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Tim O Brien Character Analysis The Things They Carried

1911 Words8 Pages

Josselyn Palma
Ms.Fox
LA (H), 3rd Period
Character Analysis
March 29, 2016

The Things that Changed Tim O’Brien In the novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a collection of short stories about a group of soldiers marching in the Vietnam war including the author himself in and after war. Each soldier is described by their stories and what each individual carried that kept them alive like the emotional burdens of memories, stories, fear and guilt. The book centers around the bonds the soldiers made and the connection of the world they left behind as well as the one they formed in the Vietnam war.
Tim O'Brien has just received a draft letter to the Vietnam war and doesn’t know how to think or react about it. Tim is embarrassed and …show more content…

He fears death because war doesn’t fit his morals and beliefs because he sees himself doing things in war that he couldn’t do like charging an enemy (44). This is how O’Brien first felt about the idea of death in war because of the draft letter thus can assume that he is scared and afraid of death and how it will be in war. Halfway through the war O’Brien finally knows what war and death is “War is hell, war makes you a man; war makes you dead” (80). It shows the reality in which Tim O’Brien and the soldiers experience in war that shows the painful emotion they constantly have to live in fear of death. O’Brien sees death through his eyes in the war and knows that death makes him be someone who he’d never think to be that has caused him to change. He is empty and emotionless of his close friends that have died and lost throughout the war “This little field, had swallowed so much, My best friend. My pride, my beliefs in myself as a man of small dignity and courage” (184). O’Brien is resentful and remorseful of death which has taken a part of him and has changed him because of the Vietnam war knowing that it can happen anytime and anywhere. O’Brien knows he struggles in sharing his feelings because of the pain in sharing to others in the war but he knows that some feelings he can’t explain. The memories of war he has it not orderly and he only captures moments where death occurs “Much of it …show more content…

Where Tim O’Brien withdraws from his feelings on going to war due to the embarrassment and fearfulness of the obligation to his family and friends, fear in his thoughts and feelings of the harsh pain he’s encountered and the memories of death throughout his life that made him helpless and insecure. O’Brien behavior adapts and develops throughout the novel. The setting of the Vietnam war influences O’Brien greatly psychologically and emotionally changing how they see the world. The development of O’Brien reveals how the character acted and his traits in his personality. To further prove that war has changed Tim O’Brien as a character at the end of the story 20 years later he returns to the spot where his best friend Kiowa died to find attempt to find closure to his

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