O Brien Rhetorical Analysis

O’Briens use of imagery is a key element in his passage. My first example is “There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, I”m left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief” he used the young men to represent the fearless Vietnam soldiers that have died. Thousands of soldiers were dead and weren’t able to be identified because they were burned by napalm or they were buried by the American soldiers. Secondly, a woman named Marie Anne, “Mary Anne made you think about those girls back home, how clean and innocent they all are, how they’ll never understand any of this, not in a billion years” Marie showed arrogance in Vietnam. She wore a pink sweater and …show more content…
He was a witness, like God, or like the gods, who look on in absolute silence as we live our lives, as we make our choices or fail to make them” in this example he’s showing us that you can put so much thought into doing something but never actually do it. O’Brien was on the edge of running off to Canada but he backed off and never went. Another example is when O’Brien and Azar play a prank on Bobby, O’Brien states “I was the land …show more content…
This quote is representing Tim’s plunge into savagery. Tim O’Brien uses synecdoche which is a type of imagery that symbolizes a big part of the story. O’Brien talks about the weight of the things they carried and Tim called the men “legs.” The soldier's legs are allowing them to walk all day in the tough terrain. Their legs also allow them to carry every bit of equipment that they need, such as weaponry, medical equipment, food, water, and clothing. Now weight isn’t just how heavy things are to carry or lift, but Tim O’Brien also shows the psychological stress or weight of being in a war. An example of the psychological weight is when comrade Ted Lavender died, Jimmy Cross felt like he was responsible for Ted dying. Then Kiowa couldn’t stop describing Ted’s death to the other men. They were constantly bored and lonely. O’Brien also says “the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down.” All of this makes daily life for the soldiers very difficult, but the soldiers do not want to seem faint-hearted in the face of death surrounding