In the book, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, there are many conflicts and from those conflicts, lessons are learned. We learn how there is a great power to storytelling, how the fear of shame can motivate people, and how we shouldn’t let anything hold us back, especially things that were out of our control.
The biggest theme of the book is how there is an immense power to storytelling. Throughout the book, O’Brien talks about how storytelling helps bring other people into the past and share unknowable experiences with the storyteller. Another thing O’Brien talked about was how storytelling allowed the dead to come back to life. The way they came back was through the story, because they could be seen as they were before they were killed. Telling stories about them could make it so they didn’t seem dead anymore, but instead they were still doing the same thing they had been doing before their unfortunate ending. On page 239 Tim says, “We kept the dead alive with stories.”
Another theme introduced in the book is how the fear of shame can be an unavoidable motivation for going to war. Soldiers who have been drafted to go to war have …show more content…
In the book, O’Brien talks about how he and other soldiers blamed themselves for a lot of bad things that happened during the war. In reality, it wasn’t their faults at all because they shouldn’t have even been at war. It was the war’s fault, not theirs. One thing that O’Brien blamed himself for the most was the death of his close friend, Kiowa. This, of course, was not his fault at all, but it stuck with him for a good chunk of his life. He eventually overcomes the guilt of Kiowa’s death by revisiting the site of his death and burying Kiowa’s moccasins, which he pulled from his dead body so many years ago. On page 186 he says, “Well,” I finally managed. “There it
The biggest theme of the book is how there is an immense power to storytelling. Throughout the book, O’Brien talks about how storytelling helps bring other people into the past and share unknowable experiences with the storyteller. Another thing O’Brien talked about was how storytelling allowed the dead to come back to life. The way they came back was through the story, because they could be seen as they were before they were killed. Telling stories about them could make it so they didn’t seem dead anymore, but instead they were still doing the same thing they had been doing before their unfortunate ending. On page 239 Tim says, “We kept the dead alive with stories.”
Another theme introduced in the book is how the fear of shame can be an unavoidable motivation for going to war. Soldiers who have been drafted to go to war have …show more content…
In the book, O’Brien talks about how he and other soldiers blamed themselves for a lot of bad things that happened during the war. In reality, it wasn’t their faults at all because they shouldn’t have even been at war. It was the war’s fault, not theirs. One thing that O’Brien blamed himself for the most was the death of his close friend, Kiowa. This, of course, was not his fault at all, but it stuck with him for a good chunk of his life. He eventually overcomes the guilt of Kiowa’s death by revisiting the site of his death and burying Kiowa’s moccasins, which he pulled from his dead body so many years ago. On page 186 he says, “Well,” I finally managed. “There it