The Man I Killed By Tim O ' Brien

In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien created several allusions that each character endured during the Vietnam War. Throughout the story were vast representations of the things the soldiers carried both mentally and physically. The things they carried symbolized their individual roles internally and externally. In addition to the symbolism, imagination was a focal theme that stood out amongst the characters. This particular theme played a role as the silent killer amongst Lt. Cross and the platoon both individually and collectively as a group. The theme of imagination created an in depth look of how the war was perceived through each character which helped emphasize their thoughts from an emotional standpoint of being young men out at war.

The author, Tim O'Brien, is writing about an experience of a tour in the Vietnam conflict. This short story deals with inner conflicts of some individual soldiers and how they chose to deal with the realities of the Vietnam conflict, each in their own individual way as men, as soldiers.

The items the soldiers carry hold a substantial amount of credibility throughout each personal story; however, within O’Brien’s story, he lacks credibility aside from the obvious tangible elements of the items held, questioning where the truth lies within these evidential fragments of the soldiers’ lives. These personal accounts of exact measurements attest the reader’s knowledge of war as well as the mental ability to calculate the exact weight upon each person’s hump through a fiction of mental and emotional agility. O’Brien quotes within Chen’s criticism stating, “A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe” (Chen 77). This background knowledge of O’Brien’s theory that an “absolute occurrence is irrelevant because a true war story does not depend upon that kind of truth,”(Chen 77) places the credibility of the information upon the emotional accounts that O’Brien’s writing bestows upon the personalities of the soldiers. The “academic tone that at times makes the narrative sound like a government report (Kaplan 45),” adds documentation like analysis of these compilations of war endeavors as told by the narrator. Kaplan continues that the “transitional phrases such as “for instance” and “in addition,”’ (Kaplan 45) as well as “whole paragraphs dominated by sentences that begin with “because,”” (Kaplan 45) convince certainty of the

Though the men reacted in violent ways in different situations, O’Brian’s violent act was something that stayed with him for the rest of his life and completely changed who he was as a person. “The Man I Killed” describes in detail the man and his life Tim O’Brien killed on a path in the jungle, even though he obviously did not know the man’s personal background, but mimicked it after his own. This description shows O’Brien’s life came to an end at his first act of violence, mirrored in the loss of the man’s life. After O’Brien’s incident on the pathway, he became cold and exemplified this new disposition after Jorgenson almost allowed O’Brien to die from a bullet wound, and in turn O’Brien needed pay back by scaring him in the middle of the night. The war may have physically killed many, but in this sense it damaged every soldier mentally.

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, he emphasizes a chapter on “The Man I Killed”, which describes the characteristics of a young Vietnamese man in which O’Brien may or may not have killed with a grenade. The novel is not chronologically sequenced, which leaves more room for the reader to engage in a critical thought process that fully bridges the author’s mind to their own. In O’Brien’s chapter, “The Man I Killed”, he attempts to humanize the enemy in a way that draws little separation between the enemy and himself by relating the enemy’s life prior to the war to his, and illustrates the war through the eyes of the soldiers who fought it.

The Things They Carried offered a unique and personal look into the life of one soldier’s experience. It showed how the war held obligations to its soldiers and expectations for each of the men to follow. The Things They Carried also showed a side of war that was not always seen in other documents and accounts such as Tim O’Brien thoughts and feelings during the war. However, many of the things O’Brien stated throughout his book is very similar to the experiences shared by men in the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. Moreover, despite some similarities, each war is unique and have their own distinctive causes and effects that have solidified their importance in American history. When it comes to war, it seems that most experiences

Copious bullets, like that of torrential downpour, reign over the battlefield; a setting in which man created through dispute, engulfs each and every individual caught within it. Some are immediately spun into a downward spiral, while with others, it hits them in the midst -- even if they have built an immunity to war’s ways. Two fictional characters, both sharing a similar atmosphere, experience the true affects to war in their own ways. Although war never changes, the individuals do, no matter the situation. This is exemplified through the fictional tales, told by Liam O’Flaherty’s “The Sniper,” as well as Tim O’Brien’s “Where Have You Gone Charming Billy,” and as the main characters are to each their own story, they bear contradistinction to one another in the aspect of war, personality, and the emotional reactions to war.

