The things they carried is a novel by Tim O’Brien. About the Vietnam war. About the lives of people going there. It’s a collection of war stories. Some of them true, some of the untrue and that’s the main topic that’ll be discussed in this paper. What is a true war story? How can it be told? this is a quite complicated question with a quite complex response(s). a true war story is something beyond generalizing, that could be true and untrue at a time. There is not only one type of truth, but happening and seeming truths, and not the man could know the real truth in a war story. “To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true…(p81). This contradictory passage is somehow paradoxical. …show more content…
It was rigged 105 round…(p84)”. According to the narrator, if Lemon had a chance to tell how he died he would tell that sunlight beautifully killed him. Not a detonator, because he didn’t see one. The thing he saw was the light. He really did so it’s true. It’s true that the sunlight killed him, from his point if view. But not from O’Brien’s. He saw how he exploded on a detonator . and that’s the truth. That’s where the reader gets to the diverse truth. O’Brien differentiates between happening and seeming truths. The truth that Lemon exploded on a detonator is a happening truth. The actual reality. But the story Lemon would tell is a seeming truth. This real truth, the happening one can never reject Lemon’s seeming truth. They can coexist together with other seeming truths in addition. This story, with it’s truths is many-sided. Many truths fit the story. Maybe it’s war itself that makes story multilateral. War makes people define some things differently from each other. War is what denies an absolute truth in a war story. “In war you lose your sense of definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and, therefore, it’s safe to say that in a true war story nothing is absolutely true(p82)”. War many-sided. In war, one can never say anything definitely because the perception
In Steve Kaplan’s The Undying Uncertainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, he writes, “the facts about an event are given; they then are quickly qualified or called into question; from this uncertainty emerges a new set of facts about the same subject that are again called into question--on and on, without end” (Kaplan). Again, this uncertain questioning process catalyzes the storyteller to question his memories. In order to succeed in telling a war
World War II (WWII) is a very common topic discussed in high school english classes mainly due to the facts that WWII is a perfect example of good vs. evil in the real world and there is an endless amount of books written about this tragic era in history. Two examples of these type of books are Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken and Elie Wiesel’s Night; and like all of the other WWII books, these two address themes about the hardships of war and how hope is always present. One specific theme that these books support is that in war, there will always be peace; this is shown through elements of faith, happiness, and trauma. To begin, the two main characters of the books Unbroken and Night face a struggle with their individual faiths, but in very different ways. Louis (Louie) Zamperini initially was not the most religious man but when faced with the most dire of situations he turned to God repeatedly for help and counsel.
For example in the chapter, O’Brien announces that “A true war story is never moral”(O’Brien 65), but, later on in the chapter he contradicts himself conveying that “ In a true war story, if there's a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth ”(O’Brien 74). He starts off saying a true war story has no morals, but then he explains that the moral means everything to a war story, which contradicts his earlier statement. This contradictory excerpt from the chapter parallels the idea of the Vietnam war in the fact that to make peace, there had to be war and bloodshed to solve the problem that the United States and North Vietnam had with one another. War is contradictory in itself ,and O’Brien’s contradictory motif illustrates it well. In fact, the idea of war is a reoccurring topic in “How to Tell a True War Story,” and O’Brien illustrates this idea of war with many other devices as
At multiple points throughout the novel, the author discusses the difference between “story truth” and “happening truth.” The latter is simple to define:
Although the concepts of truth are the same, no person will have the same exact definition of truth. Many people can share a truth, but none of them will always be the same. In O'Brien's The Things They Carried, there's an excerpt called How to Tell a True War Story, an example of O’Brien’s claim can be found when he talks about Mitchell Sanders’ story. It involves a troop that went into the mountains for a listening post operation. He mentions that these men began to hear strange echoes and music, which frightens them.
It glamorizes war into something that could be good and happy situations but this is also not the case. The concept of character makes the idea of a true war story, supposed to a fake one, more understandable. Malcolm Gladwell defines character and how it can change. He writes, “Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context. The reason that most of us seem to have a consistent character is that most of us are really good at controlling our environment.”
(page 68). This is why Tim O’Brien writes the way he does. He wants the reader to believe his story and get a sense of what war is truly
O'Brien is able to illustrate truth about the war to his readers through the use of cleverly crafted syntax and
In My Brother Sam is Dead the authors prove that war is futile. War is futile means that war is pointless or, not producing any useful product. One of the points that proves war is futile is it confuses reality with principle. Secondly war creates the youth against the elders, a clash of generations. Lastly the most devastating point that proves war is futile is it tears families apart.
He claims that the WWI was “Armageddon” or the end of the world because it was the most destructive war ever witnessed by humanity. He also says that because it was a great war, the criminals and heroes cannot be found in such a war. However, these features are not what we saw in the past wars because in the old wars, there are heroes, such as Fredrick, Napoleon, Hannibal who physically lead their soldiers in the front lines of the army, but this cannot be seen in this war because of the decline of individual’s role in the new war that the process is a cooperative affair rather than individual. Moreover, this new feature is the reason of not having “loin-hearted warriors” because if the leader is away from his soldiers, then who will motivate them and lead them physically to do their job. As he mentions that it is not a stock market for the generals to do their job far away from the center, but it is war and they needs to be at the center of the battlefield and seriously direct their army.
The world has been prospering from war for a long time. But, we do not always see the problems it causes. For instance, it tears families apart, it clashes generations, and finally it shows us principal versus reality. So, if war brings more bad things than good it defeats the purpose of even having a war in the first place. The authors of My Brother Sam is Dead also feels that war is pointless and unnecessary.
“Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head.” Pg. 2 This is ironic because the Ted was the most frighten person in the group who was scared to die and somehow he was the first victim to die. “The thumb was dark brown, rubbery to the touch, and weighed 4 ounces at most.” Pg.
The absolute truth may not always be known. Another culture’s history may tell a varied version of an account that differs from the ones that exist in the textbooks in American classrooms. To every war, there is the triumphed and the defeated. Each side walks away with a drastically different outlook on what has occurred. By only hearing one side, individuals are there by limited and constricted to a less knowledgeable idea of the truth.
“Look at Europe,they’ve had one war after another for hundreds of years and show me where anything got better for them” (Collier and Collier 28). The authors James Collier and Christopher Collier of My Brother Sam Is Dead both prove they are not against war, but at the same time, they prove war is okay in the story. They use their feelings about if war should be okay or not okay through Tim’s father. Sam,one of the characters and sibling of Tim, argue that that they should be fighting for freedom and his father argues that war is not worth it. Even though both sides are presented in the story, Collier and Collier conclusively claim in My Brother Sam Is Dead that war is brutal and pointless.
What should we bargain in our education and what content should we write into the textbook to prevent the following generation from waging war? Concerning these enquires, which put forth by Virginia Woolf nearly a century ago, it seems the human race fails to give a satisfactory riposte. No matter how hard human beings have tried, war stays to be an inevitable matter. Some people state this frustrating and inescapable result is caused by human’s aggressive instinct: we are inherently violent and egocentric. However, is human nature truly so selfish and hostile that human race are doomed to be uneducable in war prevention?