Important Quotes From The Things They Carried

Through the initial characterization of young Tim, O’Brien suggests that when faced with unexpected life changing dilemmas people will more often than naught end up clouded judgement and panic. Young Tim is ambitious and well educated, he is on his way to Harvard University on a scholarship. His life is heading in the best direction possible. This is until he receives the draft letter. His ideals “hurtling down a huge black funnel” and all he can do is “nothing …wait.” His helpless soon becomes rage, rage towards the government who’s motives for the war “were shrouded in uncertainty”. He is “too good for this war. Too smart, too compassionate, too everything.” “Why don’t they “draft some back-to-the-stone-age hawk?” Why must he, who doesn’t support this “uncertain” war “put [his] own precious fluids on the line.” As “the rage in [his] stomach” “burned down” he soon

Tim “O” Brien has felt a lot of shame telling this story and it wasn't easy for him to relieve some of the pressure. “My mother and father were having lunch out in the kitchen. I remember opening the letter, scanning the first few lines, feeling the blood go thick behind my eyes. I remember a sound in my head. It wasn't thinking, just a silent howl.” (p2/4) Tim has gotten a letter to fight a war that the us didn't understand and that he didn't like so he feels like he's too good for war, and feels the blood behind his eyes go thick. He couldn't, couldn't go to war.

Tim’s embarrassment manifests itself into a vision of people yelling at him, causing more embarrassment. Of course, they are not really there. However, this thorough description of people yelling at him, calling him a turncoat and a traitor causes the reader to understand the embarrassment he felt that made him go to

Tim O'Brien was right when he said “Stories can save us”. They saved him. Writing stories helped Tim turn into Timmy and also into a solider when he was retired and forty three years old. When O'Brien says “Stories can save us”: he lets us know that his stories helped him through the war, they also helped him stay psychologically relaxed after the war, and helped him create better versions of his memories as Timmy and Tim the soldier.

He states that “[He] would go to war- [He] would kill and maybe die- because [He] was embarrassed” (O’Brien 57). He soon realized that he should have escaped when he had the chance because it was better than experiencing the horrors and traumatic experiences that soldiers go through. Sometimes what society thinks can get the best of you and lead you to do things that are against your beliefs and morals. This is what Tim is trying to say through the book to the readers who might find themselves in similar situations.

There are many levels of truth in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. This novel deals with story-telling as an act of communication and therapy, rather than a mere recital of fact. In the telling of war stories, and instruction in their telling, O'Brien shows that truth is unimportant in communicating human emotion through stories.

Tim is a young boy forced to go to war with all hopes of returning home. He is thrown into Alpha Company with men much similar to his situation of being forced to go to war through the draft and wanting to go home. He is now forced to make bonds and friendships with his new brothers. This bond of friendship helps the men of Alpha Company survive on a day to day basis. These men looked to each

In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien uses many short stories to describe his experience in Vietnam. The story that captured many aspects of writing was “How to Tell a True War Story” because it acts as a guide to writing a true story. O’Brien uses many different rhetorical strategies, narrative techniques, and establishes a theme in this story to help develop his characters and story line.

He believes that their is a possibility that people are needlessly dying for a war that doesn’t make any sense. This makes him an outsider in his hometown because the way that he views this war is vastly different from his home town. Tim doesn’t get the sense of pride in his country for joining the war like his community does, and he asks questions about the war that he feels that his community won’t ask because of their patriotism, and viewing the war as something to be proud of.

The text, ‘The Things They Carried', is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried' shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lessening sanity of a medic as the constant death surrounds him; the trauma and guilt of all the soldiers after seeing their friends die, and feeling as if they could have saved them; and the deaths of the soldiers, the most negative impact a war

Tim O’Brien, the author of The Things They Carried, was also the main character and narrator who gives a soldier’s personal outlook on war. O’Brien writes personal and fictional stories using the several soldiers he knew during the Vietnam War. Mentally and physically, he and his fellow soldiers went through a lot. Some getting through it and others did not. Their struggles offer much to learn about what a person can go through. Although in The Things They Carried soldiers physically carried large amounts of equipment, the mental and emotional burden influenced them on a deeper level due to the fear of death, judgement, and loss.

Tim expected his brother to be rewarded for his service, and when he finds out that the General is planning to execute Sam, he realizes that there is no reward for valor, and that there will be no glory in Sam’s death. Tim used to be an undecided party, not knowing which side he wanted to be on. But, after witnessing Sam’s death, seeing the apathy and brutal relief at not being Sam in the faces of Sam’s fellow soldiers, and friends, Tim decides that he doesn’t want to be on either side, because they both took the people he loved most. Tim decides that he wants to be neutral, because of the injustice of his brother’s

“I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.” (page 16). Tim O’Brien believes he is a coward for participating in a war that went against his beliefs and regrets not being able to change his future when given an opportunity.

The emotional pain of reliving the story arouses sympathy in the reader, which as a result allows the audience to identify with Tim’s struggle. He also mentions having to “live with it, feeling the shame, trying to push it away,” which evokes empathy in the reader. It is certain that throughout one’s lifetime, they will experience an event that leaves them guilt-stricken or feeling shameful. By describing his feelings towards the story, O’Brien arouses sympathy in the reader in a way similar to the “ordinary world” phase of the hero’s journey archetype.

Tim’s confidence is very low and he feels that he needs to keep his awful secret about his past from