Newspaper article Essay

In this essay I talked almost literary ele custodyts such as symbolism, mental imagery, and metaphors being apply very substantially in the book The Things They Carried by Tim OBrien. I wrote about Tim OBrien who is the author of The Things They Carried OBrien was born in Austin, Minnesota. When he was twelve, his family, including a younger child and brother, moved to Worthington, Minnesota. His writing career was launched in 1973 with the release of If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, about his struggle experiences and how in on attribute of OBriens work is the blur between fiction and reality labeled Verisimilitude, his work contains actual elaborate of the situations he experienced.Although this is a common literary technique, his conscious, explicit, and metafictional approach to the distinction between fact and fiction is a unique component of his writing style. In the chapter close create in The Things They Carried, OBrien casts a distinction betwee n story- law (the truth of fiction) and happening-truth (the truth of fact or occurrence), writing that story-truth is whatsoevertimes truer than happening-truth. Story truth is steamy truth thus the feeling created by a fictional story is sometimes truer than what results from reading the facts.I wrote about some symbolism such as the goallike young Vietnamese soldier being killed by OBrien with a grenade. I wrote about imagery such as The Man I Killed, because it goes into exposit with things like thinking repeatedly of the star-shaped hole that is in the place of his eye and the peeled-back cheek and also like a Vietnamese girl of fourteen dances through the wreckage though most of her village has burned to the ground and her family has been burned to death by the American soldiers.I also wrote about metaphors such as the sewage field and how in In the Field, (the field here being twain the sewage field that drowned Kiowa and the combat zone) OBrien discusses the blame for Kiowas death in the sewage field or, the drowning of American goodness in poop. OutlineI. IntroductionThesisAuthorII. SymbolismKiowaThe Dead Young Vietnamese passIII. ImageryThe Man I KilledStyleIV. MetaphorsThe Lake/ FieldThe Things They CarriedVI. ConclusionThesisIn the book The Things They Carried slicey literary elements such as symbolism, imagery, and metaphors are used very well. Tim OBrien is the author of The Things They Carried OBrien was born in Austin, Minnesota. When he was twelve, his family, including a younger sister and brother, moved to Worthington, Minnesota, a city that once account itself as the turkey capital of the world. Worthington had a large influence on OBriens imagination and early development as an author.The town is placed on Lake Okabena in the western portion of the state and serves as the setting for some of his stories, especially those in the novel The Things They Carried. He earned his BA in Political Science from Macalester College, where he was Student Body President, in 1968. That same year he was drafted into the United States Army and was sent to Vietnam, where he served from 1968 to 1970 in the tertiary Platoon, Company A, 5th Battalion, 23rd Infantry Division.He served in the division that contained a whole involved in the infamous My Lai Massacre. OBrien has said that when his unit got to the area around My Lai (referred to as Pinkville by the U.S. forces), we all wondered why the place was so hostile. We did not know there had been a massacre there a year earlier. The news about that only came out later, while we were there, and then we knew. Upon completing his tour of duty, OBrien went on to graduate school at Harvard University and acquire an internship at the Washington Post.His writing career was launched in 1973 with the release of If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, about his warfare experiences. One attribute in OBriens work is the blur between fiction andreality labeled Verisimilit ude, his work contains actual details of the situations he experienced. Although this is a common literary technique, his conscious, explicit, and metafictional approach to the distinction between fact and fiction is a unique component of his writing style. In the chapter Good Form in The Things They Carried, OBrien casts a distinction between story-truth (the truth of fiction) and happening-truth (the truth of fact or occurrence), writing that story-truth is sometimes truer than happening-truth.Story truth is emotional truth thus the feeling created by a fictional story is sometimes truer than what results from reading the facts. Certain sets of stories in The Things They Carried seem to contradict each other, and certain(prenominal) stories are designed to undo the suspension of disbelief created in previous stories for example, Speaking of Courage is followed by Notes, which explains in what ways Speaking of Courage is fictional. OBrien won the 1979 National Book Award for, Goin g After Cacciato.Also his novel, In the Lake of the Woods, won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical illustration in 1995. His most recent novel is July, July. In