Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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Through the peer Interactive Oral Presentation, and film Vietnam’s Unseen War, I was able to further my understanding and previous knowledge on the Vietnam War. I also learned about the author, Bao Ninh, and the time period and circumstances in which he was alive and writing this novel.
The prior knowledge and perspective I had on Vietnam derived from reading the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. I knew that Vietnam had complex geographic features that could be both a hindrance and help to those fighting. It’s covered in jungles, swamps, mountains and other difficult terrain, making this war different from past ones that had been fought. Also, I knew that many American’s did not war agree with this war. American’s were not aware
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Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Tim O’Brien, Vietnam War veteran, perhaps more than any other author gives eloquent and contrary voice to American involvement in war. From his own experiences in Vietnam, O’ Brien wrote a series of anti-war theme novels, including his acclaimed 1987 short story “The Things They Carried,” considered one of the top 100 short stories of the twentieth century (e.g., John Updike and Katrina Kenison, eds., The Best American Short Stories of the Century, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999). In his…

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Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a short story that is semi-autobiographical account of O’Brien’s time as a soldier. The story is an account of a soldiers experience in the Vietnam war but because of O’Brien’s own history and talent for storytelling, we still talk about it today. They story relates directly to a soldier, but it connects with the very real and confusing emotions of attachment, young love, and loss too. To summarized, The Things They Carried is about a platoon of men who are…

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is Beauty “The Things They Carried”, a series of short stories composed by Tim O’Brien, illustrates how the Vietnam War affects soldiers mentally through his incredible use of syntax and word choices. O’Brien brings to light the elements of beauty hidden behind the death of characters such as the boy he killed, Curt Lemon, and even the baby buffalo, to convey the various feelings and emotions brought upon during wars. Curt Lemon has one of the most beautifully depicted deaths in Tim O’Brien’s stories…

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personal and professional understanding of Vietnam. As a language arts educator, I have an option to teach students about literature and experiences from a wide variety of places. One thing I do lack is personal experience in many of these places. For one particular novel, The Things They Carried by Minnesota local Tim O’Brien, students get to explore the Vietnamese jungles during the Vietnam conflict. For this reason, I am looking for the opportunity to explore the Vietnamese countryside and jungle…

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In the book The things they Carried, author Tim O’Brien challenges readers to think about what “Truth” is by using a series of short made up stories to relay his experience in the Vietnam War. He chooses to use “story truth” rather then “happening-truth” because stories help the reader feel what he felt, and bring the experience to the present. The first thing Tim O’Brien used was “story truth” by that he can show the readers how he really felt, by exaggerating. By saying “story truth” rather than…

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careful the next time. So next time you're walking towards a door, you’ll make sure to check for a push or pull sign before humiliating yourself, or check the receiver's name of that text about your crush. Likewise, this occurs in Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried. Throughout the novel, O’Brien expresses that fear of indignity uncovers motivation in the soldiers of the Vietnam war of 1955. O’Brien…

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one may believe. They are often tragic and inconclusive. Tragedies do not always have a lesson to be learned, and that is what Tim O’Brien is trying to express through his novel The Things They Carried. War stories are hard to tell because they have no morals or lessons. All they are is the experiences of boys who were forced to fight in a hopeless war. They are the only thing these soldiers have to show for their efforts, and O’Brien is no different. One of the earliest stories O’Brien…

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hurdles. Like the infamous German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said "To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." Tim O'Brien's The things they carried, Jane Kenyon’s Gettysburg: July 1, 1863, William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus” and Marilyn Wesley’s Truth and Fiction in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” all live up to this philosophical view. These authors all show the hardships and beauty of fighting our internal demons and dealing with physical struggle…

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Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

the most this past semester, is the choice to persevere. In the face of violence, hatred, and hardship, the characters we read about continue on, time and time again. Specifically, we explored themes of helplessness versus choice in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying, and Albert Camus’s “The Myth of Sisyphus.” In each of these pieces, the characters…

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