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Things They Carried By Sherman Alexie And Tim O Brien

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“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.” (Sue Monk Kidd). In The Things They Carried, O’Brien is clear in saying that he would agree with this as without stories, people would be very blind about their past and in some cases, what to do in the future. Sherman Alexie and Tim O‘Brien tell stories to help teach people, or show that people are naturally good at heart but they’re ideas can change based on events that they experience or witness in their lives. People tell stories to teach the younger generation about real life society. In this part, Alexie is explaining his father's love for books and how that same love and passion was passed down to him. But Alexie knew that books …show more content…

In the things they carried by Tim O’brien, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was deeply in love with Martha. But one day when a soldier was killed under his watch, he blamed Martha for his death, and wanted to forget all about her. This was the day after Ted's death, “Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha's letters” (O’Brien 22). The letters of Martha was the only thing that he had to remind him of her. Burning the letters symbolized destroying Martha from his life.Jimmy Cross is blaming Martha to hide his own guilt, when in reality ted's death was nobody's fault but the enemy. This proves how people change under conflict. In the things they carried by Tim O’brien, there is a story of how two enemies become friends to survive in the Vietnam War. The story starts with Dave Jensen beating a man by the name of Strunk, but as the war drags on they become friends. “Over the next month they often teamed up on ambushes, they covered each other on patrol, shared a foxhole, took turns pulling guard at night.” (O’Brien 62) After times of struggle, Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk had become good friends and tried to take care of each other The relationship of Jensen and Strunk is a perfect example of how people change under conflict, because of the drastic change from hatred to friendship between two

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