The Man I Killed By Tim O Brien

The book Ceremony is about a man named Tayo. Tayo returns home from war and had to face several mental and psychological challenges. He also has to figure out how to not only help himself, but his people through their beliefs. In Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko, Tayo’s developing character helped show the audience the importance of tradition and community to him and his people.

For example, Tim discovers that his father has been taken by cowboys on their way home from Verplanks Point. I the novel, Tim says, “In June of that year 1777, we found out that father was dead… it wasn’t rebel prison ship, it was a British one. Tim expects that his father was killed by the cowboys that previously captured him. He was not expecting him to be killed by the side he was supporting. This upsets Tim

From his father’s death, Tim sadly learned that loyalty, trust, and devotion are not valued or rewarded. Tim believes that people should not be loyal to a side that is underhanded in return. Tim’s final decision was to join the neutral side because he learns the Loyalists are deceptive, brutal, hypocrites, who kill innocent people for no reason at

Tim would have expected Life to be the most safe one of their family due to his loyalty to Britain, but he was captured anyway. The death of Life Meeker makes Tim develop a strong hatred toward the Loyalists due to the fact that they do not value loyalty or care about the innocent, such as this instance. Tis develops Tim’s final decision of neutrality is influenced by Jerry’s death because both the British and Patriots caused the death of the ones he cared most

Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.

Kiowa knows it is wrong to bring war into a place of peace. With this peace of mind, it shows how good of a person Kiowa is. It showed why people like him as a person. In a like manner, O’Brien discusses morality in the chapter “The Man I Killed.”

There was no sense of morality or politics or duty. Tim completed what he was trained to do, and that was to defend the camp against the enemy. The lone soldier was the enemy. Later Tim views his actions as impulsive and regrets throwing the grenade, despite his peers’ support. Tim declares, “Sometimes I forgive myself, sometimes I don’t.

This chapter “The Ghost Soldiers”, showed us how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were dealing with the war both physically and psychologically. It also shows us how the Tim O'Brien behaved and felt when he was shot, wounded and had a bacteria infection on his butt and how the war changed the way he thought, and viewed the other soldiers around him. This chapter also contain a lot of psychological lens. From the way Tim O’Brien felt when he was shot and separated from his unit to a new unit to when he wanted revenge on Bobby Jorgenson for almost “killing” him.

Hidden somewhere within the blurred lines of fiction and reality, lies a great war story trapped in the mind of a veteran. On a day to day basis, most are not willing to murder someone, but in the Vietnam War, America’s youth population was forced to after being pulled in by the draft. Author Tim O’Brien expertly blends the lines between fiction, reality, and their effects on psychological viewpoints in the series of short stories embedded within his novel, The Things They Carried. He forces the reader to rethink the purpose of storytelling and breaks down not only what it means to be human, but how mortality and experience influence the way we see our world. In general, he attempts to question why we choose to tell the stories in the way

You decide for yourself to pull the trigger”. This quote shows how Timothy in this situation cared about his men getting killed and didn’t want it to happen so he took a risk by firing at civilians to keep his men alive. Following this, a similar quote by Sebastian Junger talks about how during a fight the “death” of one soldier affects another. He says, “The worst thing that happened to him in Afghanistan was one of his men was hit in the head with a bullet in the helmet, knocked him over. They thought he was dead.

"The two words 'information' and 'communication' are often used interchangeably, but they signify quite different things. Information is giving out; communication is getting through," by Sydney J. Harris. In To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, information and communication are misinterpreted, misused, and misjudged. When people are not given the correct information, it leads to people thinking and assuming things about others that might not be true. This novel is heavily influenced by judgment, communication, prejudice, and racism.

The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, illustrates the experiences of a man and his comrades throughout the war in Vietnam. Tim O’Brien actually served in the war, so he had a phenomenal background when it came to telling the true story about the war. In his novel, Tim O’Brien uses imagery to portray every necessary detail about the war and provide the reader with a true depiction of the war in Vietnam. O’Brien starts out the book by describing everything he and his comrades carry around with them during the war. Immediately once the book starts, so does his use of imagery.

The Vietnam War leaves a legacy of moral confusion with each and every soldier who serves. Soldiers are fighting for a cause they do not necessarily believe in, killing people who do not necessarily deserve it, and watching their brothers die beside them. Tim O’Briens’ book, The Things They Carried, illustrates the soldiers struggle to define morality throughout the confusion of the war. On the Rainy River, Tim O’Brien faces what he feels is his moral obligation to answer his country’s call and fight in Vietnam, and a personal moral issue with the reason for the war.

Quotation Analysis “It wasn't as if they had a choice. They were soldiers whose choices had ended when they had signed contracts and taken their oaths. Whether they had joined for reasons of patriotism, of romantic notions, to escape a broken home of some sort, or out of economic need, their job now was to follow the orders of other soldiers who were following orders, too. Somewhere, far from Iraq, was where the orders began, but by the time they reached Rustamiyah, the only choice left for a soldier was to choose which lucky charm to tuck behind his body armor, or which foot to line up in front of the other, as he went out to follow the order of the day”(Finkel 54).

Tim in The Man I Killed had difficulty with speaking about the Vietnamese Man he killed but found ease with speaking on it by writing. In “Stan”, by writing letters and reading them aloud it helps the reader comprehend the situation. Kiowa is trying to convince Tim to speak on the situation and let his emotions out but Tim is having an internal conflict with himself. Tim doesn’t want to talk about how he killed the Vietnamese Man because he is in shock and can’t accept what he done. Kiowa simply says “Talk” and Tim says nothing.