The speaker mentions that he half expects to find his own name “in letters like smoke” (16) among the list of dead men. The speaker runs his fingers along the names and as he stops at a particular one powerful images, almost premonitions of the past, come to his mind. He sees “a woman’s blouse” (19) within the black granite, “a booby trap’s white flash” (18), “a red bird’s wings” (22-23), and “the sky” (24). Through the speaker’s use of this wonderful imagery the colors and images penetrate our minds as they do his. These images are snap shots of the bloody war and of the man’s life.…
Although majority of Harrison’s narration of trench warfare is described in chronological order, the description is given a sense of depth when the writing deviates from the sequence. For example, the writer describes a flashback to an event when he talks to veterans and reads newspaper reports. This gives depth because it gives insight to the characters current motivation and emotional state. Sense imagery paints a vivid portrait of a scene to develop the narrative with the use of words and in this case is used very effectively throughout the passage.…
Differences in economics, and culture lead to the American Revolution. This lead to the Union and Confederates to both and try to implement what they believe was right. This document was written by William Wheeler in Warren Junction, Virginia, July 26, 1863. He served a Union soldier as a Lieutenant in the 13th New York Independent Battery. War is generally portrayed as a deadly battlefield.…
O’brien makes sure that one chapter or even two are one theme or both themes, he then makes a “tragedy” happen in order for the story to build off of the themes and so the story progresses. The reader felt that the novel was very real because O’brien puts his personal experience into the war, and told the story like it was his…
Imagery enhances the overall story because it helps the reader visualize what’s happening and feel like they are actually inside the book. Imagery conveys the theme of fear by making the reader see and feel why somebody is…
O’Brien’s style of writing “supports this primary objective of evoking a real response in the reader” (The). In the same way that The Red Badge of Courage’s main theme is war, the same thing is true for The Things They Carried. There are some that are not as obvious for the book as a whole but for a few chapters at a time: memory, imagination, death, fear, exhaustion, and storytelling. These eye-opening pieces of work carry the same theme, and have created a major impact on the readers.…
Tim O’Brien has outstandingly portrayed what the life of a soldier in and out of the Army during the Vietnam War is in his own distinctive way of fictional writing. O’Brien is especially known for this book because of the way he switched from a narrative to a conversational writing style. In The Things They Carried, O’Brien constantly uses multiple literary devices to make his remarkable war stories seem as if the reader were actually there to experience the situation for themselves. Throughout the story, O’Brien tends to use symbolism to explain his short stories. Also, scattered through the stories dark satire can be found, which makes these stories a bit more intriguing.…
The Things They Carried War is a wretched battlefield. It twists the minds of soldiers, scarring them with experiences that can last a lifetime. During war, there are some experiences that one cannot verbally formulate into words that truly capture what had happened. As the author of “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’brien writes with a style that brings his stories to life, as it allows the readers to be able to feel the situation as if them themselves were in it.…
The Burdens of the Battlefield “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight” (O’Brein, 20). The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a collection of stories from the Vietnam war. The stories in the novel range from harsh and violent to deep and emotionally resonating.…
War never changes, it only causes change in the lives of the people affected by its outcome. War brings expected physical weight upon soldiers, but physical weight is not the only burden that soldiers carry. Soldiers carry unexpected emotional burdens that can cause them to become distracted from the real danger which is war. Emotional burdens can also outweigh the weight of physical burdens. In The things they Carried, O’Brien illustrates how emotional burdens are a weight that cannot be escaped in life, demonstrated through the use of imagery, strong emotion symbolism, and the voice of the speaker.…
O’Brien employed these themes to portray the life of a soldier as well as his own experiences in the Vietnam War. Love was an important theme because it motivated the soldiers, as well as distract them. Guilt was also an important theme because it signified the innocence amongst the…
This technique is used by the author ‘Allan Baillie’ to evoke a mental picture of the scene using various literary devices such as the metaphors, allusions, descriptive language and onomatopoeia. The imagery makes a piece of work more realistic and helps the reader to visualise and experience the authors writing in depth. An example of imagery is when Baillie writes “The main scar, a bloodless seam, ran from his right shoulder to his left hip. The second scar was a second, bellybutton punched in his side. Marks of shrapnel and a bullet.…
Regardless of the fact that this novel is essentially a war story, these moments are pivotal and further develop the humanity of soldiers in Vietnam. Tim O’Brien uses…
The characters of the text also explains this theme, of how they are seen upon or treats. O’Brien thinks of the man he killed of how his future was going to be, as a mathematician (119). He also go in depth of what his life was like, before he was put into the war. While Butler talks about the Americans as a whole and talks about how they thought they were so sentimental, but then realizes that he is sentimental was well (3). This is when O’Brien focuses on the individual while Butler focuses on the group.…
One of the themes that were used in the novel where glorification of war. the audiences point of view WAS when Jim was reflecting on all the old leaders. When he was reflecting on the old leaders it look up half of the page with the techniques of lines and the colour used in the imagery where dark and scary colour where used for the bad people and bright colours for the good guys. They also use soft and round lines on the imagery bubbles to show that he was reflecting on the past.…