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"His lecture's overarching message illustrated his belief that fiction, while a product of a novelist's imagination and not true in the literal sense, gets closer to the meaning of emotional and spiritual truth" (Krajek, 2009).
The Things They Carried is a fictional story, but it is written by a man who experienced a war and though the men O'Brien talks about in the story are purely fictional, O'Brien is clearly basing these stories and the characters on men he served with. At some point in his 2004 lecture, O'Brien explains that imagination plays a role in how well a soldier sometimes accepts the truth of what has happened. It may become difficult to separate what happened to what seemed to have happened, O'Brien explained.
Tim O'Brien's the Things They Carried is very simply written, but his descriptions allow the reader to identify with each character and even though the characters are fictional, it is clear that O'Brien has been in a place similar to what he is describing in his book. The simplicity of the story allows the reader to clearly understand what O'Brien is talking about and so the reader...
Both men and women tend to find O'Brien's account of Vietnam fascinating and interesting and all can see the deeper meaning in the book, particularly in chapter one.
As humans, we tend to carry material items with us, which represent our emotional sensibilities. A mother may carry a locket with her child's hair and a picture of her grandmother, a child may carry her favorite doll. These individuals are no different than a soldier being terrified of the war he's in and carrying so much additional ammunition that he himself falls hard, like a bullet, when he's shot in the head. Lavender may not have been a real character, but he and the other characters described in O'Brien's account of Vietnam represent soldiers in every war.
Works Cited
Krajeck, Amy. "The Things They [All] Carried: Discovering Theme through Imagined Stories of Votive Offerings." English Journal 99.2 (2009): 42. ProQuest. Web. 18 May 2010.
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Boston: Bantam Dell Pub Group, 1999. Print.
Works Cited
Krajeck, Amy. "The Things They [All] Carried: Discovering Theme through Imagined Stories of Votive Offerings." English Journal 99.2 (2009): 42. ProQuest. Web. 18 May 2010.
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Boston: Bantam Dell Pub Group, 1999. Print.
Furthermore, in environments that are highly conducive to trauma, such as war or a paramilitary educational institution that is predominantly filled with Caucasian males who are permitted to attack one another during a certain period in their careers, conventional morals can also become distorted .The differences of right and wrong that apply to the outside world, the world that was inhabited by people before they left it to take place
At the same time, the style is expected to give the reader an idea of what is happening, and that too in a more refined version. In his language there are poetic references for the brutality and masculinity of war as feminine features. He has talked about the "star shaped hole" and this reminds most about the American flag as also the expectation of the country to kill and
Tim O'Brien's the Things They Carried In his book, The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien is allowing the reader to see the negative effects war has on people, especially on soldiers. Through a variety of short stories focused primarily on the Vietnam war, O'Brien illustrates the horror of war through exquisite detail of the violent nature that each soldier seemed to have adopted as time went on in Vietnam. By focusing
Tim O'Brien's the Things They Carried The most shocking aspects of the novel, The Things They Carried, are the graphic descriptions and the striking honesty with which Tim O'Brien employs to describe the devastating effects of war. Several stories are written with an honesty that reveals the horrors of war as well as the frailty of the human spirit. The most moving of these stories are "The Man I Killed" and
I can make myself feel again (O'Brien, p. 180). And, through story truth, what the story is able to do for O'Brien, it becomes able also to do for the reader. In "The Lives of the Dead," O'Brien further elaborates on his need for stories universally. Through make-believe -- imagination, stories, fiction -- O'Brien finds that he can not only resurrect the dead but also lay a barrier between himself and
In short, it takes a little bravery to think about things in a serious manner and this includes our thoughts regarding courage. O'Brien writes, "Proper courage is wise courage (133) and it is also acting "wisely when fear would have a man act otherwise. It is the endurance of the soul in spite of fear -- wisely" (133). Courage is not something that can be conjured up on a