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Memoirs In The Things They Carried

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Our innate desire to leave mark in the world and preserve the past, something unique to humans, is best exemplified through our writing of memoirs. An example of such desire can be exhibited in a lyric in Twenty One Pilots ' nostalgic and memoir-like song "Stressed Out," which secured the number one spot in the American Top 40 for four weeks. "Sometimes a certain smell will take me back to when I was young, How come I 'm never able to identify where it 's coming from, I 'd make a candle out of it if I ever found it, Try to sell it, never sell out of it, I 'd probably only sell one." In these lyrics the music duo talks about capturing a very elusive and fleeting smell which only two people in the world would recognize, one of the group members and his brother. Nevertheless, he desperately wants to share the smell with which he associates positivity with, though he quickly realizes others will not be able to appreciate the smell and writes a song about his dilemma. Thus the writing of memoirs is so appealing because it draws on our nature to share all of our thoughts and experiences that were once tragically …show more content…

Tim O 'Brien 's "The Things They Carried" is aimed at many audiences, but the two main ones are: veterans who have shared similar experiences and relate to the harrowing, yet heartfelt stories in the memoir, and those who were no where near the action. Thus, his memoir provides a consolation for veterans, but provides direct confrontation with the uncomfortable truth for others, just like Phil Klay 's "Redeployment." For the younger generations, reading memoirs is alluring as they are keys to understanding the past. Furthermore, the appeal of reading memoirs is its generally manageable readability. The format of writing a letter to your current or future child or telling a war story allows the writer to write on a conversational level without sacrificing eloquence

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