ipl-logo

Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

928 Words4 Pages

Most war stories are labeled as fiction or nonfiction; however Tim O’Brien breaks this rule in The Things They Carried by creating a fictitious story that yet seeps the truth, and labelling it as a work of fiction. The book is compiled of various stories that correlate together, but it can be unclear what is fact and what is fiction. O’Brien purposely does this to draw in the reader to question what is and what isn’t, and no one exactly knows the right answer. By utilizing intentional, rhetorical tactics, O’Brien has the power of blurring the lines between fact and fiction; which allows the reader to distinguish between fact and fiction in chapters, such as “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, “Stockings”, and “Speaking of Courage”.
Chapter …show more content…

This already lets the reader question the truth behind this chapter. O’Brien mentioned how for Dobbins this brought back memories. Memories that were sweet and kind to him. When O’Brien says “he liked the memories this inspired; he sometimes slept with the stockings up against his face, the way an infant sleeps with a flannel blanket, secure and peaceful.” This not only reminds him of his girlfriend, but also a safer world away from Vietnam. O’Brien again created a vignette story where the reader would question what is real and what is not. Especially after reading that “Dobbins was invulnerable. Never wounded, never a scratch” (112). Even after their breakup, he continues to wear it, thinking it still has the power to protect him. The author shows how American soldiers can not think rationally anymore, but think based on superstition. Although this might just be a superstition, Dobbins survives the war. His beliefs in the stockings allow him to never give up hope, and stay motivated throughout the war. Even though this story lacks the factual truth, the real truth was the soldier’s …show more content…

He witnesses one of his closest friends, Kiowa, become fatally wounded and precede to sink into the never-returning mud that prompts room for creativity. Norman feels as if, by some intuitive way, prying him out of the mud would bring him back. Although to the readers, it was clear he was already gone. Tim O’Brien describes Norman’s hometown in depth as he had lived there also. His use of vivid imagery and sensory details make the readers feel as if Norman is narrating from a third person perspective, a realistic scene that has some imagination added to it. Norman’s story is a way to help Tim portray the feeling that many veterans experienced when arriving home. Constantly, Norman reminisces of his mistake he feels he has made “the truth… is I let the guy go” (147).A feeling of emptiness, loss of motivation, regretfullness makes readjustment take a toll on a soldier’s mental health. Readers are able to grasp this feeling as if Norman’s chapter contains the whole truth, however, the mention of specific details allow for also seeing the addition behind

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    772 Words  | 4 Pages

    The team had decided to camp out in a field, later discovered to be a waste field for the local village. One night while being bombed by the enemy Kiowa was hit. As he suffered his injuries and the filth of the land swallowed him up, Norman Bowker desperately tried to pull him out to save him. The smell was too much and the suction too strong and before Bowker knew it, Kiowa had disappeared in the field, becoming a part of it. As the book recalls on page 143, Norman Bowker pushed passed the wretched smell and did everything in his power to try and pull Kiowa out of the muck by his boot, but never managed to save him from the unforgiving field.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

    1202 Words  | 5 Pages

    By including phrases such as, “Circling the lake, Norman Bowker remembered how his friend Kiowa had disappeared under the waste and water,” and “I let the guy go,” O’ Brien emphasizes the culpability left by Vietnam. “Speaking of Courage” explores the way storytelling recalls the pain of a war experience and highlights memories that were never forgotten. Additionally, O’ Brien further exemplifies the difficulty of accepting past memories in the chapter, “Field Trip.” During this section of the novel, the narrator returns to the site of Kiowa’s death with his daughter, Kathleen. At this moment, he reflects on the previous times and compares his memories to that of the significantly changed site.

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

    943 Words  | 4 Pages

    O’Brien creates a series of short narratives about a small group of soldiers, using a mixture of fiction and autobiographical facts. Over the course of the novel The Things They Carried By Tim O’Brien, Tim’s experiences and interaction with his platoon; provides a view of war and it distractions At the begging, Tim O’Brien enters the war as a immature kid, but by the end, he becomes a fearless

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

    1012 Words  | 5 Pages

    By telling stories about others, he is not only saving the lives and memories of the deceased, but also his own. In the chapter “Notes”, O’Brien shares the story of Norman Bowker and explains that “It occurred to [him] that the act of writing had led [him] through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. (152) Writing about the soldiers that Tim O’Brien fought alongside in the Vietnam is a therapeutic act that helps him cope with what happened, in a sense saving his own life and preventing the “worse” from happening. In more universal terms, O’Brien conveys that telling stories of his deceased childhood friend, Linda allowed him to ease his pain and confusion surrounding death by letting her live on through imagination. “ [He’s] skimming across the surface of [his] own history, moving fast, riding the melt between the blades, doing loops and spins, and when [he] take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, [he] realizes it is as Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story.”

