Development Through Lists and Repetition In The Things They Carried The Things They Carried is a story by Tim O’Brien that is comprised of many short stories that all come together to tell a winding tale from many viewpoints of one war story through the Vietnam war. The first story in the book, also entitled The Things They Carried, is literally a story about what the soldiers carried with them, both physically and emotionally. As an introductory story to the entire novel, O’Brien uses the opportunity to introduce the setting and characters in a very non-traditional way. O’Brien uses lists and repetition to show how tedious each day of work is for a soldier, but also how the soldiers perceive what is to us extraordinary as a normal day’s work. The lists also describe the emotional baggage each soldier carried, such as First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s (the leader of the squad) love for a girl back home.
The purpose of this extract is to convey the various feelings experienced by someone who has experienced war to someone who has not. These emotions are vivid, but can be very difficult to understand by someone who has not witnessed war first hand. They are also contradictory, and he wants us to see that there are two sides to it. And we are swept up as O'Brien goes into the depths of the imagery of war, not only negatively but positively as well. He approaches war in a way to allow us readers-see that war is not only a battle that is typically seen by most, but an experience in which one is completely aware of their
Throughout this essay I will be analyzing World War 1 as a total or limited war. After deciding upon one, I will support my ideas with facts and thoughts of my own opinion. It is hard to decide whether World War 1 was actually a total or limited war as a whole because every war has different characteristics that must be taken into consideration in order to judge the final outcome. For example the countries involved, resources used, weaponry, and how many individuals were part of the war out of the whole population. Having this said, I will say that WW1 as a whole was a limited war.
“The Show”, for example, dehumanises soldiers within the battlefield and arguably has no sense of “passive suffering” whatsoever. Whereas the likes of poems such as “Exposure” and “Spring offensive” show many examples of what could be interpreted as feelings of acquiescence towards the pain that the soldiers he is writing about are going through. In “Exposure” there seems to be large sense of complacency not only in terms of suffering but with the war as a whole. “We only know the war lasts” indicates this idea of submissiveness as it shows this idea of the soldiers understanding the fact that the war is happening and the harm that it brings but also that they themselves can do nothing about this. The subsequent line “But nothing happens” shows the theme of “passive suffering” through the idea that the word “nothing” brings a sense of the soldiers suffering for almost no cause whatsoever, the fact that it is again, repeated in almost every stanza after puts emphasis on this idea.
Every thought that enters Joe's mind is written down, even if they're just a repetition of particular words: “Oh no. No no no” (pg. 63). While some writers who've attempted this tactic only end up bogging their writing down, making it a mess of an undramatic story line, Trumbo effectively connects the reader directly to Joe. By the end of the book, the reader completely sympathizes with the mental anguish Joe is going through.
This novel is a narrative of Kien, a North Vietnamese soldier during the Vietnam War, chronicling his loss of innocence, love and anguish. In this novel, the author has used many literary devices to portray to the audience the pain and sorrow Kien’s was exposed to during the Vietnam War. Bao Ninh has episodic structure and the symbolism of women in the novel to involve the audience into Kien’s inner emotions, battles and pain from the war. This structure has been by showing the present time and immediately switching back to Kien’s past, ‘flash backs’ and memories. Bao Ninh uses this structure to create the audience to have the same emotions as the character which is Kien.
James Rigney Prof. Schneider The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a collection of stories that revolves around the young men of Alpha Company during the Vietnam Conflict. O’Brien begins his book by describing each item all the men are carrying, but not all of the items are physical. Many of the items he describes are both imaginary and emotional that each man must carry while traveling through the Vietnamese country side. O'Brien uses truth in fiction to help tell the stories of Alpha Company from the first page to the very end. He talks about why each of the men carries the things they have on them, the deaths of three men in his group, Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, and Kiowa, as well as the death of his first love, Linda.
Although I could only come up with a few similarities the list of differences are way larger. The setting being one of the biggest you must also consider the difference in the characters. With a little research I also realized how different the two authors are in their young lives and in their writing. Michael Bruce was a gunner in the Canadian Army during the second world war, he said that he came up with the idea for “War” in the barracks when an argument started about if it was all right to kill some men if saving the lives of others. It seems like an odd conversation but the men were using whatever they could to get their minds off of the war.
Through sharing his personal experiences in Vietnam, Heinemann states that he does not believe the country has learned anything from the war. Although many hoped that the war could be remembered as a nostalgic and positive experience, unfortunately it is not remembered in that way. In my opinion, I believe that wars should be remembered and learned from. Most of the time, wars will be viewed in a negative light inevitably however that does not mean that our country should not still learn from past mistakes and move forward. Another main idea Heinemann points out is the idea that Vietnam felt everything had to go their way.
Since there is no mention of key factors to point at Sir Lanka, readers are to take the novel as a commentary about several places that experienced post-colonial trauma. Western readers who never experienced trauma on the level of Sir Lanka – readers will see that trauma is as definable as the disappearances of people during civil wars. Ondaatjee uses his novel to send a message: trauma is incapable of being accurately described and people can only attempt to understand trauma. Yet, readers will never quite understand the mental strain on a person unless the person has dealt with something traumatic themselves. Ondaatjee uses Anil to start off the narration of Anil's Ghost, using her as the equivalency to a Western reader.