The Things They Carried Response

The short story I chose was “The Man I Killed” by Tim O’Brien. For my first quote, I chose “His other eye was a star-shaped hole” (O’Brien 124). The literary term I chose was Imargy. The imagery in this quote helps the reader understand what is going on in terms of the appearance after Tim kills the man. It also helps set the whole sense and helps us see what he is seeing. The second quote I chose was “There was some silence before he said, ‘Stop staring’” (O’Brien 128). The literary term I chose for my second quote is an understatement. I chose this literary term because the quote shows that the characters aren’t really reacting to what is happening. It also helps us understand that after Tim killed the man he was in shock and wasn’t able to do anything other than sit and stare at the dead man's body, but along with this, they don’t make it seem like such a big deal. 

These literary terms help me understand that the author's perspective of war is that war can be very traumatizing. Adding the imagery into the text helps the reader see what Time is seeing and the other Soldiers, it also helps the reader be more into the text because it lets us envision what is going on and help us see what they are seeing without physically seeing it. Also by adding in understatement it keeps the emotions out of the story. While also allowing the reader to try and come up with their own emotions for war. Along with this by making it an understatement it can show the reader that war can cause emotional blocks and not allow them to comprehend and show emotion when it comes to things. In conclusion, the message about war from the author's perspective is that war can be very traumatizing for both your mental/emotional and physical aspects.

“The draft notice arrived on June 17, 1968. It was a humid afternoon, I remember, cloudy and very quiet, and I’d just come in from a round of golf. My mother and father were having lunch out in the kitchen. I remember opening up the letter, scanning the first few lines, feeling the blood go thick behind my eyes”(O’Brien 41).  

I believe that this exact moment in the book is a prime example of plot. Right off the bat in the beginning of the book there is a huge plot change. It immediately makes you hate the draft and the war. The author does a great job describing the feeling Tim gets when the letter comes in the mail.

“His Jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut and the other, his other eye was a star shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman’s, his nose was undamaged…”(O’Brien 124).

I like this quote because it’s showing Imagery in a way most books wouldn’t. It's very descriptive while also being understandable and gory. For a book like this, imagery is very helpful to set the mood of the scene, and this quote does a great job of it. These are also the first sentences of the chapter “The Man I Killed” further setting an instant mood in the reader. This quote helped me understand the Author's perspective quickly. If I had to talk from the author's perspective, people shouldn’t have to be exposed to this horror and they should have to live with the guilt of killing someone.

Overall I think the message of war in The Things They Carried is a negative look on war. Everything from the Draft to killing a man to the mental trauma from that act. The author, Tim O’Brien took his thoughts of being drafted into Vietnam and put them into this book. He was actually opposed to the idea before he was drafted. The war even further proved his point. 

The short work “The man I killed” is a story about a boy who kills a man while in war. He struggles with taking in the fact that he just killed a man, he stares at the body too confused to do anything he just sits and stares at it. Literary terms help me understand the story better because it gives you a connection to the character. The Author's message here was that war is a cruel place and whether a person can handle it or not it won't stop.“There was some silence before he said, ‘stop staring’ ”(O’Brien 128) This quote is a great example of understatement, the boy just killed a man and he is frozen staring at the body, the other solder who he was with told him to stop staring as if what he did was nothing. The man wants him to just shake off what he did in a way saying killing this other boy did not matter. “His other eye was a star-shaped whole” (O'Brien 124) This quote shows imagery because of the description of the body, the boy describes everything about what the body looked like after killing the boy. 

“The Man I Killed”- 2 quotes from the story i found were… “[Linda would] say amazing things sometimes. Once you're alive she’d say you can’t ever be dead” that quote is giving hyperbole , it's an overused statement that's kind of dragged and not true but it is something that you kinda just roll off your tongue. 

“[The Dead Bodys] they were all badly bloated. Their clothing  was stretched tight like sausage skins” unfortunately this one is imagery you can sit there and with all these details you can pull out what you think it will be. 

