Literature Review - The Things They Carried The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a semi-autobiographical novel based on O’Brien’s experience in the Vietnam War. In the book, O’brien tells about the events leading up to him being drafted, war stories, and some narratives about his comrades. He says that he did not join the war because of morals, but because he was scared not to. Throughout the book, the characters have been coping with death/mortality, social obligations/pressures, guilt/shame, and moral conflicts. O’Brien shares his thoughts on what makes a “true war story” which is very interesting. Overall, O’Brien induces thought and feeling through the interesting medium of stories and language. The way O’Brien describes stories and …show more content…
Lemon died accidentally after stepping on a mine but the way O’Brien describes it is hauntingly beautiful. “Twenty years later, I can still see the sunlight on Lemon’s face. I can see him turning, looking back at Rat Kiley, then he laughed and took that that curious half step from shade into sunlight, his face suddenly brown and shining, and when his foot touched down, in that instant, he must’ve thought it was the sunlight that was killing him. It was not the sunlight. It was a rigged 105 round. But if I could ever get the story right, how the sun seemed to gather around him and pick him up and lift him high into a tree, if I could somehow recreate the fatal whiteness of that light, the quick glare, the obvious cause and effect, then you would believe the last thing Curt Lemon believed, which for him must’ve been the final truth.” (80). Not including the full quote would feel like an injustice. When reading this paragraph, it feels as though the reader is watching it happen with the others, in slow motion. This is a great example of how O’Brien uses the tool of language to his advantage. Another way he uses language is in symbolism. Rat Kiley, who was Lemon’s best friend, writes a letter to Lemon’s sister but receives no response. Struck with grief, Lemon offers a baby buffalo some of his rations of “pork and beans, but the baby buffalo wasn’t interested”(75). Then, “Rat shrugged. He stepped back and shot it through the right front knee. The animal did not make a sound.” (75) Once it was nearly dead, “Nothing moved except the eyes, which were enormous, the pupils shiny and black and dumb” (76). The baby buffalo is a bit like both Curt Lemon and his sister. Neither the buffalo nor the girl responded to Rat Kiley’s kind gestures and like Curt, it was a young, dumb, innocent, and not deserving of death. After all this, at the end of
In the book,” The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, an American novelist who is best known for his works of fiction which depict his experiences in the Vietnam War, he suggests to the audience how the Vietnam War was like to him and to the company he was in during the war. Through the use of his characters to show what they carried with them throughout the war and in the peace after the war, he uses sensory details to illustrate how it felt to be in Vietnam, he uses symbolism to depict certain points of the war, his use of irony to depict something which suggests but means something opposite, and his use of themes through the story. Tim O’Brien focuses on the characters, sensory details, symbolism, irony, and themes throughout the story
In “How to Tell a True War Story”, the main theme is how to tell whether a war story is true or made-up. The author explores the conflict within reality and fiction by arguing that true war stories are hard to believe. In O’Brien’s view, he points out that “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. ”(p.80). Moreover, to make his point, the author spins between facts and fiction causing difficulty for the readers to believe if those stories actually happened or
The Things They Carried, a novel by Tim O’Brien and published in 2009, examines what it was like to have fought in the Vietnam War, through memory, imagination, and the powerful ability of storytelling. Throughout his book O’Brien writes a series of vignettes and describes what it was like during the war, and the effects it had on him a decade later. There was one part in particular that really caught my attention. In the chapter,“How to Tell a True War Story”, O’Brien mentions how Rat Kiley, a Vietnam soldier, writes a letter and he was not pleased with the outcome. As I am sitting on my bed reading one of the chapters in the novel, “How to Tell a True War Story,” I begin to see a flashback of my own life.
