The Importance of Friendship in The Things They Carried Essay

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is a portrait for war stories. Sandy Kempner's letter paints a clear picture. His role in Vietnam proves the toll it takes on mind, body, and spirit. The author uses the rhetorical devices of imagery, irony, and anaphora to illustrate his environment.

The novel, The Things They Carried is a story of one man’s accounts resulting to his tour of duty in Vietnam. Many of the men that are discussed in the book continued to be effected by the war, long after they returned home. Men were left emotionally scared, even if they managed to get out of the war physically unharmed. The

The Things They Carried is a work of historical fiction written by Vietnam war veteran, Tim O’Brien. This novella is a collection of linked short stories about American soldiers serving in the Vietnam war. The novella contains a numerous amount of deep,complex characters who help characterize each other. In the The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien characterizes the soldiers through the round female characters

Each of the soldiers in this novel carried their own mental thoughts, mementos, and real items with them during the war. Some of the personal momentos consisted of photographs, girlfriends clothing, and lucky charms. Going into and living through a war, comes with a side effect of having mental thoughts and feelings. These mental effects and feelings can affect how the soldiers react while in combat. “They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hidden 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. They carried their reputations” (O’Brien 20). This quote on page 20 is used to talk about and demonstrate how the men had emotions and thoughts every day while they were in Vietnam, which had affected their mindset and reaction to things they encountered. On top of carrying these mental thoughts, the men had been required to carry real physical items into the war prone areas of Vietnam. The novel states “the soldiers “hump” in the Vietnam War--assorted weapons, dog tags, flak jackets, car plugs, cigarettes, insect repellent, letters, can openers, C-rations, jungle boots, maps, medical supplies, and explosives” (O’Brien 1). in order to give the reader a great insight into what exactly these young men had carried while they were fighting in

Throughout the time period of the Vietnam War, the thousands of men who fought during this time were looked down upon. Many people in the United States were against the war and gave no appreciation to soldiers fighting the Vietnam War. In his novel, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, showed the guilt and shame that soldiers themselves went through being in the Vietnam War. Through not feeling brave and heroic enough, or feeling the fear of embarrassing not only themselves, but their families and hometowns if they were to flee from the war, they constantly felt regret and shame. No matter where you look in the story of The Things They Carried, you will always see the shame and guilt the soldiers are carrying.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien is a story of a group of soldiers going through Vietnam during the war. It describes the mental burdens outweigh the physical agony that soldiers in war must carry. Depends on each soldier, they carry both tangible and intangible items. O’Brien argues that uncertainty, responsibility, and fear that soldiers experience much outweigh the physical torture that they had to endure to keep them alive, burdens eased only slightly after the hope of returning home.

In the book the things they carried the author Tim O'brien uses friendship as a main theme throughout the book.By using several stories and events that happened to his platoon The Ahlpa Company in the Vietnam war, Tim O'brien is showing us the importance of friends in war.

The The Things They Carried is a novel that focus on the obstacles that Tim O’Brien - the author and main character- and his platoons face during the Vietnam War. Throughout the novel, the author Tim O’Brien uses storytelling over happening truth to show his disbelief in the war and further dissect the theme of psychological trauma. Although Tim O’Brien may not represent the views of every soldier, he does focus on providing synopsis that generally replicates the soldiers’ experiences and feelings during the Vietnam War and the years after it. Tim O’Brien wasn’t trying to recount the real events of the Vietnam War but rather confess the emotions and actions tied to it.

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried places readers in the shoes of soldiers such as Jimmy Cross, Kiowa or Rat Kiley in order to offer readers a better understanding of what American soldiers faced during the Vietnam War. By recreating the atmosphere of the Vietnam War time period accurately, O’brien had the freedom of adding realistic, but truly fictional elements to make his story more life-like. While none of the soldiers in this story are real individuals, his use of character’s point of view and their stream of consciousness helps to present their emotions and reactions in a very accurate way. Tim O'Brien employs the literary elements of perspective and syntactical expression to bring readers into a very realistic, yet fictional parallel

Being responsible for the lives of the Alpha Company men proves to be demanding enough without the proper guidance, a struggle Jimmy Cross must learn to cope with while learning to cope with his own personal grievances. Tim O’Brien’s short story, The Things They Carried, highlights Cross’ daily distractions from his duty to these men and the consequences he faces because of his actions. As Cross leads his platoon through the Vietnam War, the story explains the necessities everyone must carry for their respective positions in the platoon. Along with the physical weight the soldiers must carry, the story sheds light on the unseen, emotional baggage that the men carry with them every single day. Faced with the devastating effects of losing a close

The Vietnam War. A war that many Americans believed unfair and unnecessary. “Why am I being sent off to fight in a war I don’t know anything about? Will I ever return again?” Many draftees asked themselves these questions hoping to find comfort in the answers. But there was little to no hope, and they knew it. They were being drafted and they could do absolutely nothing about it, only hope that at the end they would be returning to the enlightened faces of their loved ones, something that not many Vietnam soldiers expected to ever see again. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, portrays his experience in the war along with his fellow squad members, in their fight for survival against the Vietcong. In The Things They Carried, each

The Vietnam War is an important part that played a crucial role to make history in the United States of America. This event took the longest military conflict that started from 1959 to 1975. There were many soldiers that lost their lives, but there were other soldiers that survived to share what they experience and what they had faced. The novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’ Brien, the author himself is an American writer and a survived soldier from the Vietnam War. This novel portrayed the past and present events that were experienced in detail about the war, as well as the experienced that his fellow soldiers that had faced in the war.

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien the author of this novel but also an important character who is a soldier in the Vietnamese War. Along with O’Brien are other soldiers that were very unprepared and filled with varied emotions like fear, sadness, anger and confusion while fighting the war. O’Brien as well as other soldiers carry things that they value during the war. They carry physical things that important to them and also rifles and things to help them survive. Also, mentally they carry more things like memories, fears, dreams, and hopes for the future. O’Brien understands and depicts the things the war takes from the soldiers and also himself. In this except Tim O’Brien uses imagery, epiphany and inner self conflict to develop his

Charlie Meyer 6/20/18 Freshman English (CP) Final Mrs. Moffat The Things They Carried - War Story Why is it so hard to tell a true war story? The Things They Carried is a novel containing various stories from the Vietnam War. These stories are often about the challenges of the war, however the chapter¨How To Tell A True War Story¨ repeatedly states the challenges of telling a truthful and accurate war story. Written by Tim O'Brien, in The Things They Carried, questioning, morals, and qualities reveal the difficulties in telling a true war story.

He mumbled goodbye to his drunk father sprawled on the couch with his hair all over the couch arm and spilled liquid on his stout belly protruding on the bottom of his undersized T-shirt. The teen picked up his sleeping bag and ran outside with a slam on the door. He got on to his bicycle and rode off into the lightless and empty streets. Four minutes have passed and he was riding down a steep hill down River’s Highway. The boy was drowsy and wasn’t to alert of his surroundings so lightly pressed down on the brakes but the bike was still speeding down. The young teenager missed half a beat when he realized how stupid he was to get himself in this situation. He stomped onto the brakes making the bicycle flip off the teenager and falling across finally coming to a