien or for a reader of “The Things They Carried”, the war includes a lots of different personalities, memories and lives such as Kiowa, Jimmy Cross, Ted Lavender… In a word, the war includes “variety” and it is complicated. This different personalities and sophistication of war has caused to O’Brien used different storytelling and structural techniques . Tim O’Brien makes an invisible bridge between readers and stories by using different type of story telling techniques like “story-truth” or making complicated sentences… This book is not about what happened at war, this book is about what is telling us about war.…
In the book, The Things They Carried written by Tim O’Brien, the challenges faced by war are explained in the form of stories. The effects that war can have on a soldier in Vietnam are not solely limited to the physical state, but also the mental state, as is shown when O’Brien introduces the character Mary Anne Bell in chapter nine. The corruption that war brought to an individual’s life led to an altered view of morality and Innocence, as well as the desensitization of an individual.…
The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is about the experience multiple soldiers go through during the Vietnam War. There are stories about the love, hardships, friendships, and loss all the soldiers go through. By going to war, the soldiers all lose a part of themselves. I believe the message Tim O’Brien is trying to convey in his novel is people who do not go to the war, do not understand what it is like. I think throughout this novel, O’Brien tries his best to give the people who are not a part of the war an opportunity to understand. There are multiple examples throughout, The Things They Carried, demonstrating there is no clear understanding from the people at home for what it is like at war. In addition to the disconnection, Tim…
Throughout his novel, the things The Carried, author Tim O’Brien uses a plethora of strategies to give the reader a deeper incite into the day to day life of an American ground soldier during the Vietnam War. O’ Brian shares with us his extensive knowledge and first hand experiences throughout the novel. Being a veteran of the Vietnam War helps O ‘Brian gives us a look into American’s longest war, not often given. Aside from recalling past events, he uses many unique techniques that we may be less used to. The first is the use of characters and objects as representations. This is one of the tactics most often used in the book. Another way that O ‘Brian uses rliterature to emphasize a point is the use of meta-fiction. This is basically telling the truth in a lie. Lastly, his knowledge and experiences add another dimension to this book that can really engage the reader. All of these components working together are what has mad the Things They Carried, such a critically acclaimed book.…
The short story I chose to write my essay on is "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. The soldiers in the story had to deal with not only accepting the deaths of those they became close with, but also dealing with the knowledge that they took another human beings' life. The author shows how they had to carry not only their equipment; but the emotions that came along with being in a war. The emotions I speak of are ones that come from knowing they were mere grunts-and as such, were replaceable. That moment where they silly cease to exist could arrive when they least expected it. This analysis is about the way Cross and his soldiers dealt with the war, not physically but emotionally.…