1. Through his novel The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien clearly evinces the notion that “Worse than war is the fear of war”, as he attempts to distinguish the physical aspect of the war from the psychological aspect of the war. Furthermore, he expounds on the belief that the emotional aspects greatly predominate the physical aspects. Thus, the essential significance of the title – “The Things They Carried” – is that the mental burdens of the soldiers outweigh the physical agony that the soldiers must inadvertently carry. Additionally, this statement can be substantiated from the text because when O’Brien states, "They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles
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After scrupulously analyzing the text as a whole, it can be logically concluded that majority of the literary text is built upon the belief that “By telling stories, you objectify your experience… you pin down certain truths.” (158). Furthermore, when O’Brien states, “you start with an incident that truly happened, like that night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur, but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.” he essentially hints at the fact that just because some aspects of the stories are not factually correct, it does not necessarily mean that they cannot engender the same emotions in the individual if they were actually true (158). A particular example from the text that best exemplifies how O’Brien pins down a certain truth is the mention of his young beloved Linda. It is evident that when he was about nine years old, he had a strong infatuation towards Linda; unfortunately, she died due to a brain tumor at a very young age, and O’Brien was psychologically shocked – almost scarred. Thus, when she died, he was not quite emotionally ready to forget her, and kept her alive via the medium of narration – storytelling – and coped with the feeling by dreaming of her, and imagining that she was still alive. Hence, this is just one of the few vivid truths that O’Brien pins down in his intriguing …show more content…
An intriguing and though provoking aspect of this novel is the constant change of point of view, which emphasizes the disorder associated with war. At some points during the book, O’Brien employs a first person point of view, and at other times he changes it to a third person point of view. For instance, in the first chapter of the book, “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien writes, “The things they carried were largely determined by necessity”, which illustrates the utilization of the third person point of view. Since in the first story of the novel O’Brien vividly describes the members of the Alpha Company, it would be logical to conclude that he utilizes a third person point of view to begin the book so that he could describe the characters vividly from a unbiased view, and to establish credibility as an author to his readers. Hence, this literary strategy serves to introduce the rest of the novel by providing the readers with a strong understanding of the personality and feelings of the characters, which is extremely helpful in further profoundly analyzing the specific characters, as O’Brien mentions them via the medium of a story. Therefore, by switching to to the third person point of view, the author – Tim O’Brien – both achieves and implies a sense of universality to his literary work. This is evident through the title he gives to the first story – The Things They Carried – because he suggests that people carry portly emotional burdens, and that by telling his own
After scrupulously analyzing the text as a whole, it can be logically concluded that majority of the literary text is built upon the belief that “By telling stories, you objectify your experience… you pin down certain truths.” (158). Furthermore, when O’Brien states, “you start with an incident that truly happened, like that night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur, but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.” he essentially hints at the fact that just because some aspects of the stories are not factually correct, it does not necessarily mean that they cannot engender the same emotions in the individual if they were actually true (158). A particular example from the text that best exemplifies how O’Brien pins down a certain truth is the mention of his young beloved Linda. It is evident that when he was about nine years old, he had a strong infatuation towards Linda; unfortunately, she died due to a brain tumor at a very young age, and O’Brien was psychologically shocked – almost scarred. Thus, when she died, he was not quite emotionally ready to forget her, and kept her alive via the medium of narration – storytelling – and coped with the feeling by dreaming of her, and imagining that she was still alive. Hence, this is just one of the few vivid truths that O’Brien pins down in his intriguing …show more content…
An intriguing and though provoking aspect of this novel is the constant change of point of view, which emphasizes the disorder associated with war. At some points during the book, O’Brien employs a first person point of view, and at other times he changes it to a third person point of view. For instance, in the first chapter of the book, “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien writes, “The things they carried were largely determined by necessity”, which illustrates the utilization of the third person point of view. Since in the first story of the novel O’Brien vividly describes the members of the Alpha Company, it would be logical to conclude that he utilizes a third person point of view to begin the book so that he could describe the characters vividly from a unbiased view, and to establish credibility as an author to his readers. Hence, this literary strategy serves to introduce the rest of the novel by providing the readers with a strong understanding of the personality and feelings of the characters, which is extremely helpful in further profoundly analyzing the specific characters, as O’Brien mentions them via the medium of a story. Therefore, by switching to to the third person point of view, the author – Tim O’Brien – both achieves and implies a sense of universality to his literary work. This is evident through the title he gives to the first story – The Things They Carried – because he suggests that people carry portly emotional burdens, and that by telling his own