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Profanity And Violence In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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Profanity and Violence
“Her team found a big gap when they analyzed 40 of the most popular teenage novels, taken from the New York Times Best Sellers List For Children’s Books. On average, the 40 books had 34.46 instances of swearing”(BYU). The book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is about his experience and encounters that he went through in the Vietnam War. The Things They Carried consist of violent scenes and profanity which causes the text to be more effective because it shows how soldiers really felt and what they had to go through in the war.
In Vietnam, soldiers were psychologically affected by the violence they encountered throughout the war. Esmeralda describes her post war experience, “I was quickly startled at loud noises …show more content…

Rat Kiley shows his irritation, “Listen to Rat Kiley. Cooze, he says. He does not say bitch. He certainly does not say woman, or girl. He says cooze. Then he spits and stares”(O’Brien 66). Rat Kiley uses profanity to express his anger, and he takes it out on someone else. The men were upset with the colonel, “I mean, they spent six trillion dollars on firepower, and this fatass colonel wants answers, he wants to know the fuckin’ story is”(Pg.72). This is how they take their anger out. They use it so they do not create violence. In some cases' profanity makes the situation worse, and it can make people really angry and upset. In the chapter “The Man I Killed” Azar shares his opinion, “Oh, man, you fuckin’ trashed the fucker, Azar said. You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like shredded fuckin’ Wheat”(O’Brien 119). Azar said these things to O’Brien and it got him upset because he did not want to here about what he had to do to the soldier. Sanders disagrees with his opinion, “Basic psychology, that’s all. Mess with his head a little.” “Negative,” Sanders said. “Spook the fucker.” Sanders shook his head. “Man, you’re sick”(O’Brien 191). The profanity in this quote does not help their situation, and it gets Sanders upset about it. Profanity is used in the book to experience the soldiers anger that they had to go through. Rat Kiley shows his anger in the chapter “How to Tell a

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