Third Person In The Things They Carried

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O'Brien uses third person plural to highlight the commonalities of the war experience at the beginning of the book. As the signs of progress of the shifts between first person and third person, at the main time focus on different characters. He acknowledges the limits of his own perspective memory thus allows other characters to be vivid. These stories use the actions of other characters enable to tell the truth of the war. O'Brien's shift points of view come with shifts in the narrative distance. For example, the incident of O'Brien killing a young Vietnamese soldier is retold several times throughout the book. We see the scene as it unfolds, feeling the fear and immediacy along with O'Brien. Later, we're distanced from the incident, reflecting on the man in the third person. O'Brien puzzles the same events over and over, through different characters and at different times in his own life. He acknowledges that some of the things aren't completely factual, some are hazy with time, some are made up. While Tim O'Brien is …show more content…
Soldiers felt obligated to go to war unless they would fell guilty. This guilty is bolstered by the guilt of not being "masculine" enough—not being brave, heroic, and patriotic enough. O'Brien feel guilt to himself just like O'Brien's friends' as survivors. Norman Bowker feels guilty of not winning The Silver Star of Valor. He thinks he would win the war if he had not failed to save Kiowa's life in "Speaking of Courage." Shame and guilt follow Bowker and he commits suicide. The soldiers even feel guilt about the deaths of the enemy. In "The Man I Killed" O'Brien throws a grenade to kill an anonymous young man. After seeing his friends die, he can't help but understand that the man he killed is just like O'Brien himself. Every story in The Things They Carried is riddled with feelings of shame and guilt. It is a feeling, that no soldier in Vietnam was able to

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