Personal Response Essay
“The Things They Carried,” a short story by Tim O’Brien. The author encompasses multiple stories to illustrate his personal life experiences, and most of his colleague militaries endured during the war in one year in Vietnam. He narrates these stories using the first person for us to connect to his experiences. Consequently, I hardly spent time in Vietnam; however, O’Brien wants us to feel the experience as if we were already physically there. The author uses “story-truth” to express his ideas in the stories. He articulates that an actual war narrative is immoral because it does not give directions or support virtue and explain the representations of the right human conduct, including restraining males from their usual deeds.
Besides, in his stories, O’ Brien disagrees with the theory that war stories are the epitome of change, including reincarnation. Instead, according to him, war is a mystery, terror, hell, and a source of discovery. Moreover, the authors also describe war as a horrible and thrilling experience that harden most people and leave many dead. Thus, according to him, opposing parties need to re-unite because of their oxymoronic devotedness, which expresses war’s reality. He writes that the memory of the death of Curt Lemon is probable during the “surreal seemliness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which represents the hard and exact truth .seems” (O’Brien). From this estimate, the author experience problem of representation as well as language flaws to address the extreme meaning, dullness, flavor and the feeling of war. Therefore, he employs inscription and re-inscription to convey the truth of war properly.
Furthermore, it is essential to prove and represent the truth critically, for it to be authentic. Tim O’Brien builds a situation that bears the meaning to show the absence of heroism and morality form his knowledge about war. Interestingly, he primarily describes the war as the only source of shame and guilt. The author described war as the spiritual presence with life on its own such that toxic elements such as white phosphorus and napalm magically transform into ethically acknowledged entities of attractiveness. Astuteness, he accepted that to describe war destructions as attractive is an absurd truth. However, the validation for the truth depends on the part it plays. Therefore, according to the author, the moral similarities relate to bombing invasions as well as weapons salvoes is defendable when no human intervention behind barrages or the attacks.
Additionally, Tim O’Brien killed the man from his stories because he was afraid not that he was in jeopardy. This shows that he is a coward. For instance, he tells us that he ‘was in no peril,’ and therefore, ‘the young man would have passed him by.’ He was aware that the gentleman was harmless, but he terminates him because everyone is supposed to do it in war. Thus, I know he is not brave, but he is giving the idea of war and doing something he did not believe in.
Consequently, the war in Vietnam incorporated a life-changing impact on Tim O’Brien, including soldiers. This is because they came into the war as young men at seventeen years and came out alive. The author believes that the Vietnam War was erroneous, and there was no bold reason for fighting and killing.
Moreover, according to O’Brien, war encompasses many contractions and is trailed by mysterious coping capabilities with the ordeal. He says the war has no meaning similar to Sanders’s narration of males who acquired much information in the forest during the war. Therefore, according to him, accurate war narration does not convey the more precise truth because he remembers conditions that facilitated Lemon’s death, whereby he was talking and smiling. Still, he was eliminated within the twinkle of an eye. His dead body was hanged onto tree branches, and the soldiers, including Tim O’Brien, were commanded by Jansen to take off his body from the tree. Consequently, the author concludes that the factual war stories are discernible by the fight’s interrogations. For instance, he narrates about who was nearly killed by a bomb grenade trying to protect his associates. Therefore, from his story ‘The Things They Carried,’ the real war stories rarely occurred.
Conclusively, the literature evaluates Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” The story is a fascinating short narration about the war in Vietnam. The author brings out the theme of war in his stories. Consequently, this essay aims to connect O’Brien’s life with the central theme of the plot. The author expressed war in the entire story and used other characters for the plot and the theme development, including physical and psychological afflictions. The author also uses himself as a character in his story as a witness of war, and therefore he is diligently linked with the central theme in the story. Hence, his presence as a character is essential because it has helped to illustrate the issue clearly.