Free Essays on The Things They Carried

In the short story â€Å"The Things They Carried† Tim O’Brien faces Jimmy Cross with the problem of surviving while fighting in Vietnam. While trying to maintain his sanity, Jimmy struggles between his old self and the person he has to become. Jimmy has to make some difficult decisions while in his tour, and most of them come to his attention after his friend Ted Lavender is killed. Jimmy’s main struggle in dealing with his friends death is to figure out a way he can become a better leader. He wants to lead his troop with confidence and preciseness. Before his friend’s death, Jimmy had constructed a bulwark to separate him from the rest of the troop. Jimmy was in his own world, mainly back in New Jersey with Martha, but sometimes in a fantasy world where nothing felt real and he would do amazing things like fly over Vietnam waving the whole madness goodbye. His misconception of fantasy and reality is one of the first things that he changes about himself in order to become a better leader. Making this decision was near impossible, the pictures that he had become inured to seeing everyday were put to flame and Martha was no longer in his thoughts. By burning those pictures he not only breaks free from the fantasy world, but also of Martha. She was a girl back home who he had loved dearly, and had remained in contact with throughout the war. His infatuation with Martha was not a sexual one, but one that had something much greater weight towards his survival. He did not think about Martha day in and day out because she was his only true love of the world; he merely needed something to occupy his mind with. He needed something to keep his thoughts away from the horrible tragedies going on around him. He was trying to maintain his hope. Martha gave him a goal, something to shoot for, a reason not to give up. â€Å"So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and no... Free Essays on The Things They Carried Free Essays on The Things They Carried In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, numerous themes are illustrated by the author. Through the portrayal of a number of characters, Tim O’Brien suggests that to adapt to Vietnam is not always more difficult than to revert back to the lives they once knew. Correspondingly the theme of change is omnipresent throughout the novel, specifically in the depiction of numerous characters. Tim O’Brien is drafted one month after graduating from Macalester College to fight a war he hated. Tim O’Brien believed he was above the war, and as a result pursued the alternative of escaping across the border to Canada. This understandable act is what Tim O’Brien considers an embarrassment to himself, and to others. When Tim O’Brien finds accommodation on the border to Canada, he meets Elroy Berdahl who eventually influences Tim O’Brien, to change. Elroy Berdahl acts as a mentor to Tim, a figure that remains detached in the sense that he must provide enough support and understanding without being attached to the results. At the rear of the boat Elroy Berdahl pretended not to notice...I realized that Canada had become a pitiful fantasy. Silly and hopeless. It was no longer a possibility. Right then, with the shore so close, I understood That I would not do what I should do. I would not swim away from my hometown and my country and my life. I would not be brave. That old image of myself as a hero, as a man of conscience and courage, all that was just a threadbare pipe dream. (O’Brien 59,60) Tim O’Brien’s epiphany so close to the Canadian shore, represents the change he went through in the 6 days he was with Elroy Berdahl. Tim O’Brien’s whole life appeared before him and out of cowardice, he went to war. Rat Kiley is the platoon medic who eventually loses his mind in the field. Rat Kiley’s metamorphosis occurs when the platoon switches to a routine of night movement Kalil 2 for 2 weeks. Rat is una... Free Essays on The Things They Carried All too often, literature is misunderstood by a reader due to the simple fact that he or she has no idea what happened in the author’s life to cause him or her to write a particular literary piece and what the author is trying to pass on to the reader. There are many factors that affect the way an author writes his or her literature including experiences that took place in his or her life, occurrences around the world, and values and beliefs he or she has. In order to understand a text, the reader must first have an understanding of the author. By this, I mean that the reader must seek to identify with the author and try to read the text as the author intended. This involves the reader learning some things about the author and determining what assumptions the author made about the reader’s knowledge, beliefs, and previous literary experiences. Peter Rabinowitz, a literary strategist, referred to this sort of perspective as â€Å"authorial† reading and encour aged this view vehemently. As we read a piece of literature, we will try our best to read as â€Å"authorial readers† and relate the author and his world to what he or she wants me to attain. An author named Tim