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

In the book Fallen Angels Walter Dean Myers tells the story of soldiers who struggles with a problem involving what is right and wrong in war. Fallen Angels set in Vietnam during the Vietnam war, the story introduces the main character Perry, who faces obstacles, including death and killing. The author’s use of literary devices, specifically imagery, irony, and metaphors convey the theme warfare often forces soldiers to reconsider their traditional notions of right and wrong.

“They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture.” (O’Brien 77) Tim O’Brien clearly demonstrates to the reader that one of the most difficult burdens to bear is being a coward because even though carrying over fifty pounds of equipment is hard on the body physically cowardice is among the worst pain because you can never put that feeling down for even a second to relieve the pain. The novel The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, intends to show the reader how the platoons soldier’s cowardice and dread can effect them in the form of regret later in

Surrealism is the use of non rational imagery to give insight to the book’s characters’ subconscious thoughts. The Things They Carried specifically references surrealism in “How to Tell a True War Story” and how it is such a big factor in war stories. It is what gives them such unrealistic sounding images and scenes but as Tim O’Brien puts it, “represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed”(68). Surrealism is apparent in many if not all chapters of the story.

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. First, the story builds a confessional tone and creates an immediate empathy between the reader and the O 'Brien character. Second, in the context of the next chapter, the reader knows that this is an unresolved story, perhaps a fragment of memory that, given O 'Brien 's attitude of storytelling, is being crafted into a story as a means for understanding the events of the past. But the story isn 't abruptly moving

In war, there is a winning side and a losing side, but both suffer casualties. Afflictions are not always dealt in death and physical pain, but also emotional damage. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, he emphasizes war’s capabilities to change people. When Mary Anne, a sweet, innocent, all-American girl, arrives in Vietnam to be with her soldier boyfriend, change is inevitable, and she will eventually lose her naiveté. O’Brien utilizes personification, jarring imagery, hyperbole, and pathos to convey that war shatters all innocence, no matter how hard one may try to avoid the change.

In the short story of Tim O'brien's The Things They Carried uses symbolism to suggest that items that the soldiers Kiowa, Lavender and Cross carried represent their values and where they come from. O'brien successfully shows in depth what each character mentioned in the short story represents in relation to the narrator by mentioning the items and memories that each individual carried.

Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.

Using distinctively visual, sensory language and dramatic devices in texts allows the reader and audience to view as well as participate and relate to different emotions. In the fictional play “Shoe Horn Sonata” written by John Misto, 1995, Misto sets the scene by using dramatic devices to address the extremely confronting circumstances that the protagonists, Sheila and Bridie experience. Similarly, in the poem “Beach Burial” by Kenneth Slessor, 1944, Slessor too uses extremely strong visual language on the subject of war to overcome the gruesome realities of the subject matter.

The Civil War was a bloody, well fought war that lasted 4 years between the Union (the Northern States) and the Confederacy (the Southern states.) This war would determine what type of nation it would become. Would the Union be split instead of preserved? Would the Union be free while the Confederate states had slaves? The bloody, gruesome war lasted four years and involved many men, women and children. Photographers captured the truth about the war. Matthew Brady, a famous photographer, took many photos that had a lasting impact on people’s perceptions of the war.. The photos of the Civil War affected the American people as a whole. The publication of Civil War battle photos affected the opinions of the

People get so caught up in what others think and expect of them that they let it completely control the decisions they make. The soldiers in “The Things They Carried” have a fear of looking weak and cowardice. They let this fear and their pride control them even if it is not what they want. Tim O’Brien, Norman Bowker, and Curt Lemon are examples of soldiers who let fear control them. The soldiers fear that the people close to them and around them will discover their weaknesses.

A heroic, glorified opportunity to fight for the success of a nation: the common romantic misconception with respect to the true realities of war shared by society. As a fairly new artistic medium during the Civil War, photography allowed for Timothy O’Sullivan and Alexander Gardner to challenge the perception in which the public imagined acts of war by capturing an un-romanticized representation of the horrors of combat in their “Field Where General Reynolds Fell.” But, Gardner enlists artistic elements as well as a narrative caption to lessen the audience’s initial wave of shock by laying burial to the corpses that sacrificed their lives and stirring a sense of resurrection among them.

Tim O’Brien and Chris Kyle both use literary devices to contrast two different ideas of war. “There’s no place to go. Not just in this lousy little town. In general. My life, I mean. It’s almost like I got killed over In Nam…” (O’Brien 150). The author, Tim O’Brien uses Norman Bowker a character in “The Things They Carried” to symbolize the conflicts of trying to find the meaning of life soldiers went through after the war. Symbolism conveys Tim O’Brien’s purpose for the readers to perceive the negative connotations that come from war and the impact it takes on the soldiers’ lives. Whereas Chris Kyle’s use of synecdoche refers to all the soldiers demonstrating the connotation of war, manliness. Kyle’s objective for using synecdoche is to have

In the war novel of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the imagery of nature is used to describe the battle of the front of the war. Because of the grotesque battle scene that is associated with nature, soldiers would change by losing their innocence and being dehumanized. Although nature often associated with peace, it is more substantial than humans because nature has an impact on the soldiers.

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.

America’s war heroes all have the same stories to tell but different tales. Prescribed with the same coloring page to fill in, and use their methods and colors to bring the image to life. This is the writing style and tactic used by Tim O’Brien in his novel, “The Things They Carried”. Steven Kaplan’s short story criticism, The Undying Certainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, provides the audience with an understanding of O’Brien’s techniques used to share “true war” stories of the Vietnam War. Kaplan explains the multitude of stories shared in each of the individual characters, narration and concepts derived from their personal experiences while serving active combat duty during the Vietnam War,