Tim O’Brien Searches For Meaning
“And right then I submitted. I would go to the war- I would kill and maybe die because I was embarrassed not to” (O’Brien, 57).
Tim O 'Brien’s book, The Things They Carried is a collection of stories of war that are not war stories, but a quest for the meaning of life that centers around a fictional version of O 'Brien’s division in Vietnam. Going into the war, the draft ruins his drive and sense of purpose, and this lack enthusiasm continues through the whole book. He has plans of attending Harvard for graduate school and quite honestly feels too good for war. His thoughts wander to escaping to Canada and he actually makes it to the border. However, in the end the embarrassment of running and the judgement …show more content…
You’re pinned down in some fifthly hellhole of a paddy, getting your ass delivered to kingdom come, but for a few seconds everything goes quiet and you look up and the immense serenity flashes against your eyeballs- the whole world gets rearranged- and even though you’re pinned down by a war you never felt more at peace” (O 'Brien, 34).
This is the sort of absurd world that existentialism deals with; a life that will let someone get killed while also showing them the beauty of the earth they’re about to …show more content…
He is forced into the ‘garden of evil’, where men die all the time with no rhyme or reason and young men end up killing because they just do and for no other rationale. O’Brien is able to move past most of this and give his own life meaning, as suggested by existentialism. He chooses to write of the mistakes he has made and the people who he has lost as a sort of way to keep them alive, and make up for the fact there deaths had no purpose. He ends the novel with this idea that writing has saved his life: “I 'm young and happy. I 'll never die. I 'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy 's life with a story” (O’Brien,
“And right then I submitted. I would go to the war- I would kill and maybe die because I was embarrassed not to” (O’Brien, 57).
Tim O 'Brien’s book, The Things They Carried is a collection of stories of war that are not war stories, but a quest for the meaning of life that centers around a fictional version of O 'Brien’s division in Vietnam. Going into the war, the draft ruins his drive and sense of purpose, and this lack enthusiasm continues through the whole book. He has plans of attending Harvard for graduate school and quite honestly feels too good for war. His thoughts wander to escaping to Canada and he actually makes it to the border. However, in the end the embarrassment of running and the judgement …show more content…
You’re pinned down in some fifthly hellhole of a paddy, getting your ass delivered to kingdom come, but for a few seconds everything goes quiet and you look up and the immense serenity flashes against your eyeballs- the whole world gets rearranged- and even though you’re pinned down by a war you never felt more at peace” (O 'Brien, 34).
This is the sort of absurd world that existentialism deals with; a life that will let someone get killed while also showing them the beauty of the earth they’re about to …show more content…
He is forced into the ‘garden of evil’, where men die all the time with no rhyme or reason and young men end up killing because they just do and for no other rationale. O’Brien is able to move past most of this and give his own life meaning, as suggested by existentialism. He chooses to write of the mistakes he has made and the people who he has lost as a sort of way to keep them alive, and make up for the fact there deaths had no purpose. He ends the novel with this idea that writing has saved his life: “I 'm young and happy. I 'll never die. I 'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy 's life with a story” (O’Brien,