O’Brien wrote about some of the events that took place in the Vietnam War. In his short story, â€Å"The Things They Carried,† O’Brien wrote a sort of autofiction about some of his accounts in the war. This is referred to as an autofiction because it is a story about true occurrences in his life with some fictional incidents intertwined into the story, hence an autobiographical fiction. In order to understand his story, we are going to learn some things about his background and his experiences in the war that influenced his literary style and also try to figure out how we, the readers, are supposed to read this particular text. In other words, we will attempt to become the â€Å"authorial readers† that we talked about earlier in order to better understand his ... Free Essays on The Things They Carried Spilling Your Heart Through a Pen Tim O’Brien utilizes the autobiographical fallacy to vent a guilty war clogged conscience. Since the author is linked to the narrator, the reader must question the factual truths of The Things The Carried. The book is dedicated to Cross, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Henry Dobbins, and Kiowa. However, O’Brien states that all the accounts, besides the narrator being a 43-year-old veteran, are fictional. So, the speaker is the author, but his stories cannot be believed as truth. Even though the stories of the narrator’s friends are fiction, the narrator stresses that the realism of these characters is not important. Tim O’Brien is linking himself to the narrator not for the purpose of making the stories more believable. According to the writer, â€Å"Story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.† (179) When a person reads the truer fictional stories, while believing the author is the narrator, it makes one â€Å"†¦fe el what [the narrator] felt.† (179) Tim O’Brien is using the autobiographical fallacy to vent his negative memories in the hope that the reader can relate or sympathize. The narrator strongly opposes the Vietnam War. Internal conflict arises when the draft picks the Tim to fight in the war. He travels toward Canada to avoid Vietnam, but feels â€Å"†¦ashamed of my conscience, ashamed to be doing the right thing.† (52) The reader knows that this particular story is not factual, because the narrator is tormented by images of people from the past and future (i.e. Abe Lincoln and Huck Finn). Many details of the narrator’s trip to Canada are bogus. The narrator goes to the war, survives, and states that, â€Å"†¦it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.† (61) These words, coupled with Tim O’Brien’s linkage to the narrator, force the reader to understand the author’s guilty conscience. The narrator relays many stories in w... Free Essays on The Things They Carried In the short story â€Å"The Things They Carried† Tim O’Brien faces Jimmy Cross with the problem of surviving while fighting in Vietnam. While trying to maintain his sanity, Jimmy struggles between his old self and the person he has to become. Jimmy has to make some difficult decisions while in his tour, and most of them come to his attention after his friend Ted Lavender is killed. Jimmy’s main struggle in dealing with his friends death is to figure out a way he can become a better leader. He wants to lead his troop with confidence and preciseness. Before his friend’s death, Jimmy had constructed a bulwark to separate him from the rest of the troop. Jimmy was in his own world, mainly back in New Jersey with Martha, but sometimes in a fantasy world where nothing felt real and he would do amazing things like fly over Vietnam waving the whole madness goodbye. His misconception of fantasy and reality is one of the first things that he changes about himself in order to become a better leader. Making this decision was near impossible, the pictures that he had become inured to seeing everyday were put to flame and Martha was no longer in his thoughts. By burning those pictures he not only breaks free from the fantasy world, but also of Martha. She was a girl back home who he had loved dearly, and had remained in contact with throughout the war. His infatuation with Martha was not a sexual one, but one that had something much greater weight towards his survival. He did not think about Martha day in and day out because she was his only true love of the world; he merely needed something to occupy his mind with. He needed something to keep his thoughts away from the horrible tragedies going on around him. He was trying to maintain his hope. Martha gave him a goal, something to shoot for, a reason not to give up. â€Å"So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and no... Free Essays on The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien Throughout history, every war has great stories that need to be heard. For the Vietnam War those great stories are captured in Tim O’Brien’s story â€Å"The things they carried†. Tim O’Brien was one of the most influential and talented writers of his time, and in his stories he unveils the truth and the facts of war and tells the readers that war is not fun and games it is serious business. Tim O’Brien was