...November 2014 Formal Paper 1 The Things They Carried, written by Tim O'Brien carry both the tangible and intangible details of war, death, and destruction. The emotional baggage this literary masterpiece entails will always reach audiences across the globe. The author taps into thousands of veterans, soldiers, and even the family that awaits them at home. It's real, it's American, and it expresses the weight of not just physical but, the emotional burdens soldiers carry. The Alpha Company in O'Brien's story doesn't focus on whether the events were accurate but the result war has had on mankind. It is the content of the story that makes this piece timeless and true to the experience of military in combat. For example, the author uses facts to create a setting. He explains in detail what the soldiers carry, such as Dave Jensen who carried," three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl's foot powder. . . then he was shot". Details like these are the epitome of mundane events mixed with philosophical thoughts, and tons of detail. From the guilt, grief, and depression to the M16's, comic books, and tranquilizers they carry, this story has it all. Although no one really knows if these events are true, the reader can appreciate the literary range the author reaches. O'Brien's matter of fact approach and character formation is like the Basketball Diaries but with PTSD. Young boys, pushed into war, during the Summer of Love, and everything is confusing: “I was no soldier. I hated Boy...
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...Discuss the role guilt and shame play in the lives of the soldiers depicted by O’Brien. Cite specific (and numerous) instances that show the results of these characteristics. In Tim Obrien’s “The Things They Carried” several behaviors function as devices designed to avoid shame and/or guilt. Characters continually find themselves in situations where their performance is a response designed to minimize the obtaining of these emotions or the pain felt by them once obtained. Therefore, action is frequently inspired by the emotional burdens that guilt or shame present. Once category of behaviors inspired by guilt and shame in The Things They Carried includes adherence to societal expectations. Prior to witnessing war first-hand the author nearly decided to escape the draft because of negative emotions toward it. He experiences conflict within himself on this point though because the choice in avoiding the draft counter the expectations of his home community and family. As he reflected he stated, “What it came down to, stupidly, was a sense of shame. Hot, stupid shame. I did not want people to think badly of me.” (pg 49 On the Rainy River) (sigfig is this contributes...
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...The Holy Trinity; Fear, Shame, and Courage The Things They Carried Essay Fear; the controller. Shame; the feeling of guilt. Courage; the sound of a lion's roar. All feelings align together like a perfect puzzle piece. Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried does an impeccable job conveying the cause and effect relationship between fear and courage, shame and courage, and fear and shame. In The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien continuously shows the reader how fear drives courage and sometimes leads to an unthinkable, but act in a courageous manner. The chapter Enemies portrays how if one feels enough shame, this shame will lead to a courageous act. “Because late that same night he borrowed a pistol, gripped it by the barrel, and used it...
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..."The Things They Carried," Tim O'Brien describes a group of soldiers marching through Vietnam. He does this by describing the items that each of them carries with him during the march. The things that the soldiers carry with them are both tangible and intangible items and what these things are depends upon the individual soldier. They carry the basic "necessities" for survival (if one can consider such things as M&M's a necessity) and the bare minimum to make life as livable as possible. But they also carry memories, and fears, and it is intangible items like these that are the prime focus of the story. The weight of these abstract items is as real as that of any physical ones, and unlike those physical objects, they are not so easily cast away. Throughout the story, O'Brien alternates between narrative passages and simple descriptions of the items that the soldiers are carrying. This fragmentation brings focus to the things the men are carrying, both tangible and intangible, without downplaying the narration. In the descriptive segments of the story, O'Brien is very exact in his descriptions and seems to be merely cataloging what is being carried: "As a first lieutenant and platoon leader, Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45(c)caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds full loaded." O'Brien gives only straight forward descriptions in these segments and the writing is void of any feeling or sentiment. When describing the intangible things, however...
