Tim O 'Brien's The Things They Carried'

Words: 280
Pages: 2
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Rafat Saada
Mrs. Rainone
Analysis
29 May 2018
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A human being’s spiritual and mental state of mind is at its peak after facing and overcoming life’s challenges and hurdles. Like the infamous German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said "To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." Tim O'Brien's The things they carried, Jane Kenyon’s Gettysburg: July 1, 1863, William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus” and Marilyn Wesley’s Truth and Fiction in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” all live up to this philosophical view. These authors all show the hardships and beauty of fighting our internal demons and dealing with physical struggle. Some of these texts differ in the embodiment of hurdles their characters
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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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