born in a small town in Austin Minnesota on October 1,1946.He went to Macalester College and graduated in 1968 with a BA in political science. Though O’Brien was against the war in Vietnam he as forced to enter the armed forces soon after he graduated. After O’Brien got out of Vietnam he went to Harvard University. He eventually left Harvard to become a newspaper reporter which led the way to his brilliantly wrote novels. Besides â€Å"The Things They Carried,† O’Brien wrote many other dazzling novels. Some of those novels are â€Å"If I Die In Combat Zone†, â€Å" Going After Cacciato,† and his most recent novel â€Å"In the Lake of the Woods†(Tim O’Brien’s Biography). In these novels, O’Brien discusses one issue that leads to a discussion of seemingly opposite issues. His novel â€Å"If I Die In Combat Zone† was a memoir of his Vietnam Tour and he describes his trip Vietnam back to Minnesota. In this novel, he emphasizes how casually death can come by describing the period of relative relief after a successful ambush. He says how the soldier may feel relaxed but that fear that death can come is still imbedded in their brain. In his novel â€Å" Going After Cacciato† he begins the story with a list of the dead soldiers in the platoon and has the protagonist of the story working on the order of the list throughout the novel. His intent in this novel was to let the reader make judgments about the morality of the war. He did this by showing the reactions of the soldiers and the innocent victims of the wa... Free Essays on The Things They Carried How does death affect the behavior of people? Although death affects everyone’s behavior differently, knowledge of one’s imminent death is a main force behind behavioral changes. This knowledge causes emotions that motivate people to look for changes, that make them have to adjust. It makes them find different ways to cope with war. This is the reason that causes the characters in a book called, The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien to have to change due to their situation. They are in the Vietnam war and the horror of death is always hanging over their heads. They have to find ways to cope with that incomparable fright. Their knowledge of death and its closeness causes the men in the story to alter their behavior by modifying emotions to relieve guilt, by exhibiting different actions to ease anxiety, and for some by just losing humanity thoroughly to excuse their actions. Guilt is a very strong emotion, and it demands adjustment very rapidly. Guilt makes a person regret how they ignored their values, and ideas, and the demand for adjustment comes from wanting to not repeat the misjudgment of their actions. Some try to substitute the guilt with other emotions, for example, some make jokes. Azar, for instance made fun of a little girl whose whole family had just died, â€Å"..., Azar mocked the girl’s dancing. He did funny jumps and spins. He put his palms of his hands against his ears, and danced sideways for a while, and then backwards, and then did an erotic thing with his hips†(pg.136). For him, the situation grows lighter with laughter. Even though he knows nothing is funny about the situation, he trys to replace the guilt with humor. He even went as far as to make fun of someone’s death, â€Å" â€Å" A classic case,† Azar was saying. â€Å" Biting the dirt, so to speak, that tells the story.† † ( pg.168). He makes jokes, he knows its not funny, but he makes jokes. He makes jokes not for others, b... Free Essays on The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien does not actually come out and write about guilt, death, or love; he describes in vivid detail how he feels. This is how he lets the reader know his feelings, either it be love, guilt, or death. Through his details the reader differentiates Tim O’Brien’s thoughts. As the reader understands O’Brien’s writing in the finial chapter, â€Å"The Lives of the Dead,† he or she finds that guilt, death, and love are all brought together by this one nine year old girl, Linda. In many ways, he describes her as, the love of his life. This was no â€Å"crush or childhood infatuation,†(228,4) as he put it, but â€Å"as deep and rich as love could ever get,†(228,4) like the complexities of mature adult love, and maybe more. In the same way he depicts his love for Linda, he portrays his guilt in the same situation. O’Brien feels helpless as that of a little fourth grader. The little boy who just stood there as the bully picked on the girl he felt something for, but had no real way of showing it. As he describes it â€Å"I stood off to the side, just a spectator, wishing I could do things I couldn’t do†(223,2) O’Brien does not come out and say he felt guilty for doing nothing, but expresses it in so many words, that of his feelings. Now love and guilt are a easier topic to understand, but when it come to death, one may find it hard to understand because fighting in a war is not something everyone has the privilege to participate in, and in war, death is a common aspect. With O’Brien’s detail, the reader can see how, in his situation it would be hard to let a person, one feels so much for