O'Briens intent

O'Brien in writing in The Things The Carried about his friends in the Vietnam War. He is creating a real person for the reader inner eye, they seem to be alive. Even though he doesn't write a full story, he creates little memories of the persons, and with every little short story he is adding a bit more information for the reader, to complete the image. He wants that the reader to "dream along [...] and [that] memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head." (O'Brien 218) His intention is to keep memories alive.

Socratic Seminar Questions for 11-11-10

1. Do the stories in The Sorrow of War follow O'Brien's definition of true war stories? If not what is Bao Ninh's definition of a true war story?
2. Why does Kien tell war stories?
3. Why does Kien see writing the novel as his duty?
4. What are the similarities and differences between Phuong and Linda?
5. Why do soldiers disrespect corpses? What does this signify?
6. Why is it significant that Kien's nickname is "Sorrowful Spirit"?
7. Why is it significant that both Kien and O'Brien see their lives in rivers?
8. Why does Bao Ninh choose to switch between points of view in The Sorrow of War?
9. Do Foxholes represent safety or danger in The Things They Carried? Does this differ in The Sorrow of War?
10. What Motifs does Bao Ninh use?

Socratic Seminar Questions, Wednesday 11/10/10

1. What opinions are expressed of absolute occurrence compared to story-truth in The Sorrow of War?

2. What is the importance and effect of ghosts in The Sorrow of War?

3. Why do O’Brien and Ninh include women in their novels? How do women influence the novels?

4. Why do O’Brien and Ninh create settings or characters that give soldiers an excuse to behave a certain way? Why is this important?

5. What literary devices are used to represent the jungle as a character in The Sorrow of War and The Things They Carried?

6. How is the idea of aging or time passing shown and reflected in The Sorrow of War? What examples or literary techniques represent this? Why is time important to any war novel?

7. Both Bronte and O’Brien used authorial distance in their novels. How is this used in The Sorrow of War?

8. What is the form of The Sorrow of War? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the style for the reader and the writer?

9. Discuss the differences of the opinion of war between Americans and Vietnamese.

10. Discuss the similarities of characters between The Things They Carried and The Sorrow of War. Why are so many similarities found between the books?

O'Brien's Intent

O'Brien articulates his primary purpose in writing "The Things They Carried" in his final story "The Lives of the Dead". In the opening line of this reflection, the author declares that "stories can save us" (O'Brien 213). O'Brien condenses his essential intent in this statement and further maintains that his stories "can revive...that which is absolute and unchanging" (O'Brien 224) in the characters he depicts (including himself). O'Brien's purpose of "[keeping] the dead alive with stories" (O'Brien 226) is manifested throughout the novel in characters such as Ted Lavender and his propensity to resist the war with tranquilizers. O'Brien recounts Rat Kiley's story of Curt Lemon trick-or-treating, adding that "to listen to the story...you'd never know that Curt Lemon was dead" (O'Brien 227). Ultimately, O'Brien intends to animate important figures who were lost to Vietnam and preserve the crucial aspects of both himself and his comerades.

O'Brien's Purpose

O'Brien writes The Things They Carried to keep the characters alive. By telling these stories, he creates the image in our mind of a specific person. From that image, emotions grow inside us and we become attached to that character. When that happens, the person becomes alive. O'Brien writes that he "want[s] to save Linda's life. Not her body- her life." (O'Brien 223) When Linda is written about by O'Brien, she lives on.

The reason that the entire combination of short stories are put together is not to save just the characters in those specific stories, but in the end, it's to save O'Brien. "I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life." (O'Brien 233) The idea of infusing all the stories together is to keep everything that makes up Tim O'Brien, alive. By making this novel, O'Brien has become alive in all of us.

Response: "What is O'Brien's purpose in writing this novel?"

O’Brien tells stories in The Things They Carried to honor the dead by keeping them alive. The Linda in O’Brien’s head describes being dead as “being inside a book no one is reading…all you can do is just wait and hope that somebody’ll pick it up and start reading” (O’Brien 232). O’Brien states that writing is about remembering which will “leas to a story, which makes it forever… [writing joins] the past and the future” (O’Brien 36). Remembering keeps people alive even if they are no longer physically alive.

