Historical Analysis Essay

Submitted By samals94
Words: 1156
Pages: 5
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Samuel Spence
4/20/2014
Professor Dunick
EGL 1020

The short story “ The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien he wrote this story pertaining to the Vietnam War. The war actually changed to mindset of Tim O’Brien and it gave him even more of a reason to write about it. The Vietnam War drafted many 18 year olds to fight for their Country, being though most haven’t ever touched a gun. This story displayed from the young soldiers a physiological loss of innocence. Also the emotionally and physically trauma that a soldier have to deal with while in the war and after he returns.

Tim O’Brien had admitted that the Vietnam War was nothing but a dark jarring experience that made him become the writer he is today. In 1968, the Vietnam War had a high number or American Casualties. For the recruitment of more soldiers the government relied on conscription. O’Brien thought the war was wrong, He thought about escaping to Canada too opt out of War. But O’Brien decided to let go of is wrong thoughts about the war and participate. Not because he was forced to but he had to due to his patriotic duty. In the short story “ The Things They Carried” O’Brien complicated the genre, giving you a taste of both fiction and reality. In the short story, O’Brien created a protagonist. Which was a Vietnam veteran named Tim Obrien. O’Brien creation of his fictional persona allows him to find his real emotions as though they were fictional creations. The Vietnam War time period was a historical time marked by conflict and uncertainly. From the controversy over the war to the unstructured war of debilitation the soldiers were asked to go to war. The misunderstanding and problems is often experienced by individuals in literature pertaining to the Vietnam War. The theme of dismantle and chaos led to the tone of uncertainty that is present in “ The Things They Carried”. For an example Obrien described how Tim O’Brien was uncertain on fighting the war and thought about fleeing to Canada so he wouldn’t have to take part in the war. The historical issue of draft dodging is that fleeing the Country to avoid the military draft, which is a pressured topic about which many contemporary organizations felt very strongly about. Obrien states facts about both sides of the issue , which is a young man feeling the fear facing military service and even possibly death to that man feeling a patriotic duty toward his Country. Obrien stories in “The Things They Carried” cover important historical problems regarding Vietnam and other multiple perspectives.

One of my important themes that I grasped from this text is the pressure caused by feeling the need to cohere to come cultural or community standard of duty. The notion “jingoism” is a common theme in Vietnam War related fiction. Most soldiers that fought in Vietnam were born just after WW2. Most soldiers in Vietnam imbibed the mores and importance of their parents’ generation that vast majority took part in WW2. U.S involvement in the Vietnam War had brought on strong arguments for and against from the war community. O’Brien inserted himself and his fellow characters into this discussion. O’Brien used images of a young Vietnamese girl dancing in the mix of corpses and remains. He also uses Henry Dobins who is an effective soldier, who has thoughts of joining the clergy. O’Brien gave his readers the chance to choose sides on many of these arguments. O’Brien states that factuality or fictionality of a story is by far, secondary to the impact of the text on the reader. If the reading stimulates an emotionally response then it is the truth. For O’Brien the priority of emotion is an metaphorical remark on war. Part of O’Brien’s objective was to construct an pleasing solution that simulates the chaos and skepticism that distinguishes the soldiers experiences , within the genre of War literature. But O’Brien’s novel does the opposite
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