The Viet Nam War has been the most reviled conflict in United States history for many reasons, but it has produced some great literature. For some reason the emotion and depredation of war kindle in some people the ability to express themselves in a way that they may not have been able to do otherwise. Movies of the time period are great, but they are not able to elicit, seeing the extremely limited time crunch, the same images and charge that a well-written book can. In writing of this war, Tim O'Brien put himself and his memories in the forefront of the experiences his characters go through, and his writing is better for it. He produced a great work of art not only because he experienced the war first hand, but because he is able to convey the lives around him in such vivid detail. He writes a group of fictional works that have a great deal of truth mixed in with them. This style of writing and certain aspects of the book are the topics of this reflective paper.

The short story that will be discussed, evaluated, and analyzed in this paper is a very emotionally and morally challenging short story to read. Michael Meyer, author of the college text The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, states that the author of How to Tell a True War Story, Tim O’Brien, “was drafted into the Vietnam War and received a Purple Heart” (472). His experiences from the Vietnam War have stayed with him, and he writes about them in this short story. The purpose of this literary analysis is to critically analyze this short story by explaining O’Brien’s writing techniques, by discussing his intended message and how it is displayed, by providing my own reaction,

Most authors who write about war stories write vividly; this is the same with Tim O’Brien as he describes the lives of the soldiers by using his own experiences as knowledge. In his short story “The Things They Carried” he skillfully reveals realistic scenes that portray psychological, physical and mental burdens carried by every soldier. He illustrates these burdens by discussing the weights that the soldiers carry, their psychological stress and the mental stress they have to undergo as each of them endure the harshness and ambiguity of the Vietnam War. One question we have to ask ourselves is if the three kinds of burdens carried by the soldier’s are equal in size? “As if in slow motion, frame by frame, the world would take on the old

Hundreds of bodies littered the ground. Sounds of explosions and endless gunfire filled the air. Soldiers, with their uniforms splashed in crimson, fought viciously and ruthlessly. Their main objective, which was to win the battle, took a backseat to their newfound desperation to stay alive. After all, war is not a game, especially one such as the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, and left its survivors haunted by a multitude of atrocious events. Terry Erickson’s father and George Robinson, who were two fictional characters from the short stories “Stop the Sun” and “Dear America”, respectively, were veterans of the Vietnam War. The differences and similarities between Terry’s father and George Robinson are striking, and they merit rigorous scrutiny.

After O’Brien subconsciously tossed a grenade at a young soldier that killed the man, he absorbed in a state of shock and guilt upon examining the body. Unlike other passages where the author left the overall picture to our imagination, he emphasized the true sight of the young man providing the reader with meticulous descriptions of the injuries in this chapter. For example, through the eyes of O’Brien, he began by noticing the most distinct feature, the jaw lodged in his throat. Then, as if he was following O’Brien’s trail of sight, he proceeded to focus upwards, describing the mouth, the eyes, and finally the hair. Thus far, even though his statements were too detailed to be “true,” O’Brien seemed calm and composed. However, as the author’s

In the novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O'Brien, there is a chapter by the name of “The Man I Killed.” Within this chapter, O'Brien narrates in one of his memories from the Vietnam War. The memory he depicts is of a Viet Cong soldier whom he has killed, using immense detail to describe the wounds.O'Brien imagines the life story of the Vietnamese soldier, envisioning that might have felt it was his duty as a citizen to protect the land and his people. While O'Brien is picturing the man's hopes and dreams, Azar interrupts his thoughts and makes a comment essentially congratulating O'Brien on killing the soldier, while Kiowa is more understanding and tells Azar to leave as he is aware that O'Brien is clearly upset. Kiowa tries to get O'Brien to stop staring at the dead man by offering justifications as to why he had to kill the man. O’Brien is still lost in his own head though, continuing to imagine the life the man could have had, had O'Brien not shot him. Kiowa continues to try to get O'Brien to talk but with to no avail.

However, Tim O’Brien once had an incident, which permanently changed his life. He killed a man. Just like retrieving back to positive lists in order to avoid the tragedy that happened in the Vietnam War, O’Brien had difficulty describing the man in “The Man I Killed,” which he avoids using first person in his writing. Subsequently, O’Brien cannot continue to live in a dream as he imagines an entire life for the late Vietnamese solider. In his story, he speaks of the similarities and comparisons of the dead man and himself shared. The man was a student who did not want to join the war as much as O’Brien did not either, but they did so because of family honor. Additionally, just like O’Brien, the man fell in love with a classmate. Because of

“In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason.” - Ernest Hemingway.