Argumentative Essay On The Things They Carried

Tim O’Brien and Brian Turner are both war veterans, who published books based on their war experience. Both of their books expresses their feelings and both have a unique way of telling war stories. However, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried book captures the reality of war better than Brian Turner’s Here Bullet book.

In the book The Things We Carried by Tim O'Brien, he tells the reader stories about his experience in the Vietnam war. He tells stories about before, during and after the war. O’Brien explains his feelings towards the war by hinting it in many of his stories. He uses juxtaposition, diction, irony, metafiction, and repetition. His feelings towards war seem to change, at times he shows the feeling of hatred, in other cases he’ll have the feeling of sorrow and tension, or his tone will go from humorous to solemn in a sentence. In the chapters They things They Carried, Enemies and Friends, How to tell a true War Story, Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong, and Style best explain his feeling towards war.

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.

This book has won several awards, in 1999 the National Book Award Finalist; in 2000 it won the Michael L. Printz, and the Coretta Scott-King award. Despites its many awards it has also been challenged and banned in many different school districts because parents didn’t think it was appropriate for their children to read. According to Dean 2013, states “Seven D97 families filed a request with the district last month to have the book removed. A "request for reconsidering" can be made under board policy, which deals with educational materials deemed "offensive or controversial." The policy also calls for an internal committee to be convened to review such materials”. The book contains vulgar language, violent imagery and sexual explicitness. Myers

O’Briens novel The Things They Carried is a unique text because each chapter tells an individual story. The work also becomes misleading because the chapters are told from different viewpoints. Rather than O’Brien using a traditional flow of chronological order, he tells the stories of his comrades to appeal to the reader at different times in the book. The reader can also begin to question O'Brien's reliability and truthfulness because of his uncommon style. The purpose is O’Briens way to cope with his experience in the Vietnam War; he retouches each memory individually depicting the story of his tragic experience at war.

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien expresses himself through fictionalized war stories as catharsis to comfort himself in the only way that he knows how. He tries to show the reader all of the pains of war that not only he felt, but his other young companions that fought alongside him in the brutal war. In the novel, O’Brien is a successful young man who is drafted into the Vietnam War to fight grudgingly for something he claims to be against. He recounts many of his experiences in stories based on true events but that are elaborated and fictionalized for the benefit of the reader’s understanding. This portrayal of the war in his words is a form of therapy for him that keeps him sane; even though the stories he tells are

In the book “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien writes about his experience before and during the Vietnamese War, tells stories about his troop, and their lives before and after the war. He illustrates about how his life changed because of the war, and emphasizes on how the war is so cruel and has no moral at all. His stories involve a lot about Vietnamese War. If people read his story superficially, they will say it is definitely a war story, but he argues that his book is actually about love (81). Although his story looks like a war story, it is actually a loved story because his stories are either about his loved ones or dedicated to his loved ones.

Soldiers participating in a war they do not understand, suffer physical and mental anguish trying to cope with the horrors of it all. Tim O’Brien is both the narrator and protagonist of the short story “The Things They Carried.” He enters the war a scared young man afraid of the shame that dodging the war would bring him and leaves the war a guilt-ridden middle-aged man who tells stories about Vietnam in order to cope with his painful memories. Jimmy Cross’s character represents the deep effects responsibility has on those who are too immature to handle it. As a sophomore in college, he signs up for the Reserve Officers Training Corps because it is worth a few credits and because his friends are doing it. But he doesn’t care about the war and has no desire to be a team leader. In this short story O’Brien and Jimmy Cross are only a couple of the many who have

War, has be around since the beginning of time it’s a part of life. Many people are anti war, but they don’t realize war is a part of life and sometimes cannot be stopped. Since the United States won the revolutionary making our own indempendent counrty know as the USA we have been in and hand full of wars. We have the two major World Wars, World War I and World War II then followed and War that has been the most controversial war so far which is Vietnam that started in the 1960s. Vietnam was a war many people didn 't support and they took their anger out on the troops, which many of whom had now choice, but to serve. Many people didn’t understand what the soldiers were going through. A novel called "The Things They Carried" was released by

Reviews of the The Things They Carried tend to praise O’Brien for the detail and truth of his recordings of Vietnam. Writing for the Washington Times, John Greenya truly reviews that O 'Brien does not misconstrue the emotions and events of Vietnam in The Things They Carried

The short story “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, is about the experience of a team of American soldiers in the Vietnam war (Julia Guance et al. 323). O’Brien fought in the war of Vietnam himself and used writing as a way to express the realities of war (322). His works are realistic, given his personal experience at war. Each soldier in the story “The Things They Carried” carry specific objects that reflect their personality and priorities. Jimmy Cross is a twenty-four-year-old, American First Lieutenant. He is madly in love with Martha, a girl back at home in New Jersey. However, it is evident she does not love him back to the same extent. On his march through Vietnam, he carries two photographs, a pile of letters, and a pebble,

Second hand sources is the only way adolescents of this age are able to uncover the stories about what happened in Vietnam in 1955. The Things They Carried consists of Tim O’Brien’s recollection of the Vietnam War. The book explains the importance of keeping these memories alive, even if it’s not the exact truth. Characters are shown as they were during the war and the materials and memories they carried everywhere with them. O’Brien expresses the men’s feelings towards their significant others back home and how it affects them while stationed far away from their safe place. Also, he reveals differences in truths and fiction within a story. Making sure people know and remember his team the way he did was one of O’Brien’s purposes of writing this book. He did not want what happened to them to be forgotten or ignored. The author’s claim as it pertains to the Vietnam War is that memories can be a good and a bad thing, they don’t necessarily have to be the whole truth, and remembrance is an important key to keeping legacies going.

Tim O’Brien’s short story, “The Things They Carried”, talks from a narrative point of view. The title of his story foreshadows the overall theme of an emotional versus physical burden throughout the soldiers experience in the Vietnam War. O’Brien talks about the various items the soldiers were carrying, along with their emotional baggage and the emotional toll the war was taking on them. Some of the baggage that is being lugged with them is composed of love, terror, grief and longing.

The Things They Carried is a text where writer Tim O’Brien the stories he encountered throughout his time in the Vietnam War. These stories, traumatic as well as warm and humorous, are ones that the author will never erase from his memory. It seems that O’Brien is retelling these stories to enlighten those who have never had experience on the battlefield in order to reach a certain level of understanding and to discover repercussions that it brings onto the human condition, both physically and mentally. Evidently, he wants to convey emotion within the reader. The stories also recall the life lessons that O’Brien learned about friendship, forgiveness, respect and reputation as well as foreignness and the other. However, as the reader continues to immerse

Over twenty years after his service in Vietnam was concluded, Tim O’Brien wrote The Things They Carried (1990). Tim O’Brien is a veteran as well as an author of memoirs, short stories, and war stories. O’Brien grew up an all-American child, after high school he went onto college and received his BA in Political Science. In 1968 O’Brien was drafted in to the United States Army and was then sent to fight in the Vietnam War. Twenty-two years after his service, O’Brien wrote the book The Things They Carried. This book is compiled of short stories based off his time in Vietnam but also takes place back in his comrade’s hometowns. The main characters in the book are his war pals that are enlisted with him under 1st Lt. Jimmy Cross. Throughout the book O’Brien uses symbolism, imagery, and the setting of the story to show the extensive emotional and psychological pain of warfare and what it can do to humans.