AP Literature

     The short story "Notes" is my favorite short story in this novel because of how unique and honest it is. This short story is one of the few that do not take place in the war, but afterward. Bowker comes back from the war and fails to find a true purpose, which is how most veterans felt after the war. These men who fought in the Vietnam War skipped one of the most crucial parts of their lives as they were transitioning into adulthood. Some left when they were 18, right when their life in America was supposed to start, but they had to put it on hold to go to war.      Bowker repetitively brings up how he "almost won the Silver Star for valor," but did not actually receive it. It seems as if Bowker is attempting to justify himself being in the war because the reality of the war being unnecessary is too hard to swallow. The most interesting part of this story is in one of the letters the Bowker wrote to O'Brien. He says that he does not know how to tell t...

     Tim Obrien makes it very clear that most war stories are not completely true. The real events that happen in war can be so shocking and traumatic that most people are unable to truthfully recall what happened. It is not important what physically occurred, but it is important how the event made these men feel. Tim Obrien is able to amplify those feelings by exaggerating in his all of stories to make the reader understand the emotions that the soldiers felt during these war stories. In the short story "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," Rat Kiley uses immense exaggeration. A young woman probably did not fly into Vietnam and did not actually go out on ambushes, but the story makes a valuable point. The point being, the Vietnam War changed the soldiers and made them unrecognizable to themselves. Everyone is affected by the war, despite one's gender, age, etc...     Exaggeration is present in almost every single short story, although it is hard to decipher ...

     One of the main messages conveyed by Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried , is the complexity of the Vietnam War, and specifically, the controversiality of it. Many men that fought in the Vietnam War did not truly understand it. In past American wars, there was passion and nationalism from the American People. For example, in World War II, the main enemy was clear: it was a fascist tyrant named Adolf Hitler. Americans believed the actions of the Fuhrer were truly despicable and had to be stopped. World War II is easy to understand because there was a clear threat that Hitler would spread his terror across the globe, thus having a direct effect on America. The Vietnam War has been so highly ridiculed in America because of the fact that the lives of American men and American money were spent and thrown away on a war that did not directly affect America. It seemed to cause unjustifiable terror and bloodshed.      This book exposes t...

     In the short story titled "The Thing's They Carried," the most prevalent component in it was the constant listing of things that the soldiers carried. The most remarkable things that O'Brien included in these lists were the figurative things that the soldiers carried. The things the soldiers carried were not only physical burdens, like a M-60 that was 23 pounds, but they were also mental and figurative, like infections or guilt.      O'Brien listed off items and their immense weight that the men carried to emphasize the extreme physical weight that the soldiers had to bear. Perhaps, the physical weight did not consume the soldiers in the Vietnam war as much as their own minds did. During the war, the soldiers were completely isolated from everything that was familiar to themselves. One of the main characters, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, was a victim of his own imagination and guilt. He spent most of the short story fantasizing abo...