Personal Narrative Essay Examples

(Beah 113) While the passage above is merely a thought, Beah, according to his story, has committed acts far more violent and gruesome. If accurate, his memoir would provide unprecedented insight into the life of a child solider. However, the validity of his claims has been challenged

The narrator (O’brien) lists things that the soldiers carry with them, both tangible and intangible. Other members of the unit are introduced through descriptions of the things they carry, such as Ted Lavender who carried tranquilizer pills and excessive amounts of ammunition, Jimmy Cross who carried photos of his lover back home and Kiowa who carried a hunting hatchet. O'Brien introduces readers to the short story’s primary characters by describing the “things” that the soldiers carried. The level of detail O'Brien offers about the characters is expanded upon and shown throughout

The Things They Carried, a novel by Tim O’Brien and published in 2009, examines what it was like to have fought in the Vietnam War, through memory, imagination, and the powerful ability of storytelling. Throughout his book O’Brien writes a series of vignettes and describes what it was like during the war, and the effects it had on him a decade later. There was one part in particular that really caught my attention. In the chapter,“How to Tell a True War Story”, O’Brien mentions how Rat Kiley, a Vietnam soldier, writes a letter and he was not pleased with the outcome. As I am sitting on my bed reading one of the chapters in the novel, “How to Tell a True War Story,” I begin to see a flashback of my own life.

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien explores the contrast between who we are and what we do, especially in “Ambush” and “The Ghost Soldiers”. In these stories, O’Brien becomes separated from his own actions and makes choices that contradict what he knows to be his personal morals and values, demonstrating how the emotional toll of war can separate a person from their “true” self. In “Ambush” (assuming the story is true), O’Brien recounts a time when he took the life of a young Vietnamese soldier who didn’t see O’Brien as he walked along a trail. O’Brien describes how the man posed no real threat to him, but something drove him to throw a grenade onto the trail.

The fantasy does not always make the pain go away. In the Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien in the vignette, The Man I Killed, O'Brien describes a Viet Cong soldier whom he has killed, using meticulous physical detail, including descriptions of his wounds. Then O'Brien imagines the life story of this man and imagines that he was a scholar who felt an obligation to defend his village. In the story, The Man I Killed, Tim O'Brien uses diction, repetition, and imagery to to convey his feelings of guilt and desolation, about the man he killed and link it to his overall purpose of writing the book, to inform readers of war is destructive, the soldiers lives have the chance to carry on forever in story form.

Entire town populations were desicrated. Ten million deaths roughly. A recent outbreak occured in the 20th century in the 1960's and 70's during the Vietnam war. As of 2008, a case of a 16 year old boy was confirmed to have the plague and was in the Sarharan

The guy wasn’t Heidi- he has a weapon, right?” (126) However, by giving insight on the man’s life, the reader learns that similarly to O’Brien, the man he killed originally had no intention of fighting. He wanted to be a scholar. The collections of short stories in “The Things They Carried” come together to show how complex war can be.

Other times, the younger boys sat by rocks weeping and telling us that the rocks were their dead families. Then there were those instances when we would ambush the staff members, tie them up, and interrogate them about the whereabouts of their squad, where they got their supplies of arms and ammunition, drugs, and food” (175). The trauma from the war sticks with the boys and causes them to have an altered perspective on their

Which, was not an uncommon number of deaths for that time period, due to the medical treatment and preventative drugs that where available. What is uncommon is this plague is it affected young men and not just the old or children. There are many different speculations as to what disease the Plague actually was, especially within the last century. Although, none have been proven yet. With the difference of opinion on the

Taking different English and writing classes has allowed me to write different types of papers. One paper that can be very challenging is the personal narrative. There are certain requirements that you must follow; each paper is different depending on who assigns it. When I am assigned to write this type of paper, usually it is dreadful to start and accomplish. This type of paper should just be removed from college writing courses.

One reason that the plague was so devastating is because there was a lack of medicine. The medicine practices being used that the time were not advanced enough

In today’s world people often overlook the gruesome and violent events that occur, rather than confronting the issue. In Tim O’Brien’s metafiction novel, The Things They Carried, he avoids sugarcoating the scenes that soldiers faced before, during, and after the war by describing the gore and violence in every detail. By including the scenes of violence, Tim O’Brien portrays the horrific effects of war on soldiers and the unnecessary casualties that the soldiers experience. Whether it be Rat Kiley murdering a baby water buffalo, Azar blowing up a puppy, or Lee Strunk begging his friend not to kill him after an explosion, O’Brien assures that the audience will have to confront the conflicts that these soldiers faced. Going into war involves

“Monday went by like a small summer cloud, like a dream in the first hours of dawn. Intent on preparing our backpacks, on baking bread and cakes, we no longer thought about anything. The Verdict had been delivered. (p18) They were taken later in the war so that was a key to his survival.

Because of their isolation, the plague did not reach them immediately.

To Tell A True War Story, 51). The true version is always what hits the hardest. In “The Things They Carried”