Lily Trunk Mrs. Aldridge English 102 13 February 2023 Literature Annotated Bibliography Chen, Tina. “Unraveling the deeper meaning: exile and the embodied poetics of displacement in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried.” Contemporary Literature, vol. 39, 1998, file:///C:/Users/Lily/Downloads/Chen%20-%20Unraveling%20the%20Deeper%20Meaning.pdf. In her critical analysis article, “Unraveling the Deeper Meaning”: Exile and the Embodied Poetics of Displacement in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Tina Chen explains how O’Brien blurs the line between fiction and truth in his novel. The article starts by describing how O’Brien was obsessed with telling a true war story and how he revisits his war experience through the fiction novel. She …show more content…
Horner uses examples from not only The Things They Carried, but also If I Die in a Combat Zone and O’Brien’s autobiography to show how O’Brien describes courage as not just the absence of fear, but also the presence of wisdom, temperance, and justice throughout his novels. O’Brien questions old notions of courage and masculinity and the pressure they put on the male psyche. O’Brien describes courage as not just an act of bravery by a soldier in combat but instead as acting wisely and rationally in the presence of fear and having individual control over that fear. Horner compares O’Brien’s ideas of courage to Hemmingway’s ideas of courage stating that O’Brien had a hands-on experience with fear, courage, and war, whereas Hemmingway did not drastically impacting how each author describes courage. This article fits into a larger discussion about the topic as it analyzes how the author’s experiences shape the descriptions they use to explain certain characteristics throughout their novels. It also examines how O’Brien gives more depth to an attribute that is ordinarily defined to have one …show more content…
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. This piece of writing fits into a larger discussion as it examines how the form of a novel can change perceptions and convey the authors underlying message. The article shows us this by analyzing how, when O’Brien’s short war stories are put together into a composite novel they create one story of
Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried (TTTC) is a collection of short stories detailing the experiences of young soldiers deployed in the Vietnam War. He uses a variety of genres, such as magical realism and an unreliable narrator, to deviate from the traditional war autobiography. In doing so, he provides an insight into the emotional and psychological toll of war, as well as the social structures within groups of soldiers at the time. The experiences of the soldiers range from facing the victims of war to coming to terms with one’s unchosen fate as a soldier. O’Brien makes use of motifs and recurring themes throughout the book to influence the reader’s interpretation of the experiences of soldiers at war.
Tim O’Brien deals with hardship during the war and after the war. He has trouble coping with it, he uses writing as a way to heal himself. Tim O’Brien writes about the man he supposedly killed. “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was a star-shaped hole – “Think it over” Kiowa said. Then later he said, “Tim, it’s a war” – Then he said, “Maybe you better lie down a minute” ”
Lily Trunk Mrs. Aldridge English 102 3 May 2023 What do They Carry No one wins a war; soldiers lose themselves if not their life, families lose light and love, and countries lose their honor to the men that they ruin in combat. Soldiers carry hidden emotional trauma and struggle to fit societal standards. This is certified in Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried.
Author Tim O’Brien once expressed, “It can be argued, for instance, that [the Vietnam] war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty….a powerful, implacable beauty—and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly”(O’Brien 77). The breathtaking yet sanguinary jungles and devastating guerilla warfare of the Vietnam War had a particular grandeur that overwhelmed its victims, and the author of The Things They Carried demonstrates that element throughout many passages in his collection of short stories. In Tim O’Brien’s historical novel The Things They Carried, he uses the clash of breathtaking beauty with horrendous imagery and grim concepts to establish the theme of the dark beauty of war through the lens of his
The Vietnam War was a war of divisiveness, antagonism, and death. In the novel “The Things They Carried“, writer Tim O’Brien reflects on those aspects of war and takes the reader on a multifaceted journey. Throughout the novel, the author emphasizes the desensitization necessitated by the brutality of battle as well as the shame and guilt that the soldiers carried with them. O’Brien juxtaposes the burden of a soldier’s obligation alongside recurrent glimpses of youth and innocence. The weight of war upon humanity is a theme O’Brien develops through powerful symbolism of contradictory characters who resemble the loss of innocence and parallels with the soldiers fighting in Vietnam.
O’Brien accomplishes this through his usage of literary conventions such as fragmentation, paradox, and unrealistic plots. As well, he explores the definition of a true war story versus a moral war story and contemplates on the justifiable reasons for soldiers committing atrocities. Therefore, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a prime example of a postmodernist novel and an exploration of morality. Works
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.
Tim O’Brien used his personal experience to imagine a theme that represented him as a young person who was trying to escape from getting drafted from the war. The soldiers should be always brave, but in O’Brien’s stories, he showed all kinds of moral weakness that occurred in the stories. The characters blamed themselves for
In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien explores the emotional state of soldiers during war, and postwar. Many of the people who die in war have a family that is heartbroken over the death of a loved one. Along with family members being heartbroken, other soldiers are too as they may have lost their bestfriend. The non-chronicle order of the story highlights the soldiers' lives after war, as they struggle to put together their past experiences. Throughout the story, many of the characters die, resulting
“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.
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
Throughout “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien tells stories about the lives of young men during the Vietnam war with a fictional twist on each one. He not only tells the stories of those men around him, but of his own life too, often dwelling on those people who have made a significant impact on his life as a soldier. He sheds light on the tangible and intangible things while the soldiers trudge through the gruesome war for years. Through the stories told, O’Brien explores multiple specific narrative elements and rhetorical devices to depict the themes within the book. In this novel, O’Brien’s primary purpose for compelling these war stories is to describe the burdens they carried through usage of polysyndeton and asyndeton.
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.”
The soldiers in the Vietnam War are portrayed as losing themselves in the chaos and trauma of combat. Through the stories of the soldiers and their experiences, O’Brien explores the ways in which war strips away one's sense of identity and humanity. The author himself is depicted as losing himself in the war. O'Brien served in the Vietnam War, and his experiences inspired much of the book. Through the character of Tim O'Brien, the author explores the ways in which war can strip away one's sense of self and purpose.
Tim O’Brien uses many literary elements in his writings to help clarify his points; the main elements this paper focuses on are symbolism, and perspective. One of the better-known books he wrote, of which this paper is about, is The Things They Carried. During the Vietnam War, O’Brien was drafted in to the United States Army as a part of the infantry division (PBS). O’Brien has used his experiences serving in the military as inspiration to write fiction stories about soldiers. The Things They Carried uses symbolism and point of view to give understanding to the reader of the physical, mental, and emotional stresses many soldiers experience.