After debating and reading the stories i realized the authors opinion seems to be 

1. Death at war is hard to cope with
2. War causes death
3. War creates stories.

Secretly, though it also frightened him. He was not a fighter. his health was poor, his body was small and frail. He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher in mathematics.               (O’Brien 125) Repetition

This quote shows how the main character of the short story keeps evolving the identity of the person he killed who he has no idea who that person was when he was alive, making the person that he killed a victim of his country who did not want to fight him feel making him feel even more guilty about what he has done to the man along with the fact that him describing the man happens many more times in the story also showing his guilt 

The young man’s fingernails were clean. There was a slight tear at the lobe of the ear, a sprinkling of blood on the forearm. He wore a gold ring on the third finger of his right hand.His chest was sunken and poorly muscled–a scholar, mabey. His life was now a constellation of possibilities. So, yes, maybe a scholar. And for years, despite his family’s poverty, the man I killed would have been determined to continue his education in mathematics. (O’Brien 128) ( paradox)

This quote describes how the  dead man  had so many possibilities of who they were before they died and  how  the person ended his life felt a huge amount of guilt for removing the future that the man that he killed had, making the reason for making the person future if he had not killed them a way to make him feel worse about his actions

 The message of this poem is to show the pain of some of the some of the soldiers even if  they are the one to kill them  and they will sometimes even curse themselves with the guilt the dead can bring, even if they did not know each other and were enemies there death could still affect them for the rest of their lives or at least a week and that very guilt can lead people to be alcoholics,abusers, someone who abuses drugs. Or they could also get ptsd for risking their lives to save their own country.

The message I took away from this story is that War is real, serious, not always a choice, stressful, unknown, and terrifying.

“ You're at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and there's a hard squeezing Pressure in your chest. What would you do?” (O’Brien 184) 

Character 

Character is the literary term I chose because it describes how the character felt when he had to decide whether or not to leave and go to war. This makes it easier for me to grasp the story as a whole since the character is young, terrified, and unsure of what to do. He doesn't want to join the war because it goes against everything he believes, but he also doesn't want to disappoint anybody. This literary term helps in my understanding of the author's viewpoint on war by emphasizing the struggles and difficulties the author faced before entering battle or abandoning his country. 

“I was a coward. I went to the war.” (O'Brien 61)

  Pov 

I chose Pov as a literary term as most people wouldn't associate being a coward with going to war. I am better able to understand the story as a whole because of his opinions on war, including his belief that it should never be started without a clear reason and that once someone is murdered, they are permanently gone. The author's point of view made it easier for me to comprehend his viewpoint on war since he has different ideas from those of other people. Therefore, understanding how he thinks about war and what it's like to fight in a war truly helped me grasp why he felt that way. The "certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons," in his opinion. 

“On the Rainy River”

“I was a coward. I went to war” clearly showing understatement using a clear cut sentence with something that would take much longer explanation (O’Brien 61).

“It was like there was an audience to my life, the swirl of faces along the river” the insider look within Tims head is something we can only get from him, his point of view, showing something only he would know (O’Brien 59).

The use of understatement and POV helps showcase how unfair war is, how the author thinks no one wins in a war, understating the morals and mindset needed, and writing from a perspective to get an idea of what's going on within a persons own mind.

“His other eye was a star-shaped hole” (O'Brien 124)
Repetition, Imagery, Hyperbole.
Repetition is mainly used in this line since he killed someone and is shocked about what he just did. His friend was also trying to make him snap out of it. The author's perspective of war seemed to have been startling for him. he could have had the same predicament as the fictional character. The author's thoughts when he killed someone could have been the same as the fictional character narrating his speculative life.

“It was a matter of live or die. There was no peril. Almost certainly the young man would have passed by. And it will always be that way.” (133)
P.O.V., Hyperbole, Juxtaposition
The quote used here mainly is P.O.V., because before Tim killed someone, he was somewhat thinking about his actions. Tim was mainly thinking about if his actions were reasonable. The author could have experienced the same thing when he was about to kill someone, he could have thrown a grenade knowing that he had no choice but to die.

War is unforgiving, it makes every decision you make is done either way.

“I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth” (O'Brien 179). This quote is an example of pov because Tim is telling us why he tells the story truths instead of the real truths. it is easier to come up with a different reality to help you better understand and cope with your struggles than face it head-on. This quote helped me understand more about the character because it puts you in their shoes. 

