Response to The Short Story "Sonny’s Blues" by James Baldwin Sonny’s Blues is a short story written by James Baldwin. In this story‚ Baldwin helps us understand the different ways people experience pain and suffering. It is a story about two brothers and the way they cope with pain and suffering in dissimilar ways. The narrator and his brother Sonny lives in a poor black dominant community in Harlem‚ where everyone struggles to survive. As the story begins‚ Sonny is arrested for using heroin while
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200‚00 people died in the vietnam war. Imagine watching people die in front of you‚ getting shot at and having to come home and return to “normal”. That is what Tim O’Brien had to go through. It took him 20 years to be able to come to terms with memories and write a novel. The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a nonlinear book‚ which is a book that is told out of order. O’Brien made the novel this way because that is how memories work. He wanted a place to gather his thoughts and feelings
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both memories and the current happenings in one’s life. In the beginning of The Things They Carried‚ by Tim O’Brien‚ O’Brien describes the lasting turmoil both he and Lieutenant Jimmy Cross feel as a result of the war: “... Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he’d never forgiven himself for Lavender’s death. It was something that would never go away‚ he said quietly‚ and I nodded and told him I feel the same about certain things” (26). The tragedies of war can never be understood by one who has not experienced
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The Things They Carried‚ author Tim O’Brien lists various people‚ places‚ and things that would prevent him from leaving his life in the United States. He describes “a hallucination” that is filled with an amalgam of people‚ from old high school buddies and cheerleaders with pompoms to Abraham Lincoln and “Jane Fonda dressed as Barbarella” (O’Brien‚ 58). My own list is not as diverse as O’Brien’s‚ primarily listing all the food that I would miss. However‚ both of our lists do share one thing: a representation
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The Things They Carried is a novel written by Tim O’ Brien that portrays several ideas of the Vietnam War. The novel presents how many dealt with tragic and alarming conditions during harsh times. Men had choices wether or not they wanted to join the war‚ fled the country‚ or stay in Vietnam once arriving. Guilt played a mind game with all of these choices. The fear of being killed and watching someone be killed was horrendous. Through different stories‚ events‚ and mental images of what Vietnam
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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
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new technology and the post dramatic events of World War I. The movement ultimately made people question the fate and future of humanity‚ wondering what was soon to become of the world. A few fearless writers‚ much like that of Tennessee Williams or Tim O’Brien reacted to the question of “what’s to become of our world” by turning to some new age‚ modernist values. While the romantic period focused much more on human nature‚ free-will and being‚ a more modernist outlook spoke of the consciousness and
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The Things They Carried 2 “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien Summary / Response War! Seems like every where we turn anymore you hear a story about war. The story of “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien takes place during the Vietnam War. Tim O’Brien narrated the story‚ and is writing from first hand experiences. This story gives you a good insight of how soldiers think during such difficult times. Throughout this story you’ll see how love can affect a person’s judgment even during
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In the story “Sonny Blues by James Baldwin‚ displays the central conflict between two brothers who becomes estrangement due to several differences. The narrator feels obligated to look after his younger brother Sonny from the heroin incident and believes that Jazz music is a waste of his time. However‚ Sonny feels withdrawn from his older brother as he is unable to understand his feeling towards music. Sonny wants to express control of his life and use music as a way to talk about his suffering
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Literature is a reflection of the truth. The Things They carried portrayed the Vietnam war accurately. O’Brien took us deep into the emotions of the veterans and it made the readers sympathize with them. O’Brien wrote about the raw emotions of the veterans and that made readers truly sympathize for the veterans. Veterans go through an unexplainable experience that average civilians can never understand. That makes it hard for veterans to talk about their experiences to an extent that someone will
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