Trench warfare

Even more so than the other American soldiers in Vietnam, Mary Ann is the embodiment of an outsider. She is also the representation of American arrogance in the Vietnam War. She does not belong there, and her story accentuates what happens when someone’s surroundings affect him or her. She arrives to Vietnam as Mark Fossie’s girlfriend, and she is the only tangible example of love in the novel. Mary Ann gets there dressed in her pink sweater and her white culottes, with a fresh face and a very…

War and religion. While in many cases, churches and other holy sites are often used as a way for people to avoid the violence of warfare, in cases such as the Crusades, religion can be the cause of warfare. The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, does not explicitly focus on themes relating to the nature of the relationship between religion and war, rather it focuses mainly on other large ideas such as burdens and subjective truths. However, several symbols presented in some of the many…

Mutually assured destruction prevented an outbreak of nuclear warfare during the Cold War. The stance against the employment of nuclear weapons arose from shifting norms in international society, as states were prompted to dedicate themselves to preventative war. Additionally, it was challenged whether the enormously devastating impact of nuclear weapons was ethically sound and whether it could be effectively used militarily. The notion that there was no winner to a nuclear war, however,…

EXTERNAL SECURITY 1052 India’s external security is informed by its political position on the world stage. Since 2014, Prime Minister Modi’s progressive attitude has brought Indian foreign policy on significantly. This is demonstrated through the surprise invitation of all South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation leaders to his swearing-in ceremony . India is now showing global self-confidence, through strengthened defence ties with the US and Europe, and has for the first time in a…

Carried Through the War An estimated one million American soldiers died in the Vietnam War. The war was brutal, and even though I have not experienced war directly, I can imagine a persistent death awaiting each and every individual on the battlefield. It is his short story “The Things They Carried”, by author and writer Tim O’ Brien, that I believe truly illustrates the hardships and death of the Vietnam War and how they affected soldiers physically, spiritually, and mentally. To begin with,…

day. The introduction of prosthetics helped give soldiers the ability to move once more and with the invention of the x-ray, injures on the front lines became noticeable. Tanks created a safe way to travel and with the establishment of biological warfare, battles were changed forever. Lastly, WWI left a…

We see the first chapter of The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien to be the foundation for the rest of the novel, with exquisite descriptions of everyone and everything, to the foreshadowing and symbolism that embodies each character and “what they carry”. O’Brien offers us basic descriptions of what each member of Alpha Company carries that is described as “largely determined by necessity” (2). Some would carry knives, extra rations and what seemed like an overkill of supplies, while others…

Dyck, B. Dyck, Brent. "Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Historian, no. 99, 2008., pp. 26-28 search.proquest.com.cyrano.ucmo.edu:2048/docview/275019126?pq-origsite=summon Accessed 21 Oct. 2016. This article provides insight on the operations launched against Japanese forces and the issued beliefs held by President Truman that he had saved a quarter-million Americans from being killed by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This source will be utilized as a tool to portray the well-known…

“William Timothy O’Brien is a renowned American writer, famous for writing novels on the Vietnam War.” (FamousAuthors). One of his most famous novels is called “The Things They Carried.” O’Brien was born on October 1, 1946 in Austin, Minnesota. He grew up in Worthington, where that city played an important role in shaping his imagination and developing his artistic sensibility. Although O’Brien was against the war, he was conscripted into the United States Army and sent to Vietnam where he…

Everyone deals with certain types of situations in his or her own way. A person’s emotions and actions could also affect how he or she deals with their problems. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien explains how the soldier’s emotions get the best of a person. Someone could also deal with their problems in a negative way. They could deal with their issues without help, which might make the situation even worse and may cause bigger problems. Someone might not know how to deal with a situation…