Moreover, O’Brien’s miscellaneous word choice, and fragmented sentence structure play a huge role in reflecting his thoughts on the war. It helps readers understand the significance of the chapter, and connect us to the author on a deeper level. O’Brien’s short, and repetitive sentences mirror his personal struggles, and allow the audience to learn more about him. For example, the last sentence of “Spin” is, “..nothing to remember except the story.” (39) He repeats the word “story” four times to emphasize his reasoning for remembering these memories from Vietnam. Recalling the good memories, instead of the bad, can’t take away the pain and distress he continues to go through. O’Brien successfully uses diction as a strategy to get the readers to understand the overlying message that grief is apart of life, that can not be ignored. …show more content…
Some of them are depressing and melancholic, while others are sweet and amusing. One of the stories he mentions is about Mitchell Sanders picking lice off his body and “slowly, carefully depositing the lice”(30) in an envelope to the draft board. This does a nice job of lightening the gloomy feel that the beginning of the book presented. In another memory, O’Brien describes going to watch Norman Baker and Henry Dobbins play checkers each evening. “There was something restful about it.” O’Brien says. (31). “There were red checkers and black checkers.”(31). He analyzes the game of checkers, and contrasts it with the war. In a game of chess, there are strategies, rules, and a clear view of what is ahead. Readers learn that O’Brien is fearful of the unknown, which may be a result of Vietnam. Throughout the chapter, the unassociated anecdotes compare to the thoughts occurring in his mind, and help readers get to know him better as a
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.
By telling stories about others, he is not only saving the lives and memories of the deceased, but also his own. In the chapter “Notes”, O’Brien shares the story of Norman Bowker and explains that “It occurred to [him] that the act of writing had led [him] through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. (152) Writing about the soldiers that Tim O’Brien fought alongside in the Vietnam is a therapeutic act that helps him cope with what happened, in a sense saving his own life and preventing the “worse” from happening. In more universal terms, O’Brien conveys that telling stories of his deceased childhood friend, Linda allowed him to ease his pain and confusion surrounding death by letting her live on through imagination. “ [He’s] skimming across the surface of [his] own history, moving fast, riding the melt between the blades, doing loops and spins, and when [he] take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, [he] realizes it is as Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story.”
Instead, he denounces the traditional, dominant war story narrative. Brutal details, according to O’Brien, are necessary, “You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come back talking dirty” (66). O’Brien essentially challenges and warns the reader by suggesting they must be prepared for reality.
The quote also serves to illustrate the harsh realities of war and the devastating consequences of decisions made in the heat of the moment. He suggests that stories can be used to make sense of experiences, even though they may not always be literal truth. O'Brien illustrates this idea by weaving together personal anecdotes, historical facts, and vivid descriptions to create a narrative that is both emotionally powerful and
O’Brien tells the readers about him reflecting back twenty years ago, he wonders if running away from the war were just events that happened in another dimension, he pictures himself writing a letter to his parents: “I’m finishing up a letter to my Parents that tells what I'm about to do and why I'm doing it and how sorry I am that I’d never found the courage to talk to them about it”(O’Brien 80). Even twenty years after his running from the war, O’Brien still feels sorry for not finding the courage to tell his parents about his decision of escaping to Canada to start a new life. O’Brien presented his outlook that even if someone was not directly involved in the war, this event had impacted them indirectly, for instance, how a person’s reaction to the war can create regret for important friends and
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
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.
Rather, the significance of O’Brien’s work is his utilization of a metafictional novel as a representative vehicle for the Vietnam War. Within The Things They Carried
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.
One of the important truths of a war story is that it doesn’t leave out the dirty gritty details that really tell the experience. A reader may see this quote and feel strange that O’Brien chooses to point out that war stories aren’t for feeling uplifted, they probably chose this book to get a good story about some soldiers in Vietnam. Rather, O’Brien wants the reader to see that any war story worth telling is going to leave in the terrible parts that cause disgust and retching. War is not something to be used to feel that there is a greater
The Disconnected Soldiers In “The Things They Carried,” written by Tim O’Brien, he creates images in the audience 's mind about what veterans truly experience before, during, and after the Vietnam war. Soldiers always have the strange feeling of disconnection but O’Brien brings this to the attention of people throughout his book. On the surface, the book appears to be a simple war novel, but beneath the surface it opens up into all of the struggles that war veterans face such as the disconnection from society. Disconnection occurs as a main theme in the novel and he presents this through multiple stories from different characters.
I find Ho Chi Minh’s letter far more persuasive than Lyndon B. Johnson’s. Using ethos, pathos, and logos, he forms a solid argument that supports Vietnam’s stance on the war. He appeals to one’s emotions by expressing the injustices faced by his people, writing, “In South Viet-Nam a half-million American soldiers and soldiers from the satellite countries have resorted to the most barbarous methods of warfare, such as napalm, chemicals, and poison gases in order to massacre our fellow countrymen, destroy the crops, and wipe out villages.” Words such as “massacre” and “barbarous” highlight the severity of these crimes, and invoke feelings of guilt and remorse in the reader. Chi Minh uses ethos to support his logos, or logical, views on the
There are numerous examples of metafiction in The Things They Carried; many are clear, and some are harder to notice at first glance. In the text, author Tim O’Brien uses a metafictional writing style to vividly illustrate what emotions and thoughts went through the minds of the soldiers fighting in Vietnam, including himself. It is unclear whether or not some of the stories he tells in the text actually happened, but there is no doubt that they are paramount to the underlying objective of O’Brien’s writing style: to use realistic scenarios that may not have actually happened, to make whatever changes necessary to the story to get his point across. Tim O’Brien uses metafiction to obscure the line between truth and fiction by manipulating details that trigger certain emotions to influence the reader. Metafiction allows writers like Tim O’Brien to manipulate what is held to be truth, and fabricate certain details in an attempt to enhance or reinforce the meaning of a story.
Tim O’Brien’s uncommon ending sentence that have caught many people by surprise in the story, “Where have you gone, Charming Billy?” which was wrote as a historical fiction that revolves around the Vietnamese war. It leads you to O’Brien’s perspective on why war is bad. The story also shows how things are not okay, even after the war. O’Brien shows the realities of war through repetition of thoughts about fear, how soldiers deal with it, and the effect it has on their actions.