Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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The Things They Carried: Blurring the Line between Fiction and Reality The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a compelling take on the stories of soldiers deployed in Vietnam during and after the Vietnam War. All at once the piece is a fictional memoir, war story and autobiography, continuously blurring the line between fiction and reality- firstly by dedicating the novel to the fictional characters whose stories are told within it. Furthermore, O’Brien creates another fictional Tim O’Brien through which the author is free to explore his real world ideas and emotions and at the same time challenge the reader to think twice before dismissing something as fiction or reality. But more than anything, what makes the book extremely compelling
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Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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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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is Beauty “The Things They Carried”, a series of short stories composed by Tim O’Brien, illustrates how the Vietnam War affects soldiers mentally through his incredible use of syntax and word choices. O’Brien brings to light the elements of beauty hidden behind the death of characters such as the boy he killed, Curt Lemon, and even the baby buffalo, to convey the various feelings and emotions brought upon during wars. Curt Lemon has one of the most beautifully depicted deaths in Tim O’Brien’s stories…

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Art and literature, although sometimes produced by the imagination of the artist, has always influenced people’s minds, causing wonder and introspection. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is about the Vietnam War and his experiences, but he claims the book is mostly fiction. Later, in an interview with Texas Monthly, he states that “accuracy is irrelevant” and that when discussing the Mona Lisa and its accuracy, he says, “Who cares? It's a great piece of art! It moves us to the next level. It…

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careful the next time. So next time you're walking towards a door, you’ll make sure to check for a push or pull sign before humiliating yourself, or check the receiver's name of that text about your crush. Likewise, this occurs in Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried. Throughout the novel, O’Brien expresses that fear of indignity uncovers motivation in the soldiers of the Vietnam war of 1955. O’Brien…

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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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