go. Too feel that one loves someone so much, but can’t tell him or her. In ways he describes it as â€Å"sitting there, wanting to find some way to let her know how I felt, but instead of doing so, I sat there with my mouth shut†(229,2,4) Feeling guilty for not speaking and standing up for that same person, then to find you will never... Free Essays on The Things They Carried THE THINGS THEY CARRIED I don’t believe that O'Brien is a coward for going to war, but the opposite, that he would be a coward for not going to war. I think the reason why he was going to go to Canada was because he doesn't believe in the cause and he thinks he is too talented a student to be forced into battle. Ultimately, he makes the decision to join the army because of what others will think of him, which is not the best reason why someone should go to war, but this shows he’s not a coward and he wouldn’t run away from his country. In "On the Rainy River," O'Brien thinks of his family, what will they think of him (past, present, future) if he doesn't join the war and he doesn't fight to defend his country. Also if he abandons the country, he will never be able to see them again. When O'Brien is fishing with the old man and he "sees" everyone he has ever known or will ever know "judging" him on his decision, he thinks that he is too much of a coward to go against tradition and go to Canada, but that is the opposite, he would be coward if he went to Canada. He is afraid of his family being ashamed or embarrassed by his flight, despite the fact that he truly seems to believe in his flight. O’Brien would not only let down his family and friends but the whole country. The U.S. needed help from the citizens they chose in the draft to go to Vietnam and help defend there fellow man and country, it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in the war, you would make more of a difference in the world going to war then skipping out and going to another country. Also in this novel, we can notice that O’Brien does care what people think of him, he would be far more respected if he went to war, then if he didn’t. Also if he died in war, he would have died for our country which he has lived in his whole life. O’Brien believes he is a coward because he is going against his moral convictions (going to war). But that does no... Free Essays on The Things They Carried â€Å"The Things They Carried† is a short story by author Tim O’Brien. It is a fictional account of an American officer, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, and his soldiers serving in Vietnam. The story begins with a description of the equipment the men are required or chose to carry with them as they patrol Vietnam. Interwoven in the story amidst the descriptions of the men’s possessions, fears, attitudes, is the story of how Ted Lavender, one of the men, dies. Jimmy is constantly daydreaming about a girl he loves, who does not love him. The platoon is ordered to go destroy a tunnel system near a village in Than Khe. After the tunnel was cleared, Tom Lavender is shot in the head while returning to the platoon after relieving himself. The central idea of the story is people who neglect their responsibilities often need to experience the results of their failure in order to change. The main character in this story is Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who is a 22-year-old Army officer from New Jersey. He believes that he should not be leading his men. â€Å"†¦He could not bring himself to worry about matters of security. He was beyond that. He was just a kid at war, in love.† Jimmy is in love with Martha, a girl back home. He carries her letters and a stone she sent him for good luck and he often daydreams to escape the reality of war. â€Å"He carried the pebble in his mouth, turning it with his tongue, tasting the sea salts and moisture.† and â€Å"†¦but then he would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha carrying nothing.† Jimmy also carries the weight of command and the responsibility for his men’s lives. After one of his men dies the author writes this. â€Å"Lieutenant Cross felt the pain. He blamed himself.† There are two main supporting characters, Martha and Te d Lavender. Martha is a junior a Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. The lieutenant dated her a few times before he left for V... Free Essays on The Things They Carried The Things They Carried In, The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien drifts away from the trendy war novel in which the author describes actions in an attempt to place the reader in the war. Instead, he focuses on the thoughts of the soldiers, the inner feelings, and small personal nuances in an attempt to place the reader in the men. In addition, he employs the stylistic technique of specific, conscious detail selection and utilizes connotative diction, allowing him to create a new literary art form. The splendor of the novel is in O’Brien’s ability to convey a multitude of ideas in so few pages, which he displays through and ensemble of motifs. One such motif, the â€Å"heart of darkness,† shows how the smoke from the war, both figuratively