these paragraphs I leave talk about examples of symbolism and what they mean. Kiowa is a good example of symbolism, a forgiving and talkative soldier he demonstrates the importance of talking about ones problems and traumatic experiences. He is also a devout Baptist and a primal American that occasionally feels contempt and distrust towards white people. However, he appears to be Tim OBriens best friend in the company. Kiowa often helps other soldiers choose with their own actions, such as taking the lives of other human beings.Kiowas death is symbolic of the senseless tragedy of war. He dies in a unrelenting way, drowning under the muck of a sewage field about which his lieutenant, Jimmy Cross, has a bad feeling. Kiowas entirely submerged body represents the transitory constitution of life and the hor rifying suddenness with which it can be snatched away. There is no dignity to Kiowas death he becomes another casualty in a war that strips men of their identity and turns them into statistics.The dead young Vietnamese soldier is another example of symbolism. OBrien is unclear about whether or not he actually threw a grenade and killed a man outside My Khe, his memory of the mans corpse is strong and recurring, symbolizing humanitys guilt all over wars horrible acts. In The Man I Killed, OBrien distances himself from the memory by speaking in the third person andconstructing fantasies as to what the man must have been like before he was killed. OBrien marvels at the wreckage of his body, thinking repeatedly of the star-shaped hole that is in the place of his eye and the peeled-back cheek.The verbal description serves to distance OBrien from the reality of his actions because nowhere in its comprehensive detail are OBriens feelings about the situation mentioned. His guilt is evident , however, in his imagining of a life for the man he killed that includes several aspects that are similar to his own life. In these next paragraphs I will be talking about some examples of imagery. The chapter The Man I Killed is an example, because it goes into details with things like thinking repeatedly of the star-shaped hole that is in the place of his eye and the peeled-back cheek (chapter 12).The chapter Style has great imagery with quotes like a Vietnamese girl of fourteen dances through the wreckage though most of her village has burned to the ground and her family has been burned to death by the American soldiers. (Chapter 14). In The book The Things They Carried, Metaphors are also used. Tim OBrien uses examples such as The Lake/ Field as an example, in In the Field, (the field here being both the sewage field that drowned Kiowa and the combat zone) OBrien discusses the blame for Kiowas death in the sewage field or, in keeping with our metaphor, the drowning of American goodness in poop.The soldiers all feel guilty in one way or another for following orders instead of trusting the Vietnamese, for a moment of stupidity in the field, or for their own brutal and disrespectful natures. Jimmy Cross and Norman Bowker both reflect that the blame is universal. The ignoble death of American decency in war is everybodys fault, in one way or another. OBrien also uses chapters like The Things They Carried as metaphors such as, First deputy sheriff Jimmy Cross carried garner from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey (667).This begins Tim OBriens short story The Things They Carried. The author will go on to list all the items carried by these soldiers, including helmets, canteens and ammunition. OBrien uses the list of physical objects that the members of the Alpha Company carry in Vietnam as a windowpane to the emotional burdens that these soldiers bear. One such burden is the necessity for the young soldiers to confront th e tension between fantasy and reality. The realization of this tension disrupts Crosss save as the resident dreamer of the Alpha Company.Cross thinksthat because he was so obsessed with his fantasy of Martha and the life they might lead after the war, he was negligent. He sees Ted Lavenders death as the result of his negligence. If The Things They Carried is the illustration of the conflict between love and war, then the death of Ted Lavender and the subsequent disillusionment of Lieutenant Cross signify a triumph for war in this conflict. The emotional burdens that the soldiers bear are intensified by their young age and inexperience.Most of the men who fought in Vietnam were in their late teens and early twentiesthey were children, students, and boyfriends who had no perspective on how to rationalize killing or come to terms with their friends untimely deaths. From the beginning, OBrien the author uses explicit details to illustrate what the experience was like for the scared men . Among the things the men carry are guilt and cowardice that they are neither able to admit to nor negotiate.Although they are sad for the loss of their friend Lavender, their predominant feeling is of relief, since they are still alive. So as you can see, in the book The Things They Carried legion(predicate) literary elements such as symbolism, imagery, and metaphors are used very well.