Through Hollywood, media, and video games, the generation of today thinks they know what war is. With the help of O'Brien's award winning novel, the generation of today is shown that in fact, war is a vary far truth from what we are told to believe. This book stands for, what i believe from my life experience, to be the greatest example of true war life from the eyes of one man's life.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
What does chocolate taste like?
As page 108 states, describing war to someone who has never been is like trying to describe chocolate to someone who has never tried it (O'Brien 108). As O'Brien says again and again, telling a good war story is extremely difficult, if not impossible. The reason being that no one is ever going to fully understand what you are telling them, and that sometimes the truth appears to be false as the lie seems to be true. In a way, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is an allegory. The entire novel is trying to relate one man's experiences in Vietnam to "civilians" who have never experienced anything such as war.
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so what elements of the novel do you think better illustrate explain Vietnam as opposed to the films/video games? Make sure you're connecting your points to specific passages/examples.
ReplyDeletePersonally I fell that O'Brien's memories, chaotic mind, and his ability to pull such emotion out of a very simple diction is what shows what war truly is. Yes there is death and killing and dirt, but O'Brien by using his unique writing style shows the deeper depths of war. The generic killing and death is the tip of the iceberg, but O'Brien has managed to show us a glimpse of what lies beneath the surface.
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