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...Everyone carries luggage literally or figuratively, people carry a variety of things with them, wallets with pictures of family, credit cards, small trinkets etc. The things they carried by Tim O’Brien can be looked at in two different ways, are what they’re carrying merely items or do they have a deeper meaning for each individual. The items carried by the men in this story serve several purposes for each individual, whether its superstition, sentimental or essential to their military jobs. By using cataloging and paying close attention to the details, in The things they carried there are several characters in which we can look deeper into the items they carry, and how they affect each character and how that plays into who they are outside of their military life. Before we look into each individual character, first it is important to look at how each character is the same in what they carry. The story has an extensive list of items that each person carries as basic military items. General items they carried include P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wrist watches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits,military payment certificates, C rations and Two or three canteens of water. These lightweight items are the basic essentials that a military man needs and thusly they do not burden the soldier too much. However throughout the story the mentioning of weight is repeated several...
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...Joey Cav 12/17/13 The Things They Carried During the Vietnam War, the fighting men carried many things. They ranged from guns, ammo, comic books, toilet paper to even Kool-Aid. They carried these things to help them fight the enemy and for comfort, but not all of these things helped these men. They also carried thoughts, memories, and even emotions about the war, and their life in general. While carrying all of these things, they were expected to fight a war, a war that some of them did not care about, or even understand. J.R.R Tolkien’s quote: “The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them” sums up many of the themes found in this novel. Daily life itself carries many hurts (i.e. death of loved ones, loss of jobs, illness, etc.) and mischances (i.e. missing cues for directions in life etc.) that are intensified during a war. Early in the novel we are confronted with Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his love for Martha, a girl from back home who isn’t even his girlfriend, yet he carries her letters with him and re-reads them every chance he gets. This proves costly when Ted Lavender, was killed during a patrol, and Lt. Cross blames himself. He feels the pain of the loss and the embarrassment of keeping his mind on Martha (his love interest) and not on his job which resulted in this death. “Lieutenant Cross kept to himself. He pictured Martha’s smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than his men, and now Ted Lavender...
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...Vietnam, or nearly one million troops, who gave into post-traumatic stress. PTSD must have been common in the group of soldiers in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” due to the amount of burdens each soldier carried. Throughout the story, O’Brien demonstrates theme of psychological, physical and mental burdens carried by every soldier. He emphasizes these burdens by discussing the weight that the soldiers carry; their psychological and mental stress they have to undertake as each of them experience the brutality of the Vietnam War. The physical burden that each soldier carried was a necessity for them due to their emotional burdens that they carried. O'Brien depicted of all the things the men carried in order to create illustrations for the reader. One important use of description the author uses is weight. He uses weight to describe the burden of items that are carried by the soldiers in this story. “The weapon weighed 7.5 pounds unloaded, 8.2 pounds with its full 20-round magazine.” He continues later saying “Among the grunts, some carried the M-79 grenade launcher, 5.9 pounds unloaded, a reasonably light weapon except for the ammunition, which was heavy. A single round weighted 10 ounces. The typical load was twenty-five pounds.” This gives the reader a sense of the struggle that the men endure in carrying these things. When fighting during the war, the physical baggage added up, creating a burden on each soldier’s back. Carrying at least fifty pounds of equipment on...
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...Shane McDonald The Things They Carried In 1990, Tim O'Brien released his second novel about Vietnam, and in the late Sunday edition of the New York Times in March, Robert Harris, editor of The Book Review, reviewed O'Brien's work. According to Harris, only a few novels have found a way to clarify, with any lasting impression the meaning the war had for the soldiers who served there. He believes that O'Brien's work moves beyond the typical war story filled with fighting and battle and instead spends his time examining courage and fear. Harris believes that this is done with sensitivity and insight and by "questioning the role that imagination plays in helping to form our memories and our own versions of the truth" (1). The Things They Carried is a collection of interwoven stories, and while it is a work of fiction dealing with the same platoon, Harris believes that it can in no way be considered a novel due to the structure, but rather it is a collection of short stories unified by characters and theme. At the same time, he also believes that while it is not a novel, all of the stories cohere and it is still a worthy piece of fiction. Harris goes on to say that while there is a lot of gore, as is typical of war stories, O'Brien explains why it was necessary through the voice of the text. Harris quotes from the story "How to Tell a True War Story" which states, "If you do not care for obscenity, you don't care for truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch...