The quote shows an example of irony because what wakes up O’brien 20 years later isn't the gore of Curt Lemons death, it is Jensen singing about Lemons death. This shows how dark and inhumane it is that he is singing. Dave Jensen lost his humanity in
A handsome kid, really sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted” The way that he is talking about how Curt lemon is and describing all of his features in this one split second. How he is talking about how beautiful he is when he is dying and the ways that the light hits him how it is all so
Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon were playing catch together when Curt stepped on the booby trap. Rat Kiley took the responsibility of why Curt Lemon died. Rat Kiley after setting up to stay the night in an abandoned village Kiley came across a baby water buffalo. Rat Kiley attempted to give food to the water buffalo but the water buffalo did not want any. The action of the water buffalo triggered Rat Kiley to shoot it; “ It wasn’t to kill; it was to hurt…
By giving the main character of the book his own name, O'Brien makes a clear connection to all of the stories told in the book by explaining them through emotion and vivid detail, though he is caught contradicting himself multiple times throughout the book. O'Brien didn't want to write a war story, as told in an interview, so he decides to use stories in order to outline the war without making the book more of a collection of stories rather than a war book. By doing this, the stories are subjected to fictionalization, nevertheless, the reader is prone to believe that the author is telling the full truth because, there are no obvious reasons would O'Brien have to lie. Though he may be pushing the stories further than they may have actually went, they are able to connect together and form a book that can be read by anyone who is not a fan of war books, while still being enjoyable for people that do enjoy war books. The war to this book is more of an element rather than a main
In the novel “The Things They Carried” author and also ex-veteran Tim O’brien writes a collection of linked short stories about a platoon of American soldiers fighting during the vietnam war. The Vietnam war was a long, unpopular and costly war and once U.S citizens began to see the harsh realities of the war their support for it quickly diminished. Approximately 20 years after the war had started, due to the fear of communism spreading, it finally came to an end leaving at least 58,000 American soldiers, out of 3 million casualties, dead and the remaining scarred for life with emotional and physical burdens. Throughout each short story we learn the significance in which the the title of the novel holds, it expresses that the soldiers not
The Things They Carried is a novel, about a true-war story, written by Tim O’Brien. This novel is a combination of various stories in one plot that mainly focuses on the Vietnam War. The novel was written almost twenty years later by one of the surviving soldiers, Tim. The narrator expresses what a significant impact the Vietnam War had created on the soldiers, both mentally and physically. O’Brien was always opposed to the war; he was never involved in any violence and wished to never be involved in any.
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. Thesis Statement: The Things They Carried is a historical novel written by Tim O’Brien recounting the Alpha Company’s experiences in the Vietnam War. O’Brien allows insight into the physical, emotional and guilt related baggage carried on by the soldiers after the war. O’Brien alludes to the likelihood that his choice to continuously write about his experience in Vietnam is a coping mechanism. O’Brien ties each chapter, which in reality is a short story, into the next primarily through the use of characters.
While marching west into the mountains, Obrien and the rest of the men took a break along a trail junction. Almost immediately Rat Kiley and Kurt Lemon started goofing off. Despite the seriousness of the situation the two continued to goof off and went off into the shade of giant trees. The men played a game which involved pulling the pin off a smoke grenade and passing it back and forth. Obrien then recalls Kurt Lemon stepping from the shade until the sunlight stating “His face was suddenly brown and shining.
“That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future ... Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” (36). The Things They Carried is a captivating novel that gives an inside look at the life of a soldier in the Vietnam War through the personal stories of the author, Tim O’Brien . Having been in the middle of war, O’Brien has personal experiences to back up his opinion about the war.
It is clear that he was shocked by the sudden, instantaneous death of the young man. “The sunlight came around him and lifted him up” (67) shows that Curt Lemon’s death was almost unreal to O’Brien, and that he finds it surreal. However, the death of the baby water buffalo is a completely different description. Killed by Rat Kiley, Curt Lemon’s best friend, the baby water buffalo suffered a slow, gruesome death that Tim O’Brien forces the audience to suffer through.
The thugs looked over to find where the howling was coming from and Lemon Brown lunged himself at them, causing himself to roll down the stairs. The thugs went outside of the house and after awhile they left. After seeing how much Lemon Brown adored his treasures, Greg realized that his dad caring so much for him meant everything. Greg now appreciates the lectures about decisions he was trying to make. Greg’s treasure was his relationship with his father all because of Lemon Brown’s story.
Mary Oliver once said “Figurative language can give shape to the difficult and the painful. It can make visible and ‘felt’ that which is invisible and ‘unfeelable’.” Authors use figurative language in order to set the tone and mood for the story. In the stories “The Treasure of Lemon Brown” by Walter Dean Myers, and “Stop the sun” by Gary Pulser, the authors use figurative language to develop the characters and tone.