The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien Essay

Memory is a crucial concept in "The Things They Carried." While being a conventional ability, it is apparent that it contains its own misconstruction. Memory, which is the act of encoding and retrieving information, is vital in everyday life, while allowing individuals to recall both the positive and negative aspects. The readers are a witness to how memory is highlighted throughout the novel and are shown how memory is indeed significant. This novel provides the reader with an insight to the…

Suzanne Collins, and “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien are two fitting examples of this. Both of these stories share a similar theme. This theme centers around survival, as well as the suffering caused by both physical and emotional burdens which people carry through…

take a life, decapitate, or even to wreak havoc upon lives to which they do not know. The use of setting in a story is a vital component in developing background upon which the story will play out. In the book of short stories by Tim O’Brien, “The Things That They Carried” action…

with people quick to judge, especially when it comes to race. Similarly, Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried uses the theme…

very important part of the military during the Vietnam war. Estimates put around 11,000 women were stationed in Vietnam 90% of the women worked as nurses, helping to care and protect those who came injured from the battlefield. In “The things they carried” by Tim O'Brien, the author challenges women roles with Mary Anne. Mary Anne arrived in Vietnam as innocent as any civilian who has never experienced war can be. Mary Anne quickly adapts to the lifestyle of the soldiers when she when she began…

different. Many writers use structure to protest war. In Tim O'brien's “The things they carried” he says “Among the necessities or near necessities were p-38 can openers, pocket knives, heater tabs… two or three canteens of water.” (D) He is stating in the following quote , the things they need for war. Another quote O'brien uses in (C ) “ Because you could… Because the nights were cold.” In this quote he is listing some horrible things very nonchalantly. This is how many authors use…

the documentary Hearts and Minds when being interviewed the United States Army General, William Westmoreland, stated that “the Oriental doesn 't put the same high price on life as does the Westerner. Life is cheap in the Orient” (Davis, The Things They Carried). I find this statement to be the most ignorant and bigoted statement made by a man of high government power about the Vietnam War. In my opinion one of the goals of Hearts and Minds was not only to show the atrocities of the war, but more…

Telling a true war story is very hard, most of the time people can't actually recall every detail of their time in the war. In Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried, he goes over what it was like to fight on the front lines overseas in the Vietnam War. The physical and emotional stress and tension of being there, witnessing horrifically dramatic scenes made it very hard to physically remember what had happened there. Telling a war story is an art, you have to paint the images into the…

are brought to the reader's attention to think about. Within Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried” readers are forced to question how O’Brien captures the “truth” of war. Although composed of different short stories, the book seems to raise similar ideas and themes in each of them. Within each of his stories the idea of being prideful enough to suppress your true emotions is brought up. The short story, “The Things They Carried” brings up this idea. The story is centered around a…

something in uncontrollable situations, even when we do not have control of ourselves. In the shorty story, “The Things They Carried”, the author Tim O’Brien used detailed imagery to show how personal possessions, physical objects, reflects the internal objects they desperately try to hold on to. O’Brien describes some of the things his comrades carried stating, “Kiowa, a devoted Baptist carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school…