and literally, blackens the soldiers, burning their hearts to atramentous ash. O’Brien makes apparent the â€Å"heart of darkness† motif in Norman Bowker as he becomes hardened during his sojourn in Vietnam. Norman Bowker, describe d as â€Å"a very gentle person† (13), is inherently very good-natured. However, he â€Å"carried a thumb†¦dark brown, rubbery to the touch†¦cut from a VC corpse† (13). This image evokes a picture of a hard-mannered, emotionally devoid soldier, carrying a severed finger as a trophy, proud of his kill. The ardent imagery describing Bowker’s darkening indicates a psychological and emotional change. The vision of the callow corpse â€Å"badly burned, flies in its mouth† (13) sputters through Bowker, smoldering his soul. O’Brien states that the VC from Delaney 2 whom Bowker takes the thumb is â€Å"just a boy† (13), giving the image of an unfledged person who should not be subjected to the horrors of war. The connotation associated with â€Å"boy† enhances the pathos one feels for the dead soldier, which in turn enunciates Bowker’s ebony heart. Just before Bowker takes his own life, he tells O’Brien in a letter, â €Å"It’s almost like I got killed over in Nam†¦Hard... Free Essays on The Things They Carried It is difficult for the young adults of our generation to grasp the intensity of the mental anguish endured while engaged in militant combat, especially when we refer to the Wars of Korea and Vietnam. Several students rarely even cover the wars in History class. To that end, it is no surprise that cinema is the primary educator on the subject. However, movies are often dramatized or overly fictional and therefore undependable. Literature is the next source, and while it is an accurate depiction, it is simply too boring for the common student. Contradictory, Tim O’brien’s portrayal through metafiction, in the story The Things They Carried offers cinematic appeal and literary precision. The combination presents an illustration of the real human emotions of soldiers in the Vietnam War. In the stories’ beginning, we met Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, a romantic, who longed for his distant love, Martha. He carried (or â€Å"humped† as O’Brien respectively put it) with him letters from her; and while they weren’t love letters he obsessed over them as if they were. In one instance, she had sent him a pebble for good luck. His mind wandered into a dream of Martha walking along a shoreline with her beautiful bare feet exposed in the purest form. He went as far as to put the pebble in his mouth to enhance the dream with the taste of sea salt. â€Å"On occasion he would yell at his men†¦to keep their eyes open, but then he would slip away into daydreams†¦walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha†¦Ã¢â‚¬ (O’Brien 75) While mentally paralyzed by one of his fits, one of his men, Ted Lavender, was shot in the head. Following the gruesome death of Ted, Lt. Cross realized his negligence as a commander. He decided to extingu ish his foolish love for Martha by burning the letters and thus alleviated his mental malfunction; he was a soldier again. This fictional microcosm of the Vietnam War claims that while the soldiers faced apprehensive dan... Free Essays on The Things They Carried The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien This story by Tim O’Brien takes you along with the soldiers of First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’ platoon as they â€Å"hump [†¦] up the hills and through the swamps† (388) of the jungles in Vietnam. Each man carries the weapons of his trade and the equipment to do a soldier’s deed in war. â€Å"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing-these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight† (O’Brien 396). Their plight, common to most soldiers who have experienced combat, was to endure the daily stresses of combat and all its associated physical and mental fatigues culminating in a flight home on â€Å"[†¦] that big silver freedom bird [†¦];† (O’Brien 397) if you happened to be one of the fortunate ones to make it through your tour without being killed. Not so fortunate was Ted Lavender who is killed while the platoon was on a mission to â€Å"[†¦] search out and destroy the elaborate tunnel complexes in the Than Khe area south of Chu Lai† (O’Brien 391). Among the many things that the typical platoon leader carries: â€Å"[†¦] a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45-caliber pistol [†¦]† (O’Brien 388), Lieutenant Cross carried the responsibility for Lavender’s death – an intangible and immeasurable weight. This would ultimately be the greatest burden that Lieutenant Cross would carry. Lieutenant Cross felt totally responsible for Lavender’s death and vowed â€Å"[†¦] to perform his duties firmly and without negligence† (O’Brien 398). By discarding the tangible items from his beloved Martha, including her letters and the two photographs, and finally, he would dispose of his good-luck pebble; this would remove some of the emotional burden s, as if to make room for the burden of Lavender’s death. The Things They Carried captures the physical and emotion...