Surrealism In The Things They Carried

Words: 457
Pages: 2

In the novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, it has multiple instances that have surrealism. The simple meaning of surrealism is unusual or dreamlike. Surrealism is something that would be rare to happen in the real world. In the chapter, How To Tell A War Story, it has many examples of surrealism. One example of surrealism in this chapter is, on page 68 the first paragraph on that page, when Tim O’Brien states, “Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t…”. He says this because he had his friend, Curt Lemon, died from stepping on a booby trapped 105 round. No one would really think that if they were not in war because it is a little less harder to die. If you are in war you possibly have a higher chance of dieing since there is so much deadly objects that can kill you in an instant. Another example of surrealism in the chapter How To Tell A War Story is on page 75 the bottom of the third paragraph when Rat Kiley shot the baby water buffalo in the throat. Rat Kiley was not doing it …show more content…
When you are out of war you usually do not believe the crazy stuff that people say sometimes like my bestfriend killed herself or I won the lottery. When you are in the war you have to believe the unusual stuff like my bestfriend died or I was held hostage by the enemy. The second example is super unusual because no one, who is sane, would go outside and kill something to let their emotions out. The only reason why Rat did it is because that was probably the only way for him to let out his emotions. Everyone else has their own problems and probably don’t want to hear another person’s problem. Outside of war you would talk to someone to let your feelings out. These two examples show that these stories are going to be hard to grasp since they are unusual to people that aren’t in the war or haven’t dealt with