Soldiers are always seen as war heroes and sometimes even as legends. But for Tim O’Brien, this is quite the opposite. The Things They Carried shares a story of a group of soldiers in Vietnam and along the way, many questions are raised towards war. One of the plethora of questions the book asks is if soldiers are heroes. Are they still heroes even after killing an innocent life? Being regretful? And are they still heroes even if their story may be fake? To start off whether or not soldiers are heroes, we begin with the death of an innocent boy. O’Brien accidentally kills a boy with a grenade having feared for his own life, but ultimately regrets it as he imagined the boy having lived a fruitful and peaceful life. The boy was fighting war and had possibly killed soldiers throughout his time alive. Although this is true, the boy was made to believe that he was fighting for a cause, not fully comprehending what that cause was, just that he had to fight and kill. O’Brien knew this, but only after he had killed the boy and regretted it almost instantly. O’Brien would’ve still been looked upon as a hero despite killing the boy, as the boy was an “enemy” and killed in the name of “war.” …show more content…
Heroes are meant to be strong, powerful, and unbreakable. O’Brien shows us the opposite of that when he begins to breakdown after killing the boy with the grenade. He not only regrets it, but begins to imagine a life he had before his death. He couldn’t stop looking at his deformed face and even thought of him later in life when he figured the boy coming towards him as he once did before his death. Heroes aren’t supposed to regret what they’ve done or even be traumatized, they’re supposed to rise above that and show their spirit. But, O’Brien clearly couldn’t show
O’Brien used lies to guard, protect and hide war given only people that don’t know the truth peace, love and those who know the truth of war the burden of keeping it to themselves. When O’Brien explained the stories of comrades Norman Bower and how he felt when he came home to his old town, how everything had changed to the point where only thing which actually remained the same to him is the old swamp lake. Even so everyone he knew are living a joyful life, he had to deal with a burden of what truly cause Kiowa death. Bower mention how Lieutenant Jimmy Cross told the squad to rest in a waste field full of human feces and how the storm turn the field to a landslide. As well mention how Kiowa was stuck in the waste mud, Bower tried to pulled him out try, try with all his might Kiowa was gone and if he doesn't leave he would had died, but still knowing the fact that he saved his life, it hurt him deep inside.
Tim begins by saying this story is true. Later, Sanders confesses to Tim that he made up some of the events that occurred. He did this in order to have Tim know what it felt like to be out there, in the woods with him. When O’Brien returns to this memory further down the road in his mind, many events are blurred, especially details that seems insignificant at the time to remember. He does not remember everything exactly
“But the strain I am under, the uncertainty, the hunger, the danger, these hours with the dead man have made me desperate…” Truth is the information and ideas that matter. Although war cannot be generalized, truth is a generalization of the feelings, lessons, and effects of an event. If someone was not present for an event, and they’re not going to ever witness it through a video, then the details of a story don’t matter. Only the lasting feelings and thoughts matter. In O’Brien’s piece, he talks about a man named Mitchell Sanders telling a story of 6 soldiers in the mountain.
I would go to the war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to. That was the sad thing.” O’Brien is trying to show the readers that he is not courageous and he followed what everyone else did which does not make him a hero at all. This proves that he does not overcome his fear of starting a new life in Canada and conforms to what his friends,family, and the government want him to do which goes against the heroic archetypal
O’Brien also shows the reality that they were just young boys who were scared, and forced by shame and their social obligations to fight the war, which contrasts from a “traditional” soldier who is seen as a brave hero. From time to time, throughout the whole book, someone would say that he is just a young boy; this is almost their way of indirectly saying that: they are scared and not as brave as they try to be, and that, they were just boys who had dreamt of living a normal life. Also, right from the beginning of the book, in the chapter “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien illustrates how they try to act with poise and dignity but fails when there were times of panic. He says that “they were afraid of dying but they were more afraid of showing
In the short story, “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien focuses on this to show that everyone fighting in a war has a story. He spends the story describing the man he killed and searching for justification of his actions. He carries around guilt with him because of it, and his fellow soldiers try to help him justify and come to terms with his action by saying things like, “You want to trade places with him? Turn it all upside down= you want that? I mean, be honest,” (126) and “Tim, it’s a war.