“He was a short, slender young man of about twenty. I was afraid of him –afraid of something – and as he passed me on the trail I threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him.” (O'Brien 131) This quote is an example of character. Tim’s actions were automatic, he didn't think before he threw. He was scared of the young man so he threw the grenade at his feet. He regretted it, he wondered if the man would have just kept walking if he hadn't thrown the grenade. It shows us more about Tim and how he thinks. It also shows more about how people feel after killing an enemy. 

“A cracking- leacking- popping feeling”(o’Brain 46) this quote represents imagery it helps you understand how Tim is feeling about going to war without the imagery we wouldn't know exactly how is feeling yes he could say it but describing it helps you understand better. 

 “I was a coward. I went to war”(o’Brian 61) this quote shows a great use of POV because in tim”s POV we get to know that he feels like a coward for going to war wear as if we weren't in tims POV we would never know that Tim is feeling like a coward because most people don’t feel like a coward for going to war. 

These literary terms help me understand the author's perspective on war because I think he is saying war is not easy for every one. It's not easy for everyone to go off to war, some don't feel ok doing it. 

Ambush/ Good form. 

“It was not a matter of live or die. There was no peril. Almost certainly the young man would have passed by. And it will always be that way.” (O'brien 133) This quote is telling us that no matter what, the soldier would have died. A bomb was set off near him and even if Tim  knew that man was there, he still would have been walking by. This is an example of juxtaposition because one thing happened and no matter what, the out come would've been the same. 

“I want you to feel what i felt. I want you to know why story-truth- is truer sometimes than happening truth”(O'brien 179)  This is an understatement because hes not telling us how he feels. We don't know what hes thinking, we need more information. 

Tim explains that telling a story version of events is more important than the actual truth because it helps others understand how it feels, it helps him take responsibility for his actions, and helps him process his emotions

War isn't always truthful. War can be mentally challenging. War doesn't always make sense

Lives of the Dead

“Her eyes, I remember, were deep brown like her hair, and she was slender and very quiet and fragile-looking.” (O’Brien, 228) This piece of Imagery is telling us how Older Tim saw Linda when they were young before she passed away of a brain tumor. I think the author wrote this part of the story to show that even in death people's images still live on in happy ways with people that loved them. I think he also wrote it to show that when people experience war it can reshape their views on death. I took away that death doesn’t have to be a scary thing because you’ll always have memories of them and the next time you experience death you’ll know how to react and get through the grief of losing someone.“It wasn’t guts. I was scared” (O’Brien, 227) This quote is a Paradox, it’s talking about when O’Brien and the rest of the troops were toasting their canteens to a dead man they found. All of the troops besides O’Brien shook the dead man's hand, this particular quote came from when he and one of his buddies, Kiowa, were sitting together and Kiowa was telling O’Brien that he had guts when he didn’t shake the man's hand. The reason O’Brien didn’t do it was because he was scared, he didn’t “have guts.” I think the author wrote this part of the story, which was the beginning, to show that sometimes you are still scared even if you’ve experienced death before because death can be a very scary thing especially if it was different from the first time you experienced it. I took away that death changes people, sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a bad way. People can also react differently depending on where they are and who they’re with. 

In the story “ The man I killed” By Tim O’Brien It talks about “His neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood there was thick and shiny…”(O’Brien 124). This shows Imagery because it uses descriptive words to help us see what he wants us to see.

 Also In the same story it goes on to say “You scrambled his sorry self, Look at that, you laid him out like Shredded fuckin’ wheat”(O’Brien 125).   This is an example of a Simile because they used like to compare the body to shredded wheat. This quote  helps show  that story talks about death can affect everyone.

 Both of the quotes  help us see what the author wants us to take out of the story. What I get from the story  is that even the  soldiers of the war still take a toll even if they didn’t die or lose close friends. 

¨I was a coward. I went to war.¨ This shows multiple literary terms but I think this shows understatement because how can you be a coward if you are going to fight for your life in war. This helps me understand that going to war even though you think you are better than war in some other way shows that doing something you can't say no to like you are peer pressured to do makes you a coward and this is what the character was seeing.

¨The man's self control was amazing he never pried. This shows character of this person because he never went into anyones business and kept to himself. This helped me understand that being alone and having self control can help you in war and in life in general.

