Childbirth is an unique event in which a woman undergoes intense pain and pressure of giving birth another human being. War is a unique event in which men viciously slaughter one another for a countries goal. Though one is about life and the other about death, they are equally similar in one way. So Tim O' Brien makes it very clear to his audience that you cannot understand the true cruelties of war unless you have been there. Soldiers have a difficult time relating their feelings or thoughts to other people who have not partaken in the war. The only other people that can even possible relate is fellow soldiers and comrades.
In The Things They Carried, friendship is one of the only things soldiers have left to keep them civilized. Friendship is not even a strong enough word to describe the bond between men consistently saving each others lives. The horrors of war constantly lurk in each others minds, and they only have each other to even try and interpret them.
The best example is Tim O' Brien's love story between Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon. This was not a love story in the sense they had intimate feelings for one another, but a love story like the bond between two brothers. Having Lemon die shattered Rat's heart and caused him to inhumanly destroyed a baby buffalo. His fellow comrades testified to his intense emotion toward Lemon's death, and how it was unlike anything their virgin eyes had witnessed before.
Another example is between Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen. Jensen broke Strunk's nose and became so paranoid for Strunk's revenge that he broke his own nose. An eye for an eye. The form not only a bond but also a pact that set lives in the hands of the other if anything should happen.
None of the feeling these men share with one another can be related to any one else. Even at times, they struggle to relate to one another. The bond they all share on the battle field cannot be understood until a person has gone through it. To betray your friend is to betray every bond formed in the army together. The Theme of friendship will not leave this story, because it is one of the last things these soldiers have left.
Sound often conveys the emotions and thoughts that Tim O’Brien is unable to show with other words. For example, silence is the way that Tim shows how upset he was about killing the young Vietcong. Kiowa keeps trying to get him to talk, but the words bounce right off him. Tim’s silence is significant of his inability to express his inward thoughts and feelings, if he even has any. The shock of killing a man seems to have ended all thoughts, which renders words useless.
Music is extremely important in the story of Mary Anne. When she first arrives, she is described as a girl with a bubbly personality who “liked to dance to music from Rat’s portable tape deck”. Presumably, the music was happy and upbeat. The way she talks is used to indicate her gradual transition into her final, primitive nature. At first she has a high pitched, giggly voice. As time goes along, though, her voice begins to lower in pitch. She talks with a new authority that shows her opinion of Vietnam. She truly likes it there, where she is free to be whoever she wants. She soon began to delve into silence that could last for hours. She began to think more than she spoke, and she stopped trusting others with her thoughts. After she comes back from the ambush, she tells Mark not to speak. Silence now seems to be her chosen companion. Mary Anne is at the breaking point of sanity. Mark breaks her silence in an effort to reach her, but his intrusion pushes her over the edge. She is next seen in the Greenies’ building, singing strange, tribal music that seems out of place, like it is part of the wilderness. The music shows how far gone Mary Anne truly is. She can no longer relate to Rat and his friends. Her music does not correspond with theirs any more. Mary Anne became one with Vietnam. Music is often used to explain emotions that words cannot express. Here, in Mary Anne’s story, it shows a progression into insanity, something most humans cannot relate to. The music allows the reader to experience her in a way that would otherwise be impossible.
Mary Anne's story is only one of the many that uses sounds to explain emotions, but it provides an example of almost every way.
Friendship is a necessary part of life. Nobody should go through life alone. War is no different. Soldiers need a friend, someone to lean on and to support them. War is hell, and nobody should go through it on their own. Nobody can understand or relate to them, except other soldiers, so they are one of the few people who can help them. Soldiers need many things, but most of all, they need a friend.
Friendship is a huge factor in war novels, movies and reality. Just look at Saving Private Ryan, Flags of Our Fathers, Band of Brothers, and even Forrest Gump. The things they carried revolves around friendship. Many chapter center around it in one way or another. The two major chapters are "How to true a tell war story" and "Enemies and Friends".
Friendship can cause crazy things to happen. Rat Kiley was so shaken up after the loss of his best friend, he tortured an innocent animal, just as an outlet of his pain. A cruel and horrific act, but without his friend, he lost all control. The other soldiers let it happen because they put themselves in his shoes, and knew they would feel the same.