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...What We Learn from “The Things They Carried” “War is a bitch” (O’Brien 30), said Azar, an American soldier who joined Vietnam War. War doesn’t bring anything good to anybody. It just creates sorrow and pains to people. In “The Things They Carried”, the author Tim O’Brien shows us a realistic picture of what the war in Vietnam was like. He demonstrates how brutal the war is and the horrible reality of death in war, and how soldiers deal with the pain. This novel should be on the reading selections of The Interpretation of Literature because as it is a novel composed of war stories, it brings some enlightening endeavor and educational experiences to make us understand more about the war. To make us have an objective perspective of what happened in Vietnam War in 1968, O’Brien let us know a little about each soldier and what they carried with them along with the war in the first chapter. The “things” that the soldiers carried were both literal and figurative. The soldiers carry out of necessity for survival, such as guns, helmets, and other forms of weaponry, as well as things they carry more out of habit. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from Martha, a girl that he loved. “Henry Dobbins, who was a big man, carried extra rations, Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers”(2). O’Brien also describes specifically the weight of the item that...
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...The Things They Carried the characters face many physical and emotional stresses which test their ability to remain strong individuals. O’Brien gives clear example to the emotional burdens the characters are faced with throughout their durations in the war as well as at home. Each story reflects a characters emotional and physical well being. Memories cascade their ways onto the shoulders of the character’s who seem to find emotional support by ignoring or just plain mocking the unpleasant. Subsequently, a few of the stories they tell seem to be in disarray but give the illusion of actuality. The responsibilities to their communities as well as their memories weigh the characters down causing catastrophic damage not only to their personal lives, but their physical well beings as a whole. Norman Bowker silently suffers throughout his duration in the war. Watching silently as his fellow comrade’s fall both emotionally and physically, Bowker never seems to show his emotions to the reader. In essence he has bottled up perceptions about his experience in the war and the death of his comrade Kiowa. In “Notes”, the letter received by O’Brien gives way to a different Bowker, full of emotional agony from deep within. Bowker’s death was one of the most catastrophic events throughout the book. The emotions seemed to pour out as he writes in his letter to O’Brien the effects of the community and the sudden thrust back into the civilian world, in his letter he writes,“[t]he thing is,...
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...Andres Pena COP 1102 “The Things They Carried” What does becoming a soldier mean? Does it mean that duty comes before love or does it mean the opposite? Could it be that soldiers do not have control of their feelings? From the mind of Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried” describes young soldiers that were automatically bumped up into manhood. The author treats the inner conflict that each soldier had to bear during the Vietnam War while fighting for their country. Witnessing horrific scenes of war and the emotional and physical burdens that each of them carried, O’Brien unfolds how these men had no choice but to fulfill their patriotic duty. As the leader of the platoon, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross goes through an inner conflict between love and duty, carrying his orders in his mind and Martha in his heart. But how far can war or following orders, impair the human side of compassion and love? Although, soldiers become men at war, O’Brien focuses in a story where war makes men emotionally handicap, leaving mental scars that may never heal. The story is told by a third person’s point of view, however, O’Brien includes a touch of his personal experiences during the war where he spent a year in Vietnam (Hicks). As Josiah Bunting said, “The things he carried into war are very different from what he carried away from it” (Bunting) expressing O’Brien’s experience at war and how his experience as a soldier would convince readers to believe that the different traumatic moments...
