Tim Obrien Analysis

Tim Obrien’s mental thinking in “The Things They Carried,” and “In the Lake Of The Woods.”

Tim Obrien’s “The Things They Carried,” and “In the Lake Of the Woods,” shows how the Vietnam War affected his writing style. Tim Obrien was a Vietnam War Veteran. This mental state is brought out through his style of writing through Characterization, Setting, and Theme. These things show how the Vietnam war affected his writing in a psychological way. I believe these stories and many others are ways he coped with the memories of Vietnam. First the characterization Obrien uses in “The things they carried,” and “In the lake of the woods,” shows how Obrien coped with his War past. Both of these stories have two men that portray Obrien. In “the things they carried,” he uses the soldier’s physical struggle of carrying their personal things to show the emotional burden the soldiers carried. For example Lieutenant Cross carried letters and pictures of a woman named Martha, his woman of interest back …show more content…
“The Things They Carried,” theme is Vietnam warfare. It wasn’t about heroism or violence but more like war is boring but has its moments of terrorizing fear. It shows how the soldiers lived there lives in the war. In the Lake of the Woods,” theme is trauma memory and war. In the book it tells of how John Wade faced losing his father at age fourteen and then later participates in the Lai Massacre. John’s reaction to his experiences in the Vietnam War fits the classic definition of trauma given by Sigmund Freud, who’s quoted several times in the novel, an event so disturbing and stressful that the mind doesn’t know how to incorporate it into the memory, and thus relives it endlessly. In the Story John often finds himself having visions of the Lai Massacre and talking to his father who is dead. This is very similar to Obrien’s writing’s as they are from the same era and have somewhat same