O’Brien uses this chapter to describe one of his close allies in Henry Dobbins. He talks about how the others would never see Dobbins without his girlfriend’s stockings that he brought from home around his neck. They meant so much to him. These stockings would be with Dobbins even in the most hectic moments. They reminded him of his girlfriend and he felt they were good luck for him.…
The evocative narrative focuses on country life, friendship, and the joy of it being Christmas season, and it its gently yet sad touch on loneliness and loss. While the main character, Buddy loves his older friend (cousin), the mood of sadness colors the short novel because they are friends circumstantially in that while the other adults are too busy for them. The author shows that there friendship develops in tenderness, but overtime they can’t stay together because will have to leave to go to the military. The theme would be the difference I the age of their friendship, and loss of Buddy going away to the military.…
Capturing Readers through Rhetoric The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien holds a collection of fictitious stories that detail the seemingly endless extent of suffering and destruction that soldiers must endure while tangled up in the chaotic corporeality that is war. O’Brien effectively makes these fabricated stories reach out to the reader and ensnare their senses, relating the readers to the novel even if they do not have firsthand experiences with war. He captures the reader by using a proficient collection of rhetorical strategies. Throughout the novel, it appears that O’Brien focuses less on the political aspect of war, and instead concentrates on the people who participated and suffered from the war instead.…
Written by Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried is a novel that has a focus on the Vietnam War, and the effect the war had on the soldiers who participated. A short part of the novel’s multipart stories, The Things They Carried is a short story that focuses greatly on the themes of love and war, and the sacrifices one has to make between personal feelings and personal duty. The author uses the characters within the story to express the feelings of the men as they travel through Vietnam, as well as interpret the psychological effects the war has on the men, and the amount of trouble they go through to maintain a sense of comfort during the men’s service. This attention to the inner conflicts of the squad of men is capitalized by the massive…
The time period during the Vietnam War was a very hard time for many people, especially for the men who were physically involved in the war. The Soldiers. Tim O’Brien, the author of The Things They Carried, served in Vietnam from 1968 through 1970. The Things They Carried is a collection of short stories in which the stories of the men who accompanied him are told. In this novel, we are introduced to Tim O’Brien himself, and numerous amount of other soldiers and their stories.…
C.S. Lewis: The Story Surrounding the Stunning Success Clive Staples Lewis An exceedingly renowned author, C.S. Lewis, has challenged the world of literature, reflecting his Christian values and life within his hundreds of books. “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen; not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” (Lewis 140) Various agnostic scholars agree Lewis’ writing is impeccable and his theology is well-thought and credible.…
An English emigrant residing in the United States, John Downe un his urgent letter entails his experience and situation in America in 1830. Downe wishes to persuade his wife to move from England along with their children in order to live a prosperous life. In his personal writing, Downe adopts a passionate and hopeful tone to encourage his wife, Sukey, to reunite with him.…
Tim O'Brien, in his collection of stories "The Things They Carried" (1990), recounts his experiences of not only the events that took place around him, but the individuals involved in the war alongside him. O'Brien identifies physical items with emotional meanings that each of the men kept with them, especially letters and themselves. To emphasize the items, O'Brien inserts potentially pathos-driven reasons why they carry what they do. O'Brien suddenly begins his novel with the introduction of what the men in his platoon carry on them.…
Change of Heart Robert South once said, “Innocence is like polished armor; it adorns and defends.” In the short story, “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” by Francis Harte, two young lovers unknowingly change the lives of their new outcast acquaintances for the better by demonstrating true love and wholesome innocence. The innocence displayed by the young lovers, Tom and Piney, has a life changing effect on the outcasts of Poker Flat. Mother Shipton is overwhelmingly affected by the lovers’ acts of innocence.…
In “The Things They Carried”, we are presented with a story about a group of military men during the Vietnam War. The story is told by an unnamed narrator, from a third-person subjective (limited omniscient) point of view. While the story goes on to describe what each of the characters carried during their missions in Vietnam. The author focuses mainly on the emotional dilemma of the group’s lieutenant ,Jimmy Cross, and the effect it has on his group. Being that the conflict is an emotional struggle, I categorize the main conflict as an internal conflict.…
In “Cathedral” Raymond Carver writes about how the ability to understand through senses other than sight can enable a person to obtain a deeper understanding with what they engage in. The narrator who is the husband in the story is visited by his wife’s blind friend. Originally the blind man has come to see the woman his friend who he hasn’t seen in years, however in this story the narrator is the one who benefits most from the presence of the blind man. Although the narrator is her husband the blind man seems to know more about the woman than him, the wife and the blind man have been communicating by sending tapes with recorded messages and poems to each other through mail since before the woman married her now husband, when the husband has…
How Love May Not Provide Successful Comfort Warzones can be incredibly violent, terrifying, and gruesome places. Especially during the Vietnam War, when soldiers had very long deployments in horrid conditions, one major way to deal with the difficult environment was to remember that there was a world beyond it. Even in civilian life, a very positive way to deal with stress is to remember that there is a life outside of the stressor. In the short stories in his book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien explores how men use pre-traumatic images of beloved females to cope with trauma, and how human’s desire for permanence manifests in these traumatic moments. The girls in these stories symbolize peaceful, happier times as a mechanism for the men…
30008195 Mr. Rob Awesome Girard AP Language & Composition Friday, October 9, 2015 Free-response 2- John Downe to His Wife In 1830, Downe writes a short letter to his family back in England, hoping to persuade them to join him in America. He is in awe of the freedom and security he has found, and wholeheartedly believes that America is a better place to live than England. In Downe's emotional letter to his wife, he expresses his unchangeable love for his wife and children and tries to convince them to join him in America.…
The letter was written by Eliza Stacey to her father in law, Edward Stacey, impassionately described the hardships of her current situation at home, due to her husband's imprisonment. Eliza Stacey wrote her letter to persuade her father in law to help her family once again. Eliza Stacey opened her letter by stating her current hopelessness and sorrowfully reported the misery that her family went through. The opening sentence is highly exaggerated and unqualified. The mood of the letter is established through the opening sentence with Stacey’s usage of syntax and diction.…
The husband John is a doctor and insists that his wife should rest and not write or do any sort of work. The woman longs to be able to write freely whenever she feels the need, “I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me” (Gilman 782). Her husband does not want her to write at all, “There comes John, and I must put this away, - he hates to have me write a word” (Gilman 781). She is not able to give up her writing and so she writes when John is away at work during the…