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

    1851 Words  | 8 Pages

    The Things They Carried is a collection of stories written by Tim O’Brien to depict what soldiers, including himself, had experienced while fighting across seas in the Vietnam War. The collection of stories begins with a section titled “The Things They Carried”. Tim O'brien is the main character, and he is a soldier fighting with his fellow comrades in a group named Alpha Company and he describes the belongings and equipment that each soldier carries while also providing a short background of a few men. Many characters reappear throughout the collection of stories that are told by Tim.

    Read More

  • War In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

    786 Words  | 4 Pages

    War and the experiences encountered within it create countless stories, both heroic and horrific. A few of these war stories are shared throughout the book, The Things they Carried, by Tim O’Brien. The men involved in these war stories respond to the uncertainty, fear, and death that surrounds them in their own distinct ways. During a time of war, the soldiers in combat respond to their stimulative surroundings through their own coping mechanisms.

    Read More

  • Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: An Analysis

    1399 Words  | 6 Pages

    Tim O’Brien’s definition of a true war story is not at all about war but the embarrassment, love, memory and sorrow. In the novel, The Things They Carried, a series of war stories about the Vietnam War, the author Tim O’Brien supplies a definition of a true war story. He states, “This is one story I’ve never told before. Not to anyone. Not my parents, not my brother or sister, not even to my wife.

    Read More

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

    1036 Words  | 5 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.

    Read More

  • Annotated Bibliography For The Things They Carried

    784 Words  | 4 Pages

    Horner uses examples from not only The Things They Carried, but also If I Die in a Combat Zone and O’Brien’s autobiography to show how O’Brien describes courage as not just the absence of fear, but also the presence of wisdom, temperance, and justice throughout his novels. O’Brien questions old notions of courage and masculinity and the pressure they put on the male psyche. O’Brien describes courage as not just an act of bravery by a soldier in combat but instead as acting wisely and rationally in the presence of fear and having individual control over that fear. Horner compares O’Brien’s ideas of courage to Hemmingway’s ideas of courage stating that O’Brien had a hands-on experience with fear, courage, and war, whereas Hemmingway did not drastically impacting how each author describes courage. This article fits into a larger discussion about the topic as it analyzes how the author’s experiences shape the descriptions they use to explain certain characteristics throughout their novels.

    Read More

  • The Ghost Soldiers Tim O Brien Character Analysis Essay

    844 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried: An Analysis

    688 Words  | 3 Pages

    “That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.

    Read More

  • How Does Norman Bowker's Character Change

    532 Words  | 3 Pages

    Norman had felt as if he had no one to talk to or relate to because no one around him had experienced war like he had. He tried to keep jobs when he was home from war, but not one of them had lasted more than 3 weeks. Since he feels he is unable to speak to anyone about war, he writes a letter to O’Brien, telling his entire war story. He soon feels as if he cannot do anything without thinking about war and hangs himself in the locker room of his town’s YMCA.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Truth In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    754 Words  | 4 Pages

    He became but a shell of his former self, the balance between head and heart disregarded. Sympathy toward Kiowa’s death ignored, overridden by his need to stifle his sensitivity. Norman Bowker exhibited the most dynamic emotional disarray. Bowker carried the strife of an unrecognized man, pained by his failure to obtain the recognition he longed for and the wishes he

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

    1900 Words  | 8 Pages

    One aspect of returning home that was conveyed by this story was doing actions that earned medals. Norman talks of how he almost got more medals and was had the courage to try and rescue Kiowa’s body but couldn’t do it while under artillery fire. This wasn’t a case of whether he could or couldn’t summon a supply of courage to support his country but just the pure reactions someone

    Read More

  • Disconnection In The Things They Carried

    1505 Words  | 7 Pages

    Already he had passed them six times, forty-two miles, nearly three hours without stopping” (O’Brien 139-140). As if Norman was stuck in a loop, he drove around that lake, reliving moments of his life from when he was in Vietnam. He questioned, doubted, and second guessed things that had happened. He wants to tell his story to his friends but they all moved on with their lives while he was in Vietnam in the war, leaving him with no one. He wanted to talk to someone but he couldn’t.

    Read More

More about Summary Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Open Document