Kiowa

beginning of the novel, Jimmy Cross feels he is guilty for Ted Lavenders death because he was too busy thinking about Martha when Lavender was shot. Guilt is brought up again towards the middle of the novel when Kiowa dies in the sewage field. Norman Bowker feels guilty because he could not pull Kiowa out of the mud when he sank. At the very end of the text Tim O’Brien mentioned the guilt he still feels to this day for not standing up for Linda when Nick Veenhof would attempt to pull off her…

Communication is paramount to, well, everything. Whether you are the director of a film, a speech writer, or the author of a novel, getting your across is key. Certain words and phrases can help you do that. An author’s tone, or how they feel towards a topic, and how they show it, tells their audience what they’re feeling, creating the mood of the text. An author’s tone can be determined by their word choice. And subsequently, their tone can give insight into who they are or who a character is.…

experienced Vietnam himself and wrote prolifically on the topic of war’s indescribable quality. The death of the soldier Kiowa is seen through the eyes of the troop that eventually finds his body. Once someone experiences something horrific, it goes from make believe to reality. That is the truth about death in this story. Death feels abstract and impossible until the lifeless body of Kiowa is retrieved, and no amount of disbelief can breathe life back into him. He is lost and found again in a…

“I never noticed people who talk a lot about duty find it much of a trouble to them” (56) In war, there are responsibilities: we have to protect, serve, and look out for each other. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Frank O’Conner’s Guests of the Nation both have settings take place during war time. Some aspects of war make them different. However, the aspect of duty is found in both stories. In war, it doesn’t matter who or what is coming, you look out for your fellow solider and defeat…

fear. It is not until Ted Lavender, a new recruit to the group who actually shows his uneasiness, separates to use the restroom and gets shot. The squad consists of Jimmy Cross, the 24 year old lieutenant who is in charge, Mitchell Sanders, Kiowa, Henry Dobbins, Dave Jensen, Ted Lavender, Norman Bowker, and Rat Kiley. Jimmy Cross plays an important role in the story where he blames himself for Ted Lavender’s death. This tragedy causes him to be more alert of…

In a Utopian Society everyone is equal, thus everyone is at peace with one another. Sadly, that’s not a concept most people today can wrap their heads around. Constantly being at war has become a societal norm, causing everyone to acknowledge and talk about it. The news, movies, and literature have become frequently used outlets to keep up to date with war. Tim O’Brien’s award-winning novel They Things They Carried is a war story set in the Vietnam War. The novel is composed of several short…

“While Kiowa explained how lavender died, Lieutenant Cross found himself trembling. He tried not to cry” -(pg1167). This was when Kiowa was explaining the death and Cross started to become sad because he had felt like it was his fault for the death and it was causing him great distress. Guilt was perceived in a way that…

In the book The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien tells the horrific experiences of a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. This platoon goes through many hardships, which on the way cause many people to die and to completely change their personalities. O’Brien depicts the awful emotional and psychological conditions the American soldiers experienced during the Vietnam War. The way O’Brien depicts these topics by talking about many points like the items the soldiers carried,…

It can make them put on a front, act overconfident. Opposing to these reactions, fear can also make people run away or hide. In the mid to late 1900’s during the Vietnam War, soldiers were faced with this same fear. The men did not want to appear weak to each other, their community, their family, or to anyone. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried he reveals stories of the Alpha Company, a United States unit of foot soldiers, that he was in during the Vietnam War. Some men went to war to…

“The Most Dangerous Game,” “The Sniper,” and “Ambush,” the authors each used literary elements throughout each story to help create a theme. For example, all the characters in the stories had an external conflict. In “Ambush,” the narrator says, “Kiowa tried to tell me that the man would’ve died anyway. He told me that it was a good kill, that I was a soldier and this was war, that I should shape up and stop staring and ask myself what the dead man would’ve done if things were reserved.” This…