¶ … Things They Carried and in the Field
The novel The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, is an episodic account of Alpha Company, a platoon of American soldiers and their experiences during the Vietnam conflict. We will focus on two chapters of the book, "The Things They Carried," and "In the Field." These are the only chapters in the book that are told from an omniscient point-of-view. Both of these chapters evoke the horrendous fear, sadness, stress, chaos, loneliness, and uncertainty of one's future brought on by active combat.
In the first chapter, "The Things They Carried," O'Brien works to bring order and comprehension into a chaotic and incomprehensible situation by spotlighting the burdens, both physical such as photographs, rations, weapons and their weights and so forth as well as the less tangible such as their memories, hopes, guilt, and stories. This device works well to give the reader an understanding of what the men endured and how they coped.
The first line first two lines "First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not lover letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping so he kept them folded at the bottom of his rucksack" (p. 3) suggests to the reader that Cross has an optimism about his future that helps him deal with the realities of the war.
The...
" (O'Brien, Chapter 15, pg. 143) Norman Bowker is a disillusioned person because he feels that his service in the war has been meaningless. The quote speaks a lot about what he feels about the people of his town. He has just returned from his tour of duty in Vietnam where he witnessed a lot of bloodshed and violence, which has left deep wounds in his soul. Bowker has gone through
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
1). The character in the novel/author 'Tim' never believed in the cause of the Vietnam War, and nearly fled to Canada to avoid serving. That decision to servie affected him in an unalterable fashion, and O'Brien's recounts the story of Vietnam to himself, in both truthful and fanciful ways, to make sense of his experience. Yet every re-telling removes him farther and farther away from the realities of the experience,
Kiowa's death also evokes the notion that for the U.S. Vietnam was a quagmire; his drowning functions almost emblematically to suggest America's deepening entanglement in Southeast Asia. 'This field,' O'Brien writes, 'had embodied all the waste that was Vietnam'" (Neilson 193). The entire book is an antiwar message, and it continues in the chapters and memories where O'Brien follows the men home after the war. The Chapter "Notes" follows Norman Bowker,
ILE L100 I was pretty enthusiastic when I returned to the 56th ABCT having been ordered to assume responsibility as the deputy brigade commander (DCO). I felt proud and lucky. I had held the proud and shinny image of the 56th ABCT in my head for the last two years. When I returned, there had been some significant changes. It has not been long since I returned, and with the division
Tim Obrien's "The Things They Carried" Short story College English (Literature) class. MLA Format. Carried Away There are several instances of repetition in Tim O'Brien's short story "The Things They Carried," which is actually the first chapter in a book he published with the same title. Rhetorically, the author uses both alliteration and anaphora (which is, respectively, the repetition of syllables and the repetition of words or phrases) to punctuate many
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