ipl-logo

Ugliness And Beauty In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

1290 Words6 Pages
In war, there is no clarity, no sense of definite, everything swirls and mixes together. In Tim O’Brien’s novel named “The Things They Carried”, the author blurs the lines between the concepts like ugliness and beauty to show how the war has the potential to blend even the most contrary concepts into one another. “How to Tell a True War Story” is a chapter where the reader encounters one of the most horrible images and the beautiful descriptions of the nature at the same time. This juxtaposition helps to heighten the blurry lines between concepts during war. War photography has the power to imprint a strong image in the reader’s mind as it captures images from an unimaginable world full of violence, fear and sometimes beauty. Henri Huet, a famous war photographer known for his work in Vietnam War captured a proportionally excellent and appealing photograph during a horrendous operation to illustrate the same blurriness between ugliness and beauty. Both the novel by Tim O’Brien and the photograph by Henri Huet elucidate that besides war’s savage environment, there are also scenes in the nature’s beauty that appeal to eye and look “beautiful”
The photograph named “Vietnam War Paratroopers Rain” by Henri Huet captures a platoon of soldiers who are carrying their weapons above their heads as they are crossing a river during a rainy weather. The rain adds a blurry effect to the photograph that helps to create the illusion of beauty. Misled by the illusion, the viewer’s attention
Open Document