Another example was with Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen. They were enemies,but eventually the paranoia and fear of war brought them together, and they became closer then any other. War has interesting effects on people, and everybody is different.
Those are 2 big examples, but there are many more good and bad. There was Tim O'brien who felt the aloneness while injured, Tim O'brien and Jimmy Cross reconnecting after the war, and Norman Bowker and Kiowa. There are many, many more.
War is full of evil and atrocities. Young men are torn from their lives, and thrown into the unknown. It can be terrifying and overwhelming. One of the few way they survive it is by having a friend. They relate and support each other. The one comfort in the foreign, terrifying world.
Sound expresses that which cannot be portrayed through words. There are points in this novel that are intensified by the description of sounds present or the lack of sound involved. O'Brien deliberately creates situations in which characters communicate certain messages or symbolism through times of silence, rather than conveying them through direct speaking. O'Brien knows the benefits to having variations to the sounds of a book, like crescendos and decrescendos in music. In the chapter Style you find a young girl dancing to no music. She is so in shock by the murder of her innocent family and the destruction of her home village that she cannot find the words to express her inner turmoil, so she dances to "let it out". The silence, the lack of music, impacts you far more than seeing a young girl dancing to traditional music would have.
Within the jungles of Vietnam, sound was interpreted in different ways among the soldiers. To Greenies, sound was a way to locate their targets for ambushing. To the soldiers up on the mountain, the sound of music was their sanity basically draining from their bodies as they sat quietly and listened. But to the men that humped all across Vietnam during the war, the absence of sound was the most frightening. In the silence, their imagination would run wild, sending them into a state of paranoia as they questioned the unknown. As this sound is described to the reader, Tim O' Brien is beckoning us to let our imaginations take us deep into the jungles of Vietnam and experience the way they had to deal with the uncertainty of sound.
Sound plays an interesting role in Vietnam from the conversation and joking that eases the soldiers fears, to the silence that no one can handle for fear that they might go insane. A good example of this is when a group of soldiers is sent into the forest to go and listen, they begin hearing things within the woods as if Vietnam itself is coming alive and they can not escape the sounds. Sound also allows to understand the words that are left unsaid. When Tim O'Brien kills a man he is unable to respond to Kiowa he just sits there and thinks of a life for this man, the silence explains his feelings toward the situation that words could not have shown. Sound also has an effect on the reader that allows us to be absorbed in the stories being told by O'Brien. The silence of the night, the grenade explosion that O'Brien knew he should hear but never heard, and many other moments become more realistic with the sound or lack of sound being used.
In Vietnam, and as demonstrated in The Things They Carried, the soldiers didn’t have friendship because they wanted to have it; they didn’t have it because they couldn’t live without it. Rather, they had what they called friendship because it was the natural and inevitable development between the soldiers in war. When experiencing the same fears, near-deaths, losses, and dangers in a world where nothing was certain, one thing was solid, factual, and stronger than any other emotion of war for the soldiers: friendship and the knowledge that they would not be abandoned. For because they were bound by the same fears and experiences, they knew each other’s hearts without even sharing what was inside them. The way these men cared for one another, the way they looked out for one another, the way they appreciated one another for the other’s simple characteristics – these were indicators of just how uniquely strong solders’ friendships are. For these men, friendship not only provided comfort in war, but it also gave war a meaning and something to believe in.
Sound is something that must be portrayed when telling a story about the Vietnam War. From the noises of gunfire to the uneasy silence before an ambush, sound is a prevalent part of Vietnam. Before O'Brien even goes to Vietnam, Elroy's silent prodding helped him make his decision, despite barely speaking with him. After killing the young Vietcong, he is silent and refused to speak to Kiowa. These displays of silence show how powerful a lack of sound can actually be. On the other hand, sounds can have jarring impacts themselves. When Mary Bell is with the Greenies, Fossie hears her and seeks her out in the Green Beret's compound, something that the soldiers all said would be a poor decision. The simple sound of her voice drove him to defy expectations and logic, showing what great power sound can hold over a person. Sound, or lack thereof, may all at once be both the most subtle and the most significant source of change in the story, as it is always accompanied by change and usually by turmoil.
