Preview

The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: Character Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
234 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: Character Analysis
The amazing war story, The Things They Carried, was written by Tim O’Brien. Tim O’Brien based the character named “O’Brien” in the book after himself.
Just like “O’Brien,” Tim O’Brien was a soldier in the Vietnam War.. After the war, O’Brien passed his nights pouring out his anxiety and grief onto the typewritten page. He believes it was this experience that sowed the seeds for his later writing career (“Tim O’Brien”, 2016) .
Kiowa was one of the characters in O’Brien’s story and he was also one of O'Brien's closest friends. Kiowa was a very thoughtful and loving man who wasn’t a coward. One of the many things that O’Brien wrote about in The Things They Carried was Kiowa’s, one of O’Brien’s fellow soldier's, death. The platoon that Kiowa

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    A true writers writer, Tim O’Brien discusses the connection between truth and storytelling in his novel “The Things They Carried”. He uses stories to dabble on the fine line of what actually happened and what seemed to happen. O’Brien uses his stories not to relay details of a certain event, but rather to express the teeming emotions felt and attempt to keep lost ones alive.…

    • 485 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    | Cross is angry for what has happened. He is angry at both himself and Martha so he decides to burn the letters from Martha because he never wanted to be distracted again.…

    • 896 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a series of short stories that focuses on the lives of a platoon of soldiers during the Vietnam War, the items they carry; both mandatory and not, and how they deal with the hardships while serving. Of course the items that these military men are required to carry are extremely important to their survival, I have chosen to focus more on the smaller more personal items, most being the emotional baggage they carry.…

    • 472 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Things They Carried, a novel by Tim O’Brien, is a collection of war stories told from a fictional Vietnam veteran’s perspective. O’Brien elucidates the physical and emotional barrier war creates between men and women to help demonstrate the frustration soldiers have with women in war.…

    • 1172 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    what's to come. Shame of why they are at the war. Others carry guilt for allowing the death of a fellow…

    • 1545 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    He pictures his victim’s whole life, and imagines he was a young student that had just entered the university in Saigon in 1964, avoided politics, didn’t like to fight, and just hoped the Americans would go away. Though out the whole story, O’Brien both, consolidates and tortures himself, by picturing the life of this young dead soldier. He imagines it in such a way, that the Vietnamese soldier ends up being very similar to himself, and by relating to his victim this way, O’Brien grapples with and tries to understand the unpredictability of his own mortality, and is better aware of the horrible nature of the killing. He contemplates the fact of life and death. How the death of this poor soldier will not change one thing and life will go on, leaving him in the past, making his death look irrelevant and…

    • 500 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Things They Carried is a memoir of twenty-two stories about the author, Tim O'Brien and his half truth memories of his time as a soldier in the Vietnam War. O'Brien admits in the novel often blurring the line between the real story and the absurd fallacy the names of the characters in the book are those of his comrades the entire collect serves as a self-contained work because it is so loyal to its themes and characters.…

    • 320 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tim O'Brien

    • 1267 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In August of 1968 O’Brien was sent to Vietnam and served in the U.S. Army Fifth Battalion, 46th Infantry. O’Brien was sent to “Pinkville” where just a year earlier Lieutenant William Calley and his squad “Charlie Company” slaughtered, raped, and abused 500 innocent Vietnamese citizens. When O’Brien got there his squad and him “all wondered why the place was so hostile.”() After moving up ranks to Sergeant; O’Brien in his thirtieth month was struck by grenade shrapnel and sent home with a Purple Heart.…

    • 1267 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Many people, in some point in their lives will experience a death of a loved one and will try to cope with it as best as they can. In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien talks about his war stories and how he and the soldiers handled the deaths of the soldiers while at war. The soldiers had to deal with the stress, sadness, and guilt when seeing their partner get killed. O’Brien talks about the different coping mechanisms the soldiers use when facing the death of a fellow comadre. The soldiers tell jokes, write letters, tell stories, take responsibility of their death, and even reenact the death scene.…

    • 1081 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In If I Die in a Combat Zone, the end is O’Brien going home from Vietnam. He says that there is no joy in leaving Vietnam. He says that he thought of the friends he gained and the friends he lost. He reminisced what he learned, and realized that he did not learn a lot.…

    • 748 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Kiowa Character Analysis

    • 884 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Kiowa is the emotional compass of Alpha Company, the one who gets everyone else to talk. He's thoughtful, respects the Vietnamese, isn't a coward, and he even has a sense of humor. We quickly learn that he's Tim's best friend in the war. Kiowa tries to comfort O'Brien after he kills the North Vietnamese soldier, and it is to Kiowa that Dobbins opens up about his respect for the ministry. The night before Kiowa is killed, he is in a tent speaking to him about his girlfriend left behind. He drowns under the muck of a sewage field about which his lieutenant, Jimmy Cross, has a bad feeling, and becomes another victim in a war that strips men of their character and turns them into a statistic.…

    • 884 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Among all of the books I have read, and I have read a lot of books, I believe this one is the most intriguing when it comes to composition. Tim O'Brien, the author, has done what is rare in literature and composed a fictionalized autobiography. He brings together thoughts, ideas, emotions, and reality in order to create his own safe and satisfying reality. He tackles reader and author's perspective and creates a work that deserves to be what The Milwaukee Journal calls “...so powerful it steals your breath”.…

    • 700 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Vietnam War last from 1964-1975 for America and was it longest war. Throughout those eleven years many stories and letters were written and many more would come long after the wars end. While officially the conflict was considered to be a police action, many consider it be just rough and brutal as any other war fought in modern history. The majority of soldiers who did return home came back to an America far different than the one they left behind and were subject to the hatred of anti-war protestors and many came back changed and haunted by the things they had seen and done in Vietnam. Some, like Tim O’Brien, found solace several years later by writing of their own accounts of what they witnessed while overseas.…

    • 2265 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    How to Tell a True War Story

    • 2535 Words
    • 11 Pages

    O’Brien tells his story when he was in the Vietnam War though books that he has written. For example in “The Things They Carried” there is a character named Tim. One of the interviews from Library of Congress Tim O’Brien states that “he goes back and forth about Vietnam and also about his first girlfriend.” He was in 4th grade when he was in love and that using his girlfriend as an example that Vietnam was not that easy like losing his girlfriend at nine years old. In the story Bob Kiley was known as Rat. O’ Brien points out that Rat that had a good friend with him in the Vietnam War. They both were good soldiers and when Lemon would volunteer Rat would volunteer as well. He lets people know that his friend and he were goofing around like always. Lemon showed Rat that the war can be fun but also very serious. There will be times to goof around and there will be times to be services during the war. He tells people that when they were goofing around they felt like kids again. Lemon and Rat “were giggling and calling each other motherfucker”. They would go a nature hike in the woods and started messing around. They heard a noise and next thing a bomb killed his friend. Rat had taken his friend back with the other soldiers. Hs friend named was Curt Lemon. He told Sander and the other soldiers what happen to Lemon.…

    • 2535 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Marxist Literary Analysis

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Through writing about his experiences in Vietnam, O 'Brien 's character is able to find a medium in which he can sort through his emotions, since "by telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths" (158). He does not look upon his stories as therapy--he recounts his stories since they are a part of his past, and who he is now is the direct result of them:…

    • 1141 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays