Coping Methods in the Things They Carried Essay

In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien uses many short stories to describe his experience in Vietnam. The story that captured many aspects of writing was “How to Tell a True War Story” because it acts as a guide to writing a true story. O’Brien uses many different rhetorical strategies, narrative techniques, and establishes a theme in this story to help develop his characters and story line.

In The Things They Carried, Tim O 'Brien uses a variety of stories to explain the life experiences that he and many of his fellow soldiers endured during a single year in Vietnam. He tells these stories in a way that we can connect to these experiences. We never spent time in Vietnam, but O 'Brien wants us to feel like we were there. O 'Brien uses what he calls "story-truth" to write these stories. The outcome or the people may be different but the feeling is real; that 's the truth in the story, the feeling. He wants us to feel what he felt, see what he saw. He doesn 't just tell us what was happening exactly; he tells a fictional story that conveys the same emotion. He plays with the truth, that 's the reason why this book is a work of

Our introduction stated that in “The Things They Carried,” author Tim O’Brien tells us not directly of the soldiers of Vietnam, or the situations they find themselves in, but about the things they carry on their shoulders and in their pockets. These “things” identify the characters and bring them to life."  I find that to be true as the author unfolds the stories about war and the uncommon things one carries in to war both inadvertently and on purpose.   As it was noted: "Stories about war – especially today – usually emphasize heroism and supporting our troops. Yet, these are completely absent in “The Things They Carried,” again I find this to be true also.  In attempting to Analyze why there is an absence of heroism and heroic acts in “The Things They Carried” I discovered that the author comes at his stories from a completely different view point and it is complex.  Example: he names himself as a fictional character and a Protagonist.  Although this is a fictional story it reads like a biography or a set of memory 's from the war in Vietnam, in which all the stories connect.  An unnamed narrator describes in third person the thoughts and actions of Lt. Jimmy Cross, a lieutenant in the Army.  Lt. Cross thoughts are of a woman named Martha, who he dated, her letters seem to serve somewhat as torture as he wonders if she feel the same way about him as he does about her, the letter give him no clue and make him wonder even more.   Lt. Cross is a inexperienced, somewhat

The Things They Carried is more than just a story about the Vietnam war. A focus has been placed on the real soldiers who lived through it. With the use of repetition, figurative language, and described imagery O’Brien is able to illustrates his story. WIth these three things, we are able to understand the physical and emotional side of a soldier at war.

Stories are something that stay within people for a very long time, memories vanish away from people and all there is left is the stories they have. Stories are unique in a way because no two people have the same one. The Things They Carried is a book that enhances different perspectives of the Vietnam War through storytelling. As Tim O’Brien explains the different stories that are told, he creates characters to capture the different moments that are experienced in war. Storytelling does not always come from the total truth, but from the experience of the storyteller.

Tim O’Brien’s use of fictionalized writing in the delivery of “The Things They Carried” was the best writing style possible for a war story. Fiction, as opposed to a more conventional historical account, allows him to paint a more realistic portrayal of soldiers’ actual combat experience during the Vietnam conflict by use of imagery, real life accounts, and third person omniscient point of view.

The war of Vietnam played a significant role in Tim O’Brien’s life throughout his works and experiences. He was drafted to the Vietnam war after graduating college in 1968 where he served two years. O’Brien wrote the novel The Things They Carried after returning from the war as a way to clear off his mind from the experiences he went through. In the novel he constructed many memories that may or may not be true, but are told using imagination as a guide to explore the mind of the readers. O’Brien used his novel to liberate his many occurrences he faced and dealt with throughout his journey. In an interview with Michael Coffey on Patrick Smith’s article O’Brien states, “My goal was to write something utterly convincing but without any rules as to what’s real and made up…” (97). Tim O’Brien uses imagination to establish a therapy within his writing as a way to cope with reality based on his war transition, allusions, and stories to save him.

