Many Emotions of War In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the collection of short stories gives the reader a better understanding of the Vietnam War and how it made the soldiers feel. At this time, there was a draft in order to get more soldiers into battle. Many men entered war at a young age and were not prepared to face the horrors that war brings. As O’Brien re-lives the war in his stories, he tends to exaggerate and change things to entertain, but also prove how the war gets in the heads of soldiers. The many emotions felt during times of war tend to take a toll on soldiers and their actions; O’Brien successfully portrays these emotions as they are proven based on medical diagnosis given to veterans. First, O 'Brien …show more content…
Lastly, young men at war cannot handle their emotions properly so they get caught up in actions that go against their morals. O 'Brien describes war as being hell and every soldier deals with it differently. The emotions used by O 'Brien give the reader a better understanding of what war was like for men that haven’t even fully grown up yet. During times of war “men often resorted to black or gallows humor, (...) as a means of dealing with everyday reality” (British Library). As the soldiers face daily fears of being killed, war takes a toll on their mental state. Tim O’Brien uses a specific example to stick this in the reader 's head, when Rat Kiley “stepped back and shot (the water buffalo) through the right front knee. The animal did not make a sound. It went down hard, then got up again, and Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear” (O’Brien 78). Rat kiley ends up killing a baby buffalo in rage after his dear friend Curt Lemon was killed. Soldiers end up committing cruel actions that go against their morals as a way of dealing with war. Tim O’Brien describes how distraught Rat was after his friend was killed which led him to take his emotions out on the buffalo. O’Brien could have exaggerated this story just like others, however the emotions that Rat Kiley feels are genuine because young soldiers resort to dark actions as they
Throughout the story, many of the characters experience the hardships of war in one way or another, whether it is a direct or secondhand impact. The maturity the boys develop throughout the novel demonstrates the way war can negatively impact one’s mental health.
Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.
Challenges at War Robert E. Lee once said, “What a cruel thing war is… to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors”. The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien takes place in Vietnam. He and a handful of other men experience things only one can image and hope they will never have to experience again. They learn how death among them can greatly affect them, and many others. War is not an easy task to get through and these men all had different coping methods.
Joseph Jacob Ann Wachtler ENGL 2202 16 May 2023 Irony In “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien’s use of irony provides the reader insight to the underlying mental states of the soldiers in his short story “The Things They Carried.” The stress the soldiers go through puts a heavy toll on all of their minds. Losing a comrade, a close friend in such stressful times of war, would usually turn one’s mind into mush. Despites their loss of a fellow soldier they still continue onwards, but are they okay mentally?
Obrien perfectly describes the duality of war saying, “war is nasty; war is fun” and “war makes you a man; war makes you dead” (76). War has many positives for some men, and it gives them a chance to honor their country. War is also horrible and leads to the death of countless young men with bright futures ahead. O’Brien uses the story of the water buffalo to describe all the emotions described in the description of war. The shooting of the water buffalo shows how desensitized soldiers become due to the mindless killing of Vietnam.
Fear of shame not only motivates men to go to war but also affects soldiers’ relationships with each other once there. Concern about being accepted in the war, which might seem in the end an unimportant part given the chances of death and importance of staying together as a “team” during this time. The emotional burden was not just during the war it was also after the war that all these memories came back to them. When these memories come back it brings sadness to them thinking about all the people they lost through out their time
In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the author retells the chilling, and oftentimes gruesome, experiences of the Vietnam war. He utilizes many anecdotes and other rhetorical devices in his stories to paint the image of what war is really like to people who have never experienced it. In the short stories “Spin,” “The Man I Killed,” and “ ,” O’Brien gives reader the perfect understanding of the Vietnam by placing them directly into the war itself. In “Spin,” O’Brien expresses the general theme of war being boring and unpredictable, as well as the soldiers being young and unpredictable.
O’Brien’s intended audience was young people who were not educated about the war and he discussed the themes shame/guilt and mortality/death. The chapter “The Things They Carried” gives an introduction about the men in the group, it also shows shame/guilt. The chapter talks about the equipment each soldier carried and how it affected them. During this chapter it focuses primarily on LT.
This chapter “The Ghost Soldiers”, showed us how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were dealing with the war both physically and psychologically. It also shows us how the Tim O'Brien behaved and felt when he was shot, wounded and had a bacteria infection on his butt and how the war changed the way he thought, and viewed the other soldiers around him. This chapter also contain a lot of psychological lens. From the way Tim O’Brien felt when he was shot and separated from his unit to a new unit to when he wanted revenge on Bobby Jorgenson for almost “killing” him.
“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.
The person had to deal with death and the reality of war under the worst case scenario. Bob “Rat” Kiley was that soldier and one of the many soldiers that left something in the war. He had lost his friend Curt Lemon and that’s the first sign that the war has been turning to be painful for him. This coping mechanism for the death was to write letters to lemon’s sister and he shot a baby Water Buffalo. This coping mechanism is seen in the chapter “How to tell a true war story”, shows how he has been affected and explained the toll the war had taken on him.
Hidden somewhere within the blurred lines of fiction and reality, lies a great war story trapped in the mind of a veteran. On a day to day basis, most are not willing to murder someone, but in the Vietnam War, America’s youth population was forced to after being pulled in by the draft. Author Tim O’Brien expertly blends the lines between fiction, reality, and their effects on psychological viewpoints in the series of short stories embedded within his novel, The Things They Carried. He forces the reader to rethink the purpose of storytelling and breaks down not only what it means to be human, but how mortality and experience influence the way we see our world. In general, he attempts to question why we choose to tell the stories in the way
O’Brien goes into great depth in this small quote on how loss of innocence and war can affect people in the war. The quote “Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t” shows how war is so different from what any human experiences at home. After that small quote he follows it up by bringing up how you have to use normal stuff to show how crazy these things are and how much of a pole it can have on somebody during a war. The way that war is treated for many is mostly the mental part that is struggling. But for many "War is hell, but that's not half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love.
The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, illustrates the experiences of a man and his comrades throughout the war in Vietnam. Tim O’Brien actually served in the war, so he had a phenomenal background when it came to telling the true story about the war. In his novel, Tim O’Brien uses imagery to portray every necessary detail about the war and provide the reader with a true depiction of the war in Vietnam. O’Brien starts out the book by describing everything he and his comrades carry around with them during the war. Immediately once the book starts, so does his use of imagery.
The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery.