Imagery in the things they carried. The Things They Carried: SYMBOLISM / MOTIFS / IMAGERY / METAPHORS / SYMBOLS by Tim O'Brien 2019-01-09

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The Things They Carried: Summary & Analysis

imagery in the things they carried

His mind would race day and night, making it difficult for him to provide adequate attention on the war. It was these events that led to great human emotions. He is a Vietnam veteran who has become a writer since returning home from the war. This song appears first in chapter 16 with a kid singing the song and Holden admires this kid for his innocence and respects. The river shows the young men's choice to go to war and do what society expects versus staying home going to prison or leaving the country and shaming themselves and family. Unable to speak about the war, he has to stop driving around and walks into the lake. Besides grappling with loneliness, boredom, and low morale, the men struggle not to appear cowardly in the face of death, which is ''the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down.


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Free Essays on Symbolism In The Things They Carried

imagery in the things they carried

Antagonist The antagonist can be looked as two different things. After reading each paragraph I was able to visualize what I had read. Early in the book he talks about his attempt to dodge the draft. Mary Anne shows the reader's reliance upon the male figure at war. She is the key to Tim's entire message, and this key began in his childhood, not in the war. Another effect derived from this symbol can be the soldier's ignorance concerning when they're entering a predicament; first familiar to knowing predicaments, but soon, becoming completely ignorant of what is ahead of you. It was those feelings that were the things they carried.

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SparkNotes: The Things They Carried: Themes

imagery in the things they carried

In doing so, the reader is able to sympathize with the internal and external struggles the men endure. It did just that reading the detailed account of how Rat shot this animal piece by piece in his anger. During a war soldiers tend to take with them items from home kind of as a security blanket. The first few pages of the story seem to be a description of a Lieutenant that is possibly obsessed over a woman back home, followed by a detailed description of each item carried by each soldier and by those individually. The necessary and luxurious items carried by each solider provides a glimpse of individuality and personalization of how they mentally deal during the Vietnam War. It symbolized the life he wanted, but really the one he could not have, even after returning home. Each soldier carried at least twenty pounds of supplies, weapons, and rations on their backs.

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What were some symbols in chapter 1 of “The Things They Carried?”

imagery in the things they carried

While they all carry heavy physical loads, they also all carry heavy emotional loads, composed of grief, terror, love, and longing. The men use rough language and jokes to protect themselves from the emotional horrors of war. War is very stressful and can easily become more than one can handle. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries around letters from his love interest back home. It relates how soldiers use different kinds of items to make themselves fell secure in the time of war.

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Symbolism in Things They

imagery in the things they carried

Burden is another main theme. I was introduced to each soldier by the things they carried with them, from village to village across Vietnam, during the war. The many references to excrement portray the filthy conditions in which the soldiers live, but they also symbolize the vulgarity of war. Throughout the story, he repeatedly describes scenes in which he and the other soldiers wade through muck, waste, slop, and shrapnel. This paper shows two different points of view.

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Symbolism of Items in “the Things They Carried” by Tim O’ Brien Essay

imagery in the things they carried

The Things They Carried Essay In the book The Things They Carried guilt plays a huge role in how the men react and carry themselves. In the story the theme of weight kept coming up. For the soldiers, if they can do the dance properly, they may understand something, anything about where they are and what they are doing there. He describes what Lieutenant Cross and his soldiers carried during the war and what those things represented for each soldier. The narrator recalls that he once began to cross a river to Canada to evade the draft. The field took away his friend, his innocence, self-worth, and hope. When one of his friends got killed during action he got rid of the pebble because he thought it was a distraction.

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The Things They Carried Essay

imagery in the things they carried

In fact, the dancing girl is one of the most optimistic symbols O'Brien gives us in the novel, for clearly she symbolizes something, even if we cannot know it. The beach symbolizes a few things, the first is a safe haven. Everything they carried affected on them whether it was physical or mental. As the story goes on it shows not only the literal meaning of what they carried but also symbolically the burdens that they had mentally. The character Linda is a symbol of the past. The jungle has an even more radical effect on her character.


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Key Themes & Symbols: The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien :: Homework Help and Answers :: Slader

imagery in the things they carried

She wears a necklace of human tongues and hangs out in the surreal world of the greenie hootch. She is effected by his stories of the war. The narrator illustrates a war fiction about soldiers of the Alpha Company, battling the current and long duration effects of the Vietnam War. We follow First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, and the company of 16 men that he commands. We might not get it—Kathleen certainly doesn't —but that's not what the trip is about. The fog haunts the men because it symbolizes the murkiness and ambiguity of their presence in the jungle. Jimmy Cross is an inexperienced sophomore in college, he signs up for the Reserve Officers Training Camp because his friends are doing the course.

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