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I Die In Combat, Box Me Up And Ship Me Home, By Tim O Brien

1036 Words5 Pages

In Tim O’Brien’s autobiographical novel, If I Die in Combat, Box Me up and Ship Me Home, he recounts his experience of being drafted into service and what happens in Vietnam. This memoir is structured within 23 chapters shifting between different time periods. The lack of chronological organization emphasizes the unpredictable nature of being in the military. The conflict that O’Brien faces is a struggle of moral and ethical judgment of his involvement in a war that he believes is unjust. He not only questions his personal involvement in the war, but he also questions the other participants reasoning for joining the war. This personal rendition takes the reader through a journey that reflects fundamental questions such as at what point does …show more content…

As a child of a military family, he admired his father and viewed him as a hero. O’Brien and his friends would venture to a local army store to purchase old equipment. His life was completely immersed by his father’s military life. Now he views the war as an evil thing. “And since it was wrong and since people were dying as a result of it, it was evil.” O’Brien becomes psychologically conflicted about the meaning and morality of the war. Erik, a fellow solider, intellectually challenges O’Brien to question what their roles are in war. Together they show a psychological resistance to the military throughout the …show more content…

He learned that to expand his thinking he must be open to compromise. So even though he compromised one principle, he fulfilled many others. He learned about the true meaning of courage from Captain Johansen. He learned that loyalty is a strong bond in a war zone, and those solider are not only his friends but his brothers. His experience was similar to other veterans, because he went through same experiences and felt similar emotions as other veterans of war. A main difference between his experience and others was that he still felt that the war was unjust, but he continued to fight out of loyalty to his family and fellow

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During the Vietnam War 58,220 U.S soldiers died. Many lost their life to a cause they did not support. Were these soldiers heroes? The true story “On The Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien describes his personal experience and his reaction to receiving a draft letter for the Vietnam War. Written twenty years after he was drafted, O’Brien recalls his early adulthood when he was sent a draft letter and had to choose if he would go off and fight in a War he did not believe in or run to Canada to avoid the draft.

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Out of the approximately 58,100 American casualties of the Vietnam War, Tim O’Brien managed to be one of the lucky foot soldiers that avoided brutal Viet Cong assault, countless hidden land mines, and deadly booby-traps. After the war, O’Brien conjured up a very emotional and eye-opening novel about his experiences in Vietnam and titled it, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me up and Ship Me Home. Author Tim O’Brien argued that the Vietnam War was unjustified through his depictions of exquisite brutality, mistreatment of Vietnam civilians, and soldier’s experiences of guerrilla warfare. The ways in which O’Brien demonstrates to the audience the exquisite brutality of the Viet Cong and American soldiers during the Vietnam War, are scattered throughout the entirety of the book and really help to strengthen his claim for the lack of justification for the War.

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He wrote a letter, a letter never answered back from his friend sister’s. There’s more specific details about the war and how awful is, how the others people misunderstand the real feeling of being in the war. We heared about the word Moral, but now they are telling us that the last thing the war have is Moral. “If a story seems moral, do not believe it “. A war story needs to sounds crazy and exaggerate to believe it.

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The North Vietnamese government along with Viet Cong fought to reunite Vietnam in the 1950s. This led up to the colonial war that initially started with France and America. America wanted to stop the expansion of communism to be worldwide this led up to start a 19 year old war in Vietnam. The occupation of the war in Vietnam was followed by American soldiers who were drafted and were forced to fighting the war. In If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O'Brien the author communicated to the reader the experience and struggle he went through while he was fighting in the Vietnam war.

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If I Die In A Combat Zone By Tim O Brien

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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.

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Being in the military can cause a lot of stress and anxiety, and this makes it very hard to transition back into civilization. Going through these challenges shows how determined and brave he was throughout his life's

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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.

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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.

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The Things They Carried: An Analysis

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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.

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Fiction And Reality In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

1413 Words | 6 Pages

Hidden somewhere within the blurred lines of fiction and reality, lies a great war story trapped in the mind of a veteran. On a day to day basis, most are not willing to murder someone, but in the Vietnam War, America’s youth population was forced to after being pulled in by the draft. Author Tim O’Brien expertly blends the lines between fiction, reality, and their effects on psychological viewpoints in the series of short stories embedded within his novel, The Things They Carried. He forces the reader to rethink the purpose of storytelling and breaks down not only what it means to be human, but how mortality and experience influence the way we see our world. In general, he attempts to question why we choose to tell the stories in the way

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Things They Carried Innocence Quotes

886 Words | 4 Pages

O’Brien goes into great depth in this small quote on how loss of innocence and war can affect people in the war. The quote “Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t” shows how war is so different from what any human experiences at home. After that small quote he follows it up by bringing up how you have to use normal stuff to show how crazy these things are and how much of a pole it can have on somebody during a war. The way that war is treated for many is mostly the mental part that is struggling. But for many "War is hell, but that's not half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love.

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The Paradox Of War In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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Although the soldier he killed was an enemy soldier, instead of vilifying him he was able to humanize the man. O’Brien was able to describe the physical appearance of the soldier and imagine her life before war. The author was able to portray an emotional connection and made the line between friend and enemy almost vanish. This was able to reveal the natural beauty of shared humanity even in the context of war’s horror. O’Brien is able to find the beauty in the midst of this tragic and horrible event.

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Truth In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

1091 Words | 5 Pages

I think in this story he shows how war alters the soldier’s perceptions of right and wrong, just like telling a war story you do not know if it is truthful or not. I think a good example of soldiers not knowing what was right and wrong was when Rat Kiley was torturing the water buffalo. The torturing of the water buffalo may feel wrong to the reader, but we do not know if it is truly wrong. This story is hard for me as the reader to believe because at the beginning of nearly every section the author says, “This is true” or “It’s all exactly true” or some other variation to prove the stories truthfulness. If a person is always trying to convince you that is something is true I have a hard time believing it actually is.

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PTSD In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

1504 Words | 7 Pages

This quote epitomizes the trauma caused by war. O’Brien is trying to cope, mostly through writing these war stories but has yet to put it behind him. He feels guilt, grief, and responsibility, even making up possible scenarios about the life of the man he killed and the type of person he was. This

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