Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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The process I used to decide on the content and symbols about the things I carry throughout the poem, was not necessarily objects that I bring to school or have everywhere I go, but rather the things I carry from past experiences, and tied them to a physical object that I do own; in a sense working in reverse. I wanted to express how the burdens, experiences, and the emotions that I have experienced shape my identity. The structure of the poem is a series of reflections of different times of my life, or very different things, which I decided to use in this process due to how I was inspired by Tim O’Brien’s book “The Things They Carried” in reference to the vignettes. I wanted to use symbols, specifically the Marine Corp keychain and my desire
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Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

In 1990, The author Tim O'Brien wrote a book called "The Things They Carried" which was about a Vietnam war. It was the longest battle in U.S history. Since the U.S. couldn't get control of a South Vietnam and eventually North Vietnam took control of South Vietnam. The Vietnam war occurred in the year 1959 and ceased in the year 1975. There was a conflict between the U.S and communist government. The main idea of this war was to prevent the expansion of communism in Asia and Vietnam. The combat…

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Tim O’Brien, Vietnam War veteran, perhaps more than any other author gives eloquent and contrary voice to American involvement in war. From his own experiences in Vietnam, O’ Brien wrote a series of anti-war theme novels, including his acclaimed 1987 short story “The Things They Carried,” considered one of the top 100 short stories of the twentieth century (e.g., John Updike and Katrina Kenison, eds., The Best American Short Stories of the Century, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999). In his…

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Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a short story that is semi-autobiographical account of O’Brien’s time as a soldier. The story is an account of a soldiers experience in the Vietnam war but because of O’Brien’s own history and talent for storytelling, we still talk about it today. They story relates directly to a soldier, but it connects with the very real and confusing emotions of attachment, young love, and loss too. To summarized, The Things They Carried is about a platoon of men who are…

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one may believe. They are often tragic and inconclusive. Tragedies do not always have a lesson to be learned, and that is what Tim O’Brien is trying to express through his novel The Things They Carried. War stories are hard to tell because they have no morals or lessons. All they are is the experiences of boys who were forced to fight in a hopeless war. They are the only thing these soldiers have to show for their efforts, and O’Brien is no different. One of the earliest stories O’Brien…

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