Tim O’Brien uses rhetorical devices throughout The Things They Carried to bring together a correlation between fear of failure, shame of not owning up to their full potential and courageous actions. Tim O’Brien uses constant repetition, precise syntax and symbolism throughout the chapter “On the Rainy River” in The Things They Carried to show the interconnection between fear, shame, and courage. Fear of shame motivates the soldiers to show acts of courage. O’Brien rhetorically uses the repetition
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specifically the Alpha Company of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. The soldiers in the company bond while serving in Vietnam. However, regardless of how close they become, they always have the inclination to never show fear or weakness and always attempt to maintain their reputations. The soldiers within The Things They Carried struggle to determine what is more important to them, their reputation or well being. This concept brings up the questions: How does Tim O’Brien depict the role of reputation
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based on the situation? What would someone do if their will was in someone else’s hands? Both John Wheelwright and Tim O’Brien had these lingering in their minds since the draft. These two men are put into a situation where many do not have a notion on what to do. They made their choices on beliefs and with the help of others. In A Prayer for Owen Meany and The Things They Carried, Tim and John struggle with morality due to the fact that it is a cowardly act to abandon their nation but also cowardly
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foremost, it is important to have an understanding of this chapter in The Things They Carried. “Field Trip” focuses on Tim O’Brien, his daughter Kathleen, and an interpreter returning to the field mainly for O’Brien’s sake of attempting to find redemption. By going to the place of Kiowa’s death almost two decades later, Kathleen is unamused by this trip. This is mainly because O’Brien had claimed this was her birthday present, seeing as how she just turned ten, but in reality this trip was for the author’s
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What Soldiers Carried The soldiers from Tim O’Brien’s novel The Things They Carried all had to carry something during their service in the Vietnam War. O’Brien expresses these objects in his novel through the perspectives of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and himself, detailing their characters from what they carried both physically and symbolically. Initially, Jimmy Cross, the lieutenant of O’Brien’s company, brought with him memorabilia from a girl he loved named Martha and the responsibility of his
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Often in life people are faced with situations that cause them to question their own motives. A dilemma of this nature is depicted in the short story “On the Rainy River” written by Tim O’Brien. The story explores the role of shame in war, and has a reoccurring theme of embarrassment. The main character, Tim O’Brien himself, feels guilty about going to Vietnam because it contrasts all his moral standards. Though not all of the events that appear in the story are true, the story itself does convey
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the Civil Rights Movement was in full force, and all the hippies wanted world peace. In Tim O’Brien’s work of fiction, “On The Rainy River,” he uses rhetorical devices such as a confessional tone, the theme of embarrassment as motivation, metaphor, and rhetorical question to help explore the utter conflict one can have when being shamed into fighting a war one does not believe in. Unfortunately, Tim O’Brien was in a huge moral dilemma-the question of avoiding the draft or fighting for a war he
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What do you think Tim O’Brien wants his reader to understand about war? He would probably want his readers to understand every single level of war that there is, whether it be the surface of it or the depth about it. What it is to watch someone die in front of your own eyes whilst knowing that you can’t do anything about it but move on. As well as to how when you watch a fellow soldier die, you have to move on from it quickly while grieving in silence. There could be exercises they do to be able
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soldiers that Tim O’Brien talks about is Tim O’Brien himself. Throughout the ending of the book, “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’brien and his daughter went on a trip to Vietnam, where most part of his appalling memoires took part/place in. According to the chapter “field trip” (pg.181) in the novel, “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien writes “...In the end I decided to take her to this piece of ground where my friend Kiowa had died. It seemed appropriate... Besides I had business here” (O’Brien,184). This
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people do not get help due to hospitals not allowing help to veterans due to the surplus of them. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is an accurate representation of minor and major PTSD in war by showing the change in soldiers from the start and the end of war. One of the most showing moments of the signs of PTSD is in the chapter “The Man I Killed” as after the man is killed Tim can do nothing except stare at the cold dead body in front of him and cannot move. This relates to the symptom of PTSD
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