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Symbolism In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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Symbolism in O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, plays a huge part in trying to support the author’s message. O’Brien uses symbols everywhere such as with the characters and to help develop the structure of the novel. The author decides to hide some of the symbols while some of the other symbols are in the open, making the symbols easy for the readers to pick up or understand clearly. The author uses symbolism in different forms, mainly intangible for an example. The main point of using symbols in a novel is to engage the readers, wanting them to continue reading, get the hidden messages across, and mainly addressing the theme. Near the beginning of the novel, O’Brien speaks on the weight of the things they carried which is one of the important symbols of the whole novel. Constantly, the author lets the readers know about the weight of various necessities, hinting to the readers how important the weight is. “They carried the land itself… They carried the sky, the whole atmosphere, they carried it,” (O’Brien 14) for an example which is significant. O’Brien states in the novel how foreign the terrain and atmosphere is to the alpha company which caused conflicts. Unfortunately, the soldiers in Vietnam battles with a different conflict in their own minds. …show more content…

O’Brien expresses his feelings about the two enough to where the readers can get a clear distinction of both. For an example, Jimmy Cross begins thinking about Martha when Ted Lavender passed away. When Mark Fossie ends up getting deployed in a way, he brings his girlfriend with him; bringing his love into his war and the girlfriend ends up wearing war paint on her face and camouflaged clothes. Also, in the novel, Timmy and Linda decides to go on a date, going to see a movie about war. This is another place where O’Brien shows the connection between love and

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