At first Mr. O’ Brien wants to flee to Canada even though he knows that he won’t be able to see his family again or that he won’t be able to come back to the states. However, when he is only twenty yards away from the border, he can’t risk the embarrassment from his hometown and the whole universe, so he goes to the war. During the war, Mr. O’ Brien figures out that the only reason that any of his fellow soldiers are at the war was so their prestige wouldn’t go down. He goes so far as to say, “Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to… They died so as not to die of embarrassment.
Valor and Heroes in The Things They Carried The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien was published in 1990. The book is set during the Vietnam war, and It is narrated by O’Brien and tells about the war stories that happened. According to Kleinbard, “O’Brien provides a more substantive reality that has no heroes or valor.”
In The Things They Carried, O’Brien’s story-telling method is an attempt to show that the lines between fiction and reality are often not that far. Even though the names or details may not be fully accurate, this does not change the fact that they are a reality for many. Additionally, he challenges the importance that we place on war and links it to a storytelling aspect because he’s pointing out that not every story has a moral to it. With tragic events, we typically want some sort of meaning behind them, some sort of assurance that the incident was not for nothing. However, this is not always true, as a character “Yeah, well…I don’t see no moral”…
I do not believe that O’Brien believes there is truth in war. There are many examples from both stories that show O’Brien does not believe there is truth in war. I think the throughout “The Things They Carried” the soldiers are lying to themselves, they carry everything to make themselves feel safer even though they things they carry will often not help them survive. The author gives the reason for why they carried the things they did. In one instance of describing everything they carried and the weight of it the author says, “But they carried it anyway, partly for safety, partly for the illusion of safety.”
O’Brien had to grapple with the effects of war and his memories of killing people. Transition into a civilian life was hard for O’Brien; he often had to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder and nightmares relating to his evocative bygone. Tim sacrificed a great amount of his time re-confronting the traumatic incidents of the war to bring in the truth and horror of a war. His greatest nightmare was killing an innocent boy with a grenade. Finally, his sacrifice of going over the memories was a resolution and a confession to the life he has taken in the war.
In November of 1955, the United States entered arguably one of the most horrific and violent wars in history. The Vietnam War is documented as having claimed about 58,000 American lives and more than 3 million Vietnamese lives. Soldiers and innocent civilians alike were brutally slain and tortured. The atrocities of such a war are near incomprehensible to those who didn’t experience it firsthand. For this reason, Tim O’Brien, Vietnam War veteran, tries to bring to light the true horrors of war in his fiction novel The Things They Carried.
The Vietnam War leaves a legacy of moral confusion with each and every soldier who serves. Soldiers are fighting for a cause they do not necessarily believe in, killing people who do not necessarily deserve it, and watching their brothers die beside them. Tim O’Briens’ book, The Things They Carried, illustrates the soldiers struggle to define morality throughout the confusion of the war. On the Rainy River, Tim O’Brien faces what he feels is his moral obligation to answer his country’s call and fight in Vietnam, and a personal moral issue with the reason for the war.
At this moment, O’Brien is going through remorse for himself. He does not think that he should be forced to fight in this war when he does not believe in what they are fighting for. O’Brien believes that the war was unjust because “certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (1002).O’Brien
Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are". (O'Brien 38) O’Brien uses his stories to reach his audience. There are generations of people who have no clue what war is really like, whether it is because of our misconceptions based on what media portrays or the fact that there are people who have not served in the military. Some people might know about Vietnam and know the outcome of the war, but they don’t have the experience and real life understanding of how that story ended. They might not be able to fully understand the feelings of a soldier.