Childbirth is an unique event in which a woman undergoes intense pain and pressure of giving birth another human being. War is a unique event in which men viciously slaughter one another for a countries goal. Though one is about life and the other about death, they are equally similar in one way. So Tim O' Brien makes it very clear to his audience that you cannot understand the true cruelties of war unless you have been there. Soldiers have a difficult time relating their feelings or thoughts to other people who have not partaken in the war. The only other people that can even possible relate is fellow soldiers and comrades.
ReplyDeleteIn The Things They Carried, friendship is one of the only things soldiers have left to keep them civilized. Friendship is not even a strong enough word to describe the bond between men consistently saving each others lives. The horrors of war constantly lurk in each others minds, and they only have each other to even try and interpret them.
The best example is Tim O' Brien's love story between Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon. This was not a love story in the sense they had intimate feelings for one another, but a love story like the bond between two brothers. Having Lemon die shattered Rat's heart and caused him to inhumanly destroyed a baby buffalo. His fellow comrades testified to his intense emotion toward Lemon's death, and how it was unlike anything their virgin eyes had witnessed before.
Another example is between Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen. Jensen broke Strunk's nose and became so paranoid for Strunk's revenge that he broke his own nose. An eye for an eye. The form not only a bond but also a pact that set lives in the hands of the other if anything should happen.
None of the feeling these men share with one another can be related to any one else. Even at times, they struggle to relate to one another. The bond they all share on the battle field cannot be understood until a person has gone through it. To betray your friend is to betray every bond formed in the army together. The Theme of friendship will not leave this story, because it is one of the last things these soldiers have left.
Sound often conveys the emotions and thoughts that Tim O’Brien is unable to show with other words. For example, silence is the way that Tim shows how upset he was about killing the young Vietcong. Kiowa keeps trying to get him to talk, but the words bounce right off him. Tim’s silence is significant of his inability to express his inward thoughts and feelings, if he even has any. The shock of killing a man seems to have ended all thoughts, which renders words useless.
ReplyDeleteMusic is extremely important in the story of Mary Anne. When she first arrives, she is described as a girl with a bubbly personality who “liked to dance to music from Rat’s portable tape deck”. Presumably, the music was happy and upbeat. The way she talks is used to indicate her gradual transition into her final, primitive nature. At first she has a high pitched, giggly voice. As time goes along, though, her voice begins to lower in pitch. She talks with a new authority that shows her opinion of Vietnam. She truly likes it there, where she is free to be whoever she wants. She soon began to delve into silence that could last for hours. She began to think more than she spoke, and she stopped trusting others with her thoughts. After she comes back from the ambush, she tells Mark not to speak. Silence now seems to be her chosen companion. Mary Anne is at the breaking point of sanity. Mark breaks her silence in an effort to reach her, but his intrusion pushes her over the edge. She is next seen in the Greenies’ building, singing strange, tribal music that seems out of place, like it is part of the wilderness. The music shows how far gone Mary Anne truly is. She can no longer relate to Rat and his friends. Her music does not correspond with theirs any more. Mary Anne became one with Vietnam. Music is often used to explain emotions that words cannot express. Here, in Mary Anne’s story, it shows a progression into insanity, something most humans cannot relate to. The music allows the reader to experience her in a way that would otherwise be impossible.
Mary Anne's story is only one of the many that uses sounds to explain emotions, but it provides an example of almost every way.
Friendship is a necessary part of life. Nobody should go through life alone. War is no different. Soldiers need a friend, someone to lean on and to support them. War is hell, and nobody should go through it on their own. Nobody can understand or relate to them, except other soldiers, so they are one of the few people who can help them. Soldiers need many things, but most of all, they need a friend.
ReplyDeleteFriendship is a huge factor in war novels, movies and reality. Just look at Saving Private Ryan, Flags of Our Fathers, Band of Brothers, and even Forrest Gump. The things they carried revolves around friendship. Many chapter center around it in one way or another. The two major chapters are "How to true a tell war story" and "Enemies and Friends".
Friendship can cause crazy things to happen. Rat Kiley was so shaken up after the loss of his best friend, he tortured an innocent animal, just as an outlet of his pain. A cruel and horrific act, but without his friend, he lost all control. The other soldiers let it happen because they put themselves in his shoes, and knew they would feel the same.
