Reasoning And Evidence In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Claim 1. O’Brien wants his readers to feel the embarrassment of trying to run from his problems.

Reasoning and Evidence O’Brien tries to portray embarrassment through his own testimony. Tim starts the reader off by saying that he has not told this story until now because he thought it “would only cause embarrassment(37)” There is no clearer evidence for this point than this. He comes to tell us the exact feeling he thought we would feel after he wrote this. He also tells us that he still lives with this shame. This foreshadows one of the vibes that he tries to get us to feel while reading the rest of the chapter. Testimony on one of the many ways that embarrassment is displayed in this chapter.

Reasoning and Evidence

O’Brien gets the

Once Tim gets the draft notice we begin to feel the embarrassment When he first got his draft notice he thought that it must be some mistake. He was sure that it could not be him. He had gotten himself a full ride to Harvard and tells the reader that he hated the boy scouts. He was showing so much self-pity to himself. He thought he had it bad and he had not even gotten to the front lines.(39). The overuse of self pity helps to express embarrassment to the

He was stuck in the middle of a mental battle. Tim himself says that “I (he) feared the war, … but I (he) also feared exile.(42)” No matter what option he chose there would always be fear attached to it. Tim ended up not crossing the border because he feared the consequences of being chased by the Law and losing everything he had for himself in the United States. (48) It was the fear that led him into this mental battle in the first place and fear that would end up making him pick the war over running to Canada. The combination of the stressful choice that Tim is faced with and the consequences attached to each one helps to develop the theme of fear throughout the chapter.

Reasoning and Evidence

Through Tim’s gruesome visions the reader is able to feel the fear O'Brien felt in his life. He said that there was just a raw fact of terror. He said that fear was spreading inside of him like weeds. He would see himself dead or be killing another human. He wanted the reader to put themselves in the position of being killed or ending another man's life, which almost everyone fears in some way, to help the reader relate and fear with him while they read. (42) Although these dreams are not used a lot, they clearly express the fear he felt before heading off to the