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien provides an account of his time in the Vietnam War with memories and anecdotes in order to evoke emotion from the reader. Throughout the war, O’Brien sees instances of courage and cowardice within himself and his fellow platoon cronies. The title of his work signifies what the soldiers carried with them to the war and what they continue to carry after the war. O’Brien carries the shame of his inability to abscond from his call to serve in the United States Army because of his concern for his reputation. This initial act of cowardice sets up how O’Brien thinks of himself as a soldier and overshadows all courageous actions with this singular pusillanimous decision to join a movement that he wanted no part in while the characters who represent true courage admit their faults and embrace their humanity.

Tim O’Brien’s The Things they Carried is a riveting war story that has the power to evoke emotion from the coldest soul; O’Brien depicts graphic events from his time served in the Vietnam war. From death to drugs, O’Brien’s seen it all. On pages 57-61, O’Brien is at a crossroads; he is debating on whether or not he should fight in the Vietnam War. At this point in the novel, O’Brien quits his job, leaves his conventional life behind and flees to northern Minnesota. Towards the end of his trip, O’Brien goes fishing with the lodge owner; this is where he makes his emotional decision to go to war. O’Brien’s powerful word choice, use of imagery, and oxymoron work in conjunction to develop a somber mood.

They try to build a new life, but memories from the war are still strongly obvious to them. Through the feeling of embarrassment inside the soldier, O’Brien has depicted the post-war effects of the

Finding the Truth Within the Fiction in The Things They CarriedAlthough there are many themes displayed throughout the stories told by Tim O’Brien inThe Things They Carried, none of them will have the intended impact on the audience if theylack the ability to separate the truth from the fiction. Interpreting this truth throughout the novelmay be hard due to the often made-up recollections rather than factual events, which often resultin a lack of respect for the accounts being presented. However, once the reader can comprehendthat not all of the stories are true, yet the emotions always are, a new appreciation for the storieswill be found as well as a deeper comprehension. Tim O’Brien’s recollection of his time spentfighting the war in Vietnam is not always completely truthful, but truth can always be found inthe book through the emotions and morals that come along with his blunt, brutal stories.

During the Vietnam War, a range of emotions occurred within every soldier. Even though some veterans can move past their memories of war, many soldiers became haunted by their dark memories. In Tim O’Brien’s fictional novel The Things They Carried, O’Brien takes his readers through several different events and emotions that occurs to his character during the Vietnam War. Although his character sometimes faces a tough time telling the story, O’Brien manages to inform his readers of the different emotions he faced from the point he enter the Vietnam War to the end of the Vietnam War. During the novel, several different themes continuously appear throughout the text. Out of all the themes that O’Brien describes, the themes of guilt and fear stand out the most during his stories of before, during, and after the war.

Through telling and retelling these people’s stories O’Brien (and any character doing the storytelling) is preserving and extending the people’s lives. Most of the stories and characters in this novel are made up; this much O’Brien admits to. Only through exaggerating and inventing stories, O’Brien argues, can the true sentiments of the stories and the people in them be conveyed. O’Brien admits that he “invented incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain” what it was like to go through the war (O’Brien, 107). Only through these inventions can we truly begin to understand who the characters are and how they were affected by the events that took place in the

In many respects, Tim O 'Brien 's The Things They Carried concerns the relationship between fiction and the narrator. In this novel, O 'Brien himself is the main character--he is a Vietnam veteran recounting his experiences during the war, as well as a writer who is examining the mechanics behind writing stories. These two aspects of the novel are juxtaposed to produce a work of literature that comments not only

In fact, O’Brien dedicates an entire chapter “How to Tell a True War Story” to the metafictive analysis of war stories, which inherently addresses the novel itself. “This is true,” O’Brien insists (65). “Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true.” (77). He explains that vision is skewed, vision is relative--what happened is different than what seemed to happen, but nevertheless the events themselves do not define the truth of emotion in that moment, which he deems most