Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: A Literary Analysis

During the War young men were taken away from fully experiencing their adolescence lives and were sent to fight in war. In the short story, “The things they carried” by Tim O’Brien, the narrator discusses his personal experience in the Vietnam War along with his fellow soldiers. He tells the story in an unusual way when he shares parts of his story from past and changes to present which allows the reader to feel the emotions and experience what each soldier went through and learn more about the characters personalities. O’ Brien uses an unusual narrative technique that allows the reader to visualize the experiences they went through such as death and guilt. Throughout the story we also learn more about the characters personalities and the importance

One night the platoon set up camp alongside a river. They quickly realized they had settled in a sewage field, meanwhile rain had continued to pour making their camp muddy and dangerous. Suddenly rounds of mortar began to fall onto their camp. After the third round

He witnesses one of his closest friends, Kiowa, become fatally wounded and precede to sink into the never-returning mud that prompts room for creativity. Norman feels as if, by some intuitive way, prying him out of the mud would bring him back. Although to the readers, it was clear he was already gone. Tim O’Brien describes Norman’s hometown in depth as he had lived there also. His use of vivid imagery and sensory details make the readers feel as if Norman is narrating from a third person perspective, a realistic scene that has some imagination added to it.

Tim O’Brien’s incredible work, The Things They Carried, depicts the gruesome story of the Vietnam war, and gives surreal accounts of the events that took place. However, O’Brien does not do so not through concrete facts, but instead through fictional storytelling. O’Brien believes that the facts of war are not what matters in determining truth, but instead that a “true war story” moves the reader, allowing them to feel and understand the experiences of the soldiers who lived it. In the chapter titled “Good Form” O’Brien admits that the only truth to his story is that he was a foot soldier in Vietnam at the time of the war, and that everything else written “is invented.” However, in this chapter O’Brien also explains his reasoning behind using

The book tells the story of soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War. The short stories are inspired by O’Briens personal experience while fighting in the war. O’Brien conveys his experiences during his time fighting into each short story. This book evidently exhibits an anti-war tone. “In this essay, author Tim O'Brien writes about his war experiences and how they affected his life.

Poetic Elements in “The Things They Carried” In the short story “The Things They Carried “ O Brien explores many poetic elements in the story. The author’s purpose of this story is to tell us about the effects and impact that the Vietnam War has left. War is truly horrific and should not be taken lightly. Going to war can be very devastating.

“The Things They carried” is O’Brien’s third book and was published in 1990, twenty years after O’Brien coming back from war. The main subject of the book is the Vietnam War, and it consists of twenty-two interconnected short stories. There is no clear distinction between the reality and fiction in the book. O’Brien uses his own name for the main character of the book. In some stories, he writes about his true memories of the war, and in some parts he writes complete fiction.

In “The Man I Killed,” Tim O’Brien portrays a vivid story on how war affects individuals. Tim, Azar, and Kiowa are all at the Vietnam war in 1990 together fighting. Tim killed a man with a grenade and he feels deeply upset about the matter, while Azar shows no sympathy for the dead man whatsoever. Kiowa is the neutral man of the situation, trying to comfort and justify the death of the man because it was Tim’s job to protect his men. The story is told from the perspective of the protagonist, while O’Brien uses a sufficient amount of imagery throughout the reading to show the amount of guilt he has obtained from killing a man.

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.

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.

(page 68). This is why Tim O’Brien writes the way he does. He wants the reader to believe his story and get a sense of what war is truly

War was so much more than just war to O’Brien and he able to share this through his writing. " But this is true: stories can save us. ... in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world." (page

In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the author skillfully presents a paradox about war and how it is both horrible and beautiful. Through O’Brien’s vivid storytelling and sorrowful anecdotes, he is able to demonstrate various instances which show both the horrible and beautiful nature of war. Within the vulnerability of the soldiers and the resilience found in the darkest of circumstances, O’brien is able to show the uproarious emotional landscape of war with a paradox that serves as the backbone of the narrative. In the first instance, O’Brien explores the beauty in horror within the chapter “Love.”

Contrary, Kiowa does not like the idea of invading the pagoda, saying, “this is all wrong” (122). Kiowa symbolizes the opposition to the war, those who think involvement with Vietnam is not a good idea. Third, the “field” Kiowa dies in represent Vietnam as well; the “field” is unpleasant and hard to get out of, like the war. Norman Bowker has a parallel of the field with a lake. Even at back at home, the lake is there reminding him of the war as if it will never leave him, showing the reader the war stays with people.

In November of 1955, the United States entered arguably one of the most horrific and violent wars in history. The Vietnam War is documented as having claimed about 58,000 American lives and more than 3 million Vietnamese lives. Soldiers and innocent civilians alike were brutally slain and tortured. The atrocities of such a war are near incomprehensible to those who didn’t experience it firsthand. For this reason, Tim O’Brien, Vietnam War veteran, tries to bring to light the true horrors of war in his fiction novel The Things They Carried.