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...Norman Bowker and the Weight He Carried in Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried: a Work of Fiction The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a series that talk about different experiences that soldiers went through during war the Vietnam War. In the 1960’s young men with no experience whatsoever were drafted and sent to fight a terrible war. The worst part of the war for most of these young soldiers was having to cope with the aftermath of all the terrible things they encountered. For example, before going to Vietnam, Norman Bowker had a normal life with his friends and family, but when he returns from Vietnam, he finds himself lost in his own town, his girlfriend married to someone else, one of his friends dead; he feels like a total stranger, and, as a result he is no longer able to call this place home. As can be seen in the chapter “Speaking of Courage” and in “Notes”, Norman Bowker is one of those soldiers who, even long after the war has ended, was never able to recover from the emotional burdens he carried. “Speaking of Courage” tells us the story from Norman Bowker’s point of view of Kiowa’s death in Vietnam. Because of the heavy rains, “the Song Tra Bong overflowed its banks and the land turned into a deep, thick muck for a quarter mile on either side”(136). One night the platoon had settled near the river. Soon they realized they had settled in a shit field, and later that night they took mortar fire. “The field just exploded. Rain and slop and shrapnel...
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...Tim O'Brien does a fantastic job of blurring the lines of what is true and what is fiction in The Things They Carried. In fact, he often points out that he has made entire stories up, after the fact. He defends his decisions by proposing that what he has done is, in fact, not lie, but rather tell a story-truth. He argues that his reason for doing this is to bring the story to life more than it could live through the happening-truth. 'I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth' (O'Brien, 183). O'Brien believes that, when accompanied by vivid details which essentially make the reader view the scene as a dream, story-truths can carry greater emotional truths than ever possible to be achieved through actual, happening-truths. With this, he shows, contrary to belief, how story-truths are often truer than happening-truths, and demonstrates this through the addition of often graphic details. Happening-truth encompasses actual events that take place. However true these stories may be, they are often times viewed as unreal simply because they have no details to back them up. The entire shit field scene that was put into this book, for example, was turned from a happening-truth into a story-truth because the original version was not believable. The reader can see this through O'Brien describing the letters that he received from Norman Bowker. Norman writes to Tim, telling him that he should write about the event. 'What...
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...The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien ENG 1300 W5A2 Andrea Carr South University Online The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien “The Things They Carried” is one of several short stories written by Tim O’Brien that brilliantly portrays a squad of young American soldiers in the Vietnam War. Each of the short stories builds on the last but in The Things They Carried the author places focus on how immature boys cope and their transformation into young men and responsible leaders. O’Brien is not a character in the story but the fact that he is fluent with military lingo and conveys great passion and a working knowledge of the military suggests that he was a soldier. He tells his war story of soldiers’ experiences with obsession, duty, regret, burden, comradely and maturing. He achieves this by describing every facet of the items they carried with great accuracy and detail. The things they carried as they are depicted in the story represent literal things, emotional things, psychological things and symbolic things all weighing in at different levels of importance. There were physical as well as emotional things they carried on their missions, both were equally burdensome. O’Brien states that during missions many of these items were discarded no regardless of their importance to achieve a higher level of comfort. The author further states that the choppers would effortlessly replace the discarded items. In research conducted by Michael Tavel Clarke he implies...
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...The Vietnam War: Weight of Emotions “The Things They Carried” is a short story that describes a group of soldiers and the tangible and intangible items with which they chose to burden their bag packs and hearts. The author creatively manipulates two different ideas, such as ambiguous morality and loneliness to exaggerate the theme which is of physical and emotional burdens. The soldiers carried vital items for survival during this difficult time of their lives. The men tried to take comfort in the personal items and memories they brought with them while they were away from home. With a list of each item a solider took to war, the author carefully pieces together a puzzle about who these characters are. O’Brien’s use of imagery helps to visualize the battle field and understand the soldiers. As the story starts to unfold, the reader is greeted by a love struck narrator by the name of Lieutenant Cross. O’Brien describes the relationship between the narrator and Martha, a girl from back home who he is in love with, but she in return does not share the same feelings. Cross carries letters she wrote and fantasizes daily of their illusive love. His love for Martha becomes more of an obsession. “He loved her so much he could not stop thinking about her” (O’Brien 598). His constant question of her love for him causes Cross to fall short of his responsibilities as the leader of the platoon. “Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter--he...
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