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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Metafiction is a literary device that makes a reader question what is reality and what is fiction. Tim O’Brien uses metafiction‚ in his chapter “How to Tell a True War Story”‚ to tell the reader how one can pick out a true war story as he is telling a war story. He uses this technique to emphasize how real the stories were to keep himself sane and get his bottled-up emotions off his chest. In the chapter “Notes”‚ O’Brien tells the reader a story about a man named Norman Bowker. Bowker committed
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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‚ 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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In Vietnam veteran and author Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried the reader is given a list of both the physical and mental items that a soldier has to carry during war. The way O’Brien incorporates these lists into his writing indisputably makes the events and stories conceivable for the reader because each item defines the nature of the men in alpha platoon. O’Brien’s depiction of the men in alpha platoon does more than define each man’s personality but it enables a reader with no knowledge
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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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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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In life there are choices people would have to make every day: To go in or out‚ to leave or stay‚ to move on or remain in the past‚ to keep or to erase‚ to live or die – these type of choices are the things Tim O’Brien carried when his daughter‚ Kathleen‚ asked why he writes about Vietnam and later suggested that he should forget about the war. Exploring the secret passageways of fragmented memories of O’Brien‚ not only struck with his intricately crafted mind of the past‚ but the feeling of being
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