Smith AP Lit

     While reading the last chapter "The Lives of the Dead", I wondered why O'Brien didn't finish his book with a story from Vietnam because that is what most of the other stories were about.  After the discussion in class though, I realized he didn't end it with a war story, but rather he ended his book about love, guilt, fear, and remorse with death.  I thought that was so symbolic especially after Ben brought up the last sentence of the first chapter: "He might just shrug and say, Carry on, then they would saddle up and form into a column and move out toward the villages west of Than Khe" (25).  The west symbolizes death, and O'Brien was basically setting the reader up to read a book filled with life, love, and pain all to be ended with unescapable death.       The story in the last chapter about Linda and O'Brien's love for her when they were only nine years old also caught my attention because it didn't seem to fit in with the rest...

     While the story “Good Form” was one of the shortest and simplest, I feel it perfectly summed up what truth means to O’Brien in his stories.   He said, “I want you to feel what I felt.   I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth” (171).   O’Brien goes on to tell the story about the man he witnessed die, but then says the “story-truth” is that he killed the man.   I believe that in some cases, such as this one, emotions speak louder than the facts.   What a person feels in the moment is his or her truth, and for the sake of sympathy and emotion, the “happening-truth” does not seem to matter all that much.   With this comes a fine line, though.   To what extent can a person believe a story solely on the emotions of the storyteller?   Do you not question the validity of the story because the storyteller pours so much emotion into it?   When O’Brien told the story about the man he killed, I nev...

     Many authors are able to make the reader feel specific emotions throughout their books, but I feel that O'Brien has done something special with his writing.  As I have been reading, I noticed that I started to have physical feelings, specifically due to his use of cataloging and repetition.  In the first chapter, O'Brien included many lists, some longer than others, that seemed to go on and on.  A key part of these lists was that he did not use the conventional noun then comma and then noun again, but rather he used the word "and" in between the items listed.  Both of these literary devices created paragraphs that delivered a feeling of heaviness.  As I read, I felt weighed down, and it gave me a feeling of burden almost.  O'Brien successfully uses the lists to convey his message that the men carried so much more than just their physical objects, and the things they carried inside weighed a lot more than the other items that now seem sup...

     In the first chapter of The Things They Carried, I noticed the immense amount of symbolism that Tim O’Brien included.  First of all, the title itself is so meaningful in that O’Brien did not just want to list off everything the soldiers carried, but rather he wanted to share with the reader the things they carried inside and the things they could not stop thinking about.  Throughout the chapter, the narrator, also named Tim O’Brien, lists physical things the men carried, but he included the weight of each item.  Most of these weights were fairly large, especially if you had to carry the items around all day.  I noticed the symbolism when he talked about the meaningful things they carried, such as pictures, letters, or small objects sent from home.  O’Brien also gave the weights of these items, which had no comparison to the size of the guns, rations, radios, and other war items.  Yet these items had the...

     After reading all the stories in The Thing Around Your Neck, I kept going back and thinking about the symbolism and meaning in the story “Imitation.”   The chapter starts off with Nkem learning that her husband may be cheating on her, but it is important to note that she is staring at the Benin mask the whole time.   There are many masks around the house that Obiora, her husband, collected.   I think these masks symbolize Nkem’s life for many reasons.   The first is that Nkem says she wonders what life is behind those empty masks, and by the end of the chapter, she can’t remember where her life had gone.   She too became an empty mask that was lifeless behind it.   The second reason the masks relate to Nkem’s situation is that she said she wondered if the people behind those masks that had to kill people for the king wished they didn’t have to kill and that maybe they could have a say.   Those people represent N...