The Things They Carried Rhetorical Analysis

The Things They Carried Synthesis Essay Several war stories have been written over the years to help ordinary people get a feeling of what war is like and how brutal it is. Tim O’Brien wrote The Things They Carried as fiction but it can be believed as nonfiction. The story examines the life before, during, and after war. The story, “Soldier's Home” is written about a young man returning home from WWI. These stories share a common connection about how war changes people. Soldiers lose their sense of motivation when returning from war. “The war was over and there was no place in particular to go” (O’Brien 131). This was the first line of the chapter “Speaking of Courage.” This line means that after war, the soldiers have so much free time …show more content…
“"Speaking of Courage" was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa” (O’Brien 149). This quote describes the pain and suffering after war. Norman Bowker could not live normally after war and was not happy. In response, he committed suicide. This is the ultimate changing of people, death. If Bowker was not drafted, he most likely would have lived a happy life and died peacefully at old age. This normal life is far from committing suicide at a young age, leaving family and friends. It is heartbreaking to see that war changes a person so much that they feel that suicide is the only option. In “Soldier’s Home,” Krebs also has to deal with complications after the war. Krebs got into an argument with his mother after he returned. Krebs eventually got upset with his mother after she wanted him to get things done and to restart his life. Krebs got so upset that he said, “I don’t love anybody.” This upset Krebs’s mother and she ended up crying. Krebs eventually apologized but he is still not the same person after the war. Both Bowker and Krebs will never live the same life after their war with Bowker dead and Krebs has harsh relations with his

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