“His Jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole…his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood there was thick and shiny…” O’Brien 124 shows Imagery that helps give the reader a vivid picture of how gruesome death is during war. Tim taking in every detail of the injuries helps to show the guilt that Tim feels about killing this man.‘“You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like shredded fuckin’ Wheat.”’ O’Brien 125 This quote is a simile and helps the reader understand how in war people get killed. How death can stay with a person for a long time, remembering how they looked and what they could have done if that did not happen. The author’s perspective on war is, war is gruesome and soldiers in war can have a difficult time forgetting the thing that they saw and the people who were killed, the way that they died can replay in someone's mind forever, never forgetting, and forever feeling guilty. The message from the story is, war can stay with people forever and constantly having them thinking of the could haves and would haves that might have been if the war and killings hadn’t happened. Things that happened will never go away, the guilt of what they did and the memories of the people they saw and killed are things they have to live with forever. 

¨I was a coward. I went to war.¨(O,brien 61)This shows multiple literary terms but I think this shows understatement because how can you be a coward if you are going to fight for your life in war. This helps me understand that going to war even though you think you are better than war in some other way shows that doing something you can't say no to like you are peer pressured to do makes you a coward and this is what the character was seeing.

.The man's self control was amazing he never pried.¨(O,brien 51) This shows character of this person because he never went into anyone's business and kept to himself. This helped me understand that being alone and having self control can help you in war and in life in general. 

1. “His one eye was shut, his other was a star-shaped hole.” -Repetition 
2. “Then, later he said, “why not talk about it?” -Understatement

These literary terms help me better understand the story by showing the repeated trauma happening over again and the character trying to help out with trauma and PTSD, the mental disorders they're facing.

The literary terms also help me understand the author’s perspective on war because it shows that the author believes that war messes with your mentality. It shows by repeating the trauma, showing the trauma, and the characters all being messed up from it and trying to help another out. 

The message about war that I took away from this story is that was is terrifying and that it gives you serious PTSD and trauma and that in those situations you have no choice between life or death.

His one eye was shut his other was a star shaped hole (o'brien 124) this quote shows the literary term Imagery  the literary term helps understand what is happening in the story because you imagine what that description looks like

 the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless, (O'brien 124) this quote is also showing imagery because its descriptive and makes you imagine what the author is trying to describe. 

These quotes help the reader understand that the author is trying to give a lot of detail and I believe that the author's message about war is that its very graphic and brutal and the quotes and the literary terms used help prove that.

“Seemed to lean heavily to one side,like a cripple”  (O’brien 48)

This simile puts more emphasis on the state of the Tip Top fishing lodge, and shows the cabins were in rough condition. In this part, the character is searching for a place to stay after driving through the morning, and he ends up settling for this fishing lodge, where the main building is leaning, like a cripple. The character seemed to be escaping something, so the old man letting them into the cabin gave them a sense of hope.

“After slaughter the hogs were decapitated, split down the length of the belly, pried open eviscerated, and strung up by the hind hocks” (O’brien 42)

This example of imagery is the character describing what happens at his place of work. He worked in a meat packing factory that specializes in pork, so the character dealt with pigs. Working on the assembly line, he saw all the different processes that go into harvesting a pig. The character hated the idea of drafts, which is why he decided to escape and go off the grid towards Canada. The character didn't really enjoy what his life had become, not being able to get a date, and being stressed about going to war, one of the many reasons he tried escaping towards Canada.

The Things They Carried Forum 

The Prompt:

After reviewing a collection of the chapters from The Things They Carried (“On the Rainy River,” “The Man I Killed,” “Ambush”/“Good Form,” “The Lives of the Dead”), complete the following response. Choose one section to complete the following analysis on:

• Identify two quotes from the story that showcase one literary term each. Explain which literary term they represent and what that helps you better understand about the story as a whole. 
• Explain how those literary terms helped you understand the author’s perspective on war.
  • What is the author’s perspective on war? What is a message about war you took away from this story?

Response:

The quote, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (O’Brien, 38) from the book “The Things They Carried” shows symbolism because the author is talking about how the soldiers are targeting the other country but killing them with no personal motive. So the certain blood being the other country, and the uncertain reason is because they are basically being told to.

This quote from “The Things They Carried” is from the chapter ‘The Man I Killed’ and it states, “His jaw in this throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole,” (O’Brien, 118). This quote shows imagery because he has this extremely vivid memory of what the war was like and how he felt when the realization hit him that he had just killed someone else.