If I Die In A Combat Zone By Tim O Brien

June 23 The book opens up with a story about First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and the infatuation he has with a young woman named Martha. As the chapter continued I start to realize the only reason he is so taken with Martha is because he needs someone, something, even an idea to hold onto to get mind off of the war.

At this point in the book O’Brien has decided he is going to the war. Not really for himself but for the people in his town. He doesn’t want the embarrassment of not going, he doesn 't want people looking down on him. He ultimately does it for everybody but himself. It comes from the story “On the rainy river”.

Tim O’Brien is a novelist and a retired soldier from the Vietnam War. He wrote a semi-autobiographical novel titled, The Things They Carried, in a format that seemed as if we were in the novel itself. As readers continue with this novel one can envision and have the impression of deaths and all the effects war has on a soldier from the war. O’Brien explores the effect of war on an individual through fictionalized stories he tells in this novel in order to show how humans can change through drastic events that happen to them due to the war. Being in a war affects the way we think and the people we love.

In this battle, it is clearly expressed that many people are dying for uncertain reasons. Another example of the soldiers horrific experience is represented in how desensitized the soldiers become to violence and danger. Such as in chapter seven, when LZ gator was put under mortar fire and O’Brien was the first one to the barracks because most of the other soldiers were drunk and weren’t alarmed at all (88-89). These soldiers has been through so much fear and danger that they turn to drowning their pain in alcohol to forget. This level of mental trauma and desensitization to immediate danger proves that O’Brien is arguing that the Vietnam war was a horrific occurrence.

Death will always complement war. This is seen clearly in Tim O’Brien’s short story “The Man I Killed”. In this tale the Main character, Tim, is vividly describing in his mind the enemy Vietcong solider he just killed life story before his death. He details everything, from the visible wounds on the soldier’s body to a fantasy of the man’s life. Meanwhile, to soldiers in Tim’s platoon acknowledge that he killed this man and try to speak to him about it.

O’Brien The novel/autobiography, If I Die in a Combat Zone (1973), recounts author Tim O’Brien’s experiences with life, love, and personal dissention during possibly one of the most horrific military conflicts in history: the Vietnam War. In If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O’Brien gives a terrifying first-person perspective of his disdain and opposition toward the Vietnam War through his recollection of his internal struggle of living life in mid war Vietnam, the violence and loss of humanity that soldiers, and the life-altering, irreversible damage that the author/narrator endured during the Vietnam War. Throughout his involvement/participation in the Vietnam war, O’Brien was having a hard time coping with the way he felt about why the war was even happening to

In If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O'Brien argued that the Vietnam War was unjust and unethical through his depictions of the inhumane fighting between American and Vietnamese soldiers, with examples of his opinions on how this war was pointless, by detailing the soldier's experiences of death and the mental and physical turmoil they endured during their time in war. According to Tim O’Brien, the Vietnam war left so many soldiers mentally and physically damaged. They literally had to alter how the truly felt about death and fear. Tim O'Brien said, “To talk about death was bad luck, the ultimate self fulfilling prophecy.

O’Brien did not want to shame his family by ignoring the draft to the Vietnam war he received. He confirms how he “feared ridicule and censure” to explain how his hometown would disapprove him fleeing to Canada instead going to the war (O’Brien 42). Shame motivated him to go to the war because he do not want to seem cowardly or shameful. Although love and shame affect the men , enemies does as well.

O’Gorman begins the article by discussing O’Brien’s earlier war novels and describing how from the beginning he was placed in the ranks of contemporary war writers who were trying to record what was happening in the bloody battles of Vietnam. O’Gornan discusses and uses quotes from O’Brien’s novels If I Die in a Combat Zone, Northern Lights, and more to show how O’Brien had a wide scope of literature. O’Gorman then goes into discussing how O’Brien links to traditional war writers such as Cooper, Crane, and Hemmingway, and how he was influenced by Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, and more writers. However, O’Gorman’s main analysis of The Things They Carried was in the form of the book, the novel is a composite novel comprised of short stories that flow together to create a whole text. O’Gorman believes that O’Brien composed this form because he felt compelled to move from traditional linear novels to something more complex and richer, in choosing this form he is not just writing about war stories but rather stories of humanity.

We believe that true, patriotic heroes go to war without cowardice or complaint. Yet, as O’Brien demonstrates in his novel, war is incomprehensible and lacks the morality we expect it to have. The Vietnam War was fought for reasons unknown to the soldiers involved as seen in the lines “The very facts were shrouded in uncertainty: Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation or simple aggression?

“It’s never about war, it’s about sunlight.” This quote is one of the many reasons Tim O’Brien gives on how to tell a true war story. In The Things They Carried four of Tim O’Brien’s own rules demonstrate why his chapter “On a Rainy River” is true. The rules that a true war story has no moral, a true war story doesn’t generalize, a true war story is not just about war, and a true war story is embarrassing prove his chapter true.

He fought a war in Vietnam that he knew nothing about, all he knew was that, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (38). He realized that he put his life on the line for a war that is surrounded in controversy and questions. Through reading The Things They Carried, it was easy to feel connected to the characters; to feel their sorrow, confusion, and pain. O’Briens ability to make his readers feel as though they are actually there in the war zones with him is a unique ability that not every author possess.

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.

As O’Brien tells what he would consider to be a ture war story of two young Vietnam soldiers he writes, “ They were kids; they just didn’t know. A nature hike, they thought, not even a war … they were giggling and calling each other yellow mother and playing a silly game they invented” (O’Brien 270). With O’briens words he reminices with his readers about childhood. The soldiers he writes about, under different circumstances, could have easily been kids in a school yard or a summer camp. True war stories show the gruesomeness of war, childrens lives lost faster than the blink of an eye.

This is evident when Mr. O’Brien says, “I would go to the war – I would kill and maybe die – because I was embarrassed not to,” (pg. 57.) In the end the author realized what he must do and went back home, so he could fight in the Vietnam