Tim O Brien Character Analysis Essay

Imagine being drafted to move thousands of miles away from the life you love to fight a war you hated. This is the unfortunate reality for Tim O’Brien In The Things They Carried. O’Brien explains his experiences of war in Vietnam, what it took to get him there, and his relationships with the other men in his platoon. He portrays guilt and pride through storytelling and intertwines the two by showing how the men often feel guilty for the actions they pursue or decisions they make based on their pride.

Tim O'Brien, an extremely talented and acclaimed writer of the award winning novel, The Things They Carried, has an extraordinary writing style, which seems to cloud the line between fact and fiction. He challenges his readers to consider more profound interpretations about truth and memory, and guides the readers closer to the center of the character’s experiences. The Things They Carried is not just a story about fighting in a war, but also about fighting the war going on inside one’s self. The book's dominant idea is just as pertinent today as it was many years ago; touching the hearts of all types of people from all different walks of life.

O’brien was against the Vietnam War before and after got drafted. As a student, O’brien took a stand against the war, and participated the anti-war protest. In the Chapter, “On The Rainy River,” O’brien is talking about how he thought about fleeing to Canada when he received the draft notice. O’brien had a full-ride scholarship for grad studies at Harvard when he received the draft notice and he could not believed it because he was to smart to go war. Furthermore, he “hated dirt and tents and mosquitoes” ( O’Brien 39), he was not a soldier materiel.

The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, illustrates the experiences of a man and his comrades throughout the war in Vietnam. Tim O’Brien actually served in the war, so he had a phenomenal background when it came to telling the true story about the war. In his novel, Tim O’Brien uses imagery to portray every necessary detail about the war and provide the reader with a true depiction of the war in Vietnam. O’Brien starts out the book by describing everything he and his comrades carry around with them during the war. Immediately once the book starts, so does his use of imagery.

In Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried the narrator, Tim O’Brien, often blurs the lines between reality and fiction. As a young soldier, O’Brien recalls the Vietnam war including the sounds, sights, and his emotions, while 20 years later he again shares his feelings and experiences of the same event. This same event, however, is told differently in order to help him cope with the emotional pain of war. The details become blurry as the pain is too great to endure.

In the book “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien admits to killing only one man during his war career, and relays it in the chapter “The Man I Killed”. In this chapter, O’Brien surveys the mangled body of the Vietnamese man he has just murdered, and desperately attempts to humanize the dead man as a coping method for his guilt. The chapter embodies a unique, and extremely detailed repetitive writing style which serves as a symbol of O’Brien’s scrutiny over his irrevocable action. The chapter begins with an exceptionally detailed description of the Vietnamese soldier’s body, as O’Brien surveys his destruction.

Regret is a powerful emotion that has the ability to scar someone for the rest of their life. Moments of regret can come from relationships, self-made decisions and life changing events. The idea of regret also applies to “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh and “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien. Although these two literary pieces are very different in many ways, both authors describe the experience of the Vietnam War as a time of regretful decisions that negatively impacted people of both the American side and the Vietnamese side. Both authors tell a story about a character that recalls of flashbacks of the war, where they grieve over the past decisions that have affected them for the rest of their life.

Meaning of War Tim O 'brien wants readers to understand the meaning of war. His way of explaining war is by writing fictional short stories and giving speeches. Even though his stories are fictional they still contain the thoughts and feelings of war through the eyes of a soldier. The first topic is stress.

The chapter On the Rainy River is a depiction of what it is a like to get a draft notice. Tim O’Brien exemplifies the emotions a soldier goes through when they get a draft card. The feelings he wants the readers to feel is arguably the best depicted in this chapter. The story is believable, even when as a reader, we know it is not true, because the book is fiction. Tim O’Brien wants us to believe this story because he wants the reader to understand the emotion truth.

Right from the first few sentences the author already starts to impress. There is a mix between the writer 's memoir and autobiography. With a memoir a writer will usually recount scenes from his or her own life. The way the writer writes depends on the conditions of the mental and emotional for the writer. When he starts off saying that "this is one story I 've never told before" signals two points to the reader.