aspects emphasized in Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried. Throughout the novel‚ O’Brien “[blurs] the lines between fiction and nonfiction” (Smith)‚ and explores how using fiction to convey the war affects the readers more as they learn about the soldiers. By using juxtaposition and by incorporating fictional parts in the novel‚ O’Brien shows how truth is less important in war stories than non-truth since non-truth makes the reader look at war stories at a more emotional level than truth
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“There was never a good war or a bad peace.” War‚ conflict between nations or fellow citizens with the use of arms. War is the most powerful threat we have on earth today. War can accomplish a variety of things in a variety of ways but for the soldiers they are stuck with an experience unlike any other known to the everyday man‚ stuck with memories and images of what it’s like to be hunted by another man. Different people take different things away from war and are affected in different ways‚ but
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Kimberly LaChaine Period 2 January 3‚ 2017 The Effects of War The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien represents the epitome of dehumanization that war inflicts on people. Each character is involved in a short story that makes up the entire novel; their different traits make up not only their personality but their entire persona and how their social role contributed to the overall message. The characters participation in the war leads to many tragic fates such as absurdity‚ trauma‚ and
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Veasey English 3 MG May 2013 What is a true war story? Is it a collection of memories‚ pulled from the ragged and weary brain of a soldier‚ and stitched together to form literature? Is it a fictitious (albeit perfectly accurate) account of battle‚ formulated by a civilian English major for his dissertation? One might argue that a true war story cannot be defined‚ for it will never exist. A thorough and valid account of battle‚ sticking without
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“The Things They Carried” Thesis Statement: In “The Things They Carried‚” the soldier uses physical objects to calm their secret fears. This symbolizes emotions‚ spiritual burdens within the objects that symbolize times‚ places‚ and also what they feared. Another thing we are not aware of is when the author mentions dust which is a constant reminder to the soldiers that they are not safe. In this short story the narrator wanted to express the loneliness the soldiers felt and distressed because
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Cassandra Reed S. Matthews Comp II 3 March 2014 The Things They Carried The Things They Carried by Tim O’ Brien is a collection of twenty-two short stories about the mental and physical endeavors that the American soldiers in the Vietnam War that comes together in one short novel. In this collection O’ Brien often blurs the lines between fiction and reality in order to push the reader to sympathize with the soldiers as they carry guilt‚ shame‚ cowardice‚ malice‚ and confusion. Many of the
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The Things They Carried What seems like a true account of his time in war‚ Tim O ’Brien makes The Things They Carried a generalization of his own experiences in Vietnam. Through the actions of soldiers we can begin to explore the effect war has on the human condition and the toll it plays on their minds. O ’Brien makes shame and physical and emotional burdens motivation. He also plays around with the idea of ambiguous truth and how to tell true war stories. That the difference between the "happening
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Mr. Willions English 26 May 2011 Final Essay #7 The most emotional part of war is the amount of death that soldiers encounter. During the Vietnam War‚ soldiers saw their brothers and enemies getting violently killed every day. Before war‚ the soldiers had never been around so much death and destruction. In the novel The Things They Carried‚ the narrator focuses on important deaths and analyzes them from different points of view. A death is a huge event‚ and not something that can be classified
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dealt with on a daily basis and how events affected their health and mental state. In order for a story to be good it must be filled with facts‚ but with imagery that make a story easier to picture it when reading it. When an author writes a story they need to use facts to make a good story‚ but they need to add things to make the readers picture what is happening‚ they make them think deeper about the story. An example of when this happens in The Things They Carried is when O’Brien is talking about
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In The Things They Carried‚ Tim O’Brien tells the tale of not about war‚ but rather about war’s effect on one’s mentality. Ultimately‚ this novel is built on a foundation of the items that the soldiers of the Vietnam War carried. Whether it was the way Jimmy Cross uses the pebble to escape from his duties as a soldier or when Norman Bowker realizes that courage comes form within‚ not from receiving a Silver Star; O’Brien uses baggage as a symbol throughout the book to teach that war does in fact
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