Another example was with Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen. They were enemies,but eventually the paranoia and fear of war brought them together, and they became closer then any other. War has interesting effects on people, and everybody is different.
Those are 2 big examples, but there are many more good and bad. There was Tim O'brien who felt the aloneness while injured, Tim O'brien and Jimmy Cross reconnecting after the war, and Norman Bowker and Kiowa. There are many, many more.
War is full of evil and atrocities. Young men are torn from their lives, and thrown into the unknown. It can be terrifying and overwhelming. One of the few way they survive it is by having a friend. They relate and support each other. The one comfort in the foreign, terrifying world.
Sound expresses that which cannot be portrayed through words. There are points in this novel that are intensified by the description of sounds present or the lack of sound involved. O'Brien deliberately creates situations in which characters communicate certain messages or symbolism through times of silence, rather than conveying them through direct speaking. O'Brien knows the benefits to having variations to the sounds of a book, like crescendos and decrescendos in music.
ReplyDeleteIn the chapter Style you find a young girl dancing to no music. She is so in shock by the murder of her innocent family and the destruction of her home village that she cannot find the words to express her inner turmoil, so she dances to "let it out". The silence, the lack of music, impacts you far more than seeing a young girl dancing to traditional music would have.
Within the jungles of Vietnam, sound was interpreted in different ways among the soldiers. To Greenies, sound was a way to locate their targets for ambushing. To the soldiers up on the mountain, the sound of music was their sanity basically draining from their bodies as they sat quietly and listened. But to the men that humped all across Vietnam during the war, the absence of sound was the most frightening. In the silence, their imagination would run wild, sending them into a state of paranoia as they questioned the unknown. As this sound is described to the reader, Tim O' Brien is beckoning us to let our imaginations take us deep into the jungles of Vietnam and experience the way they had to deal with the uncertainty of sound.
ReplyDeleteSound plays an interesting role in Vietnam from the conversation and joking that eases the soldiers fears, to the silence that no one can handle for fear that they might go insane. A good example of this is when a group of soldiers is sent into the forest to go and listen, they begin hearing things within the woods as if Vietnam itself is coming alive and they can not escape the sounds. Sound also allows to understand the words that are left unsaid. When Tim O'Brien kills a man he is unable to respond to Kiowa he just sits there and thinks of a life for this man, the silence explains his feelings toward the situation that words could not have shown.
ReplyDeleteSound also has an effect on the reader that allows us to be absorbed in the stories being told by O'Brien. The silence of the night, the grenade explosion that O'Brien knew he should hear but never heard, and many other moments become more realistic with the sound or lack of sound being used.
In Vietnam, and as demonstrated in The Things They Carried, the soldiers didn’t have friendship because they wanted to have it; they didn’t have it because they couldn’t live without it. Rather, they had what they called friendship because it was the natural and inevitable development between the soldiers in war. When experiencing the same fears, near-deaths, losses, and dangers in a world where nothing was certain, one thing was solid, factual, and stronger than any other emotion of war for the soldiers: friendship and the knowledge that they would not be abandoned. For because they were bound by the same fears and experiences, they knew each other’s hearts without even sharing what was inside them. The way these men cared for one another, the way they looked out for one another, the way they appreciated one another for the other’s simple characteristics – these were indicators of just how uniquely strong solders’ friendships are. For these men, friendship not only provided comfort in war, but it also gave war a meaning and something to believe in.
ReplyDeleteSound is something that must be portrayed when telling a story about the Vietnam War. From the noises of gunfire to the uneasy silence before an ambush, sound is a prevalent part of Vietnam. Before O'Brien even goes to Vietnam, Elroy's silent prodding helped him make his decision, despite barely speaking with him. After killing the young Vietcong, he is silent and refused to speak to Kiowa. These displays of silence show how powerful a lack of sound can actually be. On the other hand, sounds can have jarring impacts themselves. When Mary Bell is with the Greenies, Fossie hears her and seeks her out in the Green Beret's compound, something that the soldiers all said would be a poor decision. The simple sound of her voice drove him to defy expectations and logic, showing what great power sound can hold over a person. Sound, or lack thereof, may all at once be both the most subtle and the most significant source of change in the story, as it is always accompanied by change and usually by turmoil.
ReplyDelete