O'Brien's Purpose in Writing TTTC

O’Brien had many motivations to write The Things They Carried, but he states his most integral purpose in "The Lives of the dead”. O’Brien wrote this novel in order to keep the memory of loved ones lost. In "The Lives of the Dead" , he explains Linda, whom he loved, but who died of cancer at age nine. After Linda’s death, O’Brien would dream of talking to her, and she tells him that to be dead is like “being inside a book that nobody’s reading” (O’Brien 232). O’Brien writes The Things They Carried in order to create a book that will be read by everyone, and not only occasionally. Therefore, everyone can experience reading about Linda as she was before she died, as well as all the other characters in the novel who died in the war. O’Brien however has an additional motive to writing this novel, but one that he does not quite admit to. O’Brien does “not look on [his] work as therapy” (O’Brien 152), however he would not have had such an easy “shift from war to peace” (O’Brien 151) if he had not been able to release built up memories and remembered mistakes through writing stories. He states “the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse” (O’Brien 152). O’Brien writes not only to keep his memory strong of the dead, but also to not become overwhelmed with the grief of the death and slaughter he witnessed in his time in the Vietnam War.

Tim O'Brien , of course , had many different reasons to write "The Things They Carried ," but one of my opinions is that Tim O'Brien wrote the novel as a set of instructions for all future story tellers. He wrote the novel to tell people "how to tell a true war story ," (O'Brien 64). This title is deceiving because it could be perceived as how to determine the validity of a war story but in my opinion the title is suggesting how to physically tell a true war story. Instructions are given throughout the book , for example , O'Brien states that "you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you," (O'Brien 66). Searching for the truth in a story cannot embarrass you but telling a story can. The truth behind the novel is irrelevant because the stories are merely there to direct the reader how to physically tell a war story.

Tim's Purpose for TTTC repost

Tim O'Briens purpose for writing "The Things They Carried" is to save himself. Tim's writing leads him through memories that "might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse" (152). Norman Bowker hangs himself a short while after the war. The war traumatized Norman to the point of taking his own life. Through the stories Tim creates he is able to resolve his emotions. All the traumatic memory Tim experianced he turns into stories. Tim saves himself from death by writing "The Things They Carried". He relieves the burdon of all the emotions he carries from Vietnam by writing continuously.

Response: "What is O'Brien's purpose in writing this novel?"

O'Brien wrote this novel in order to "remember" or rather show himself and the reader that which is worth remembering. According to O'Brien, "sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future" (O'Brien 36). By saying this, O'Brien is describing how he writes in order to remember how we got here. This suggests that he believes that how we got here matters. As he says later in the book, “if the answer matters, you’ve got your answer” (O’Brien 79). He is saying that if it matters whether a story is true or not, if one would feel cheated if it wasn’t, the story itself doesn’t actually matter. But if it’s meaningful whether it’s true or not, then it’s a true story even if it never happened. Thus, even though he reveals that the entire book may or may not be true, he is showing that it still matters, that people should still know and remember these things. Again, later in the book he says "by telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths" (O'Brien 152), describing how the act of remembering and the act of writing can make one see them in a new light, and makes one see the "certain truths" that are in the story. In other words, storytelling is for looking back on what happened before, separating what matters from what doesn’t, and remembering that which is important.

Why Did O'Brien Write TTTC?

Tim O’Brien writes The Things They Carried to “make past things present” (O’Brien 172). He is writing his stories “as Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story” (O’Brien 233), meaning that O'Brien uses writing as a door to his happier, simpler childhood memories, and well as a coping device for the more complex, traumatic memories of the Vietnam War. He writes to preserve and express the memories of his lost loved ones, including his childhood self. Kiowa, Ted Lavender, Linda, Curt Lemon, as well as memories of other members of the platoon and young Timmy are preserved within Tim’s various stories in the novel. Tim believes that stories can bring people back from the dead. He says that being dead is like “being inside a book that nobody’s reading…up on a library shelf…safe and everything, but the book hasn’t been checked out for a long time” (O’Brien 232). The memories of his old friends are “checked out” and appreciated every time one of O’Brien’s stories are read or told. Through his writing, O'Brien makes sure that his friends are never forgotten.

Why Tim O'Brien wrote TTTC

O'Brien's novel is essentially a collection of war stories. In the beginning he tells us the purpose of writing stories, that "Stories are for eternity,when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the stories." (O'Brien, 36) However, we later discover in "Lives of the Dead," that there is a personal motive to this ideal on stories. In "Lives of the Dead" he writes "but this too is true: I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still here, I keep dreaming Linda alive...In a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile, and sit up and return to the world." He admits stories keep the dead alive; at least the memory of them. So yes, this novel is a collection of war stories, but they are Tim's war stories. By telling his stories, and his friends' stories, they will never die for stories are for "eternity." In his closing paragraph, Tim says " I'm young and happy. I'll never die. I'm skimming across the surface of my own history,... I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story." (O'Brien, 233) Tim's purpose in writing TTTC is to "save" his life, forever.

O'Brien's Intentions-Estrella

O’Brien states as a writer it is his job to save Linda and “Timmy’s life with stories” (O’Brien 233.) O'Brien writes to preserve himself. He writes to keep himself alive so he will never truly die. He is a writer because it is his duty to 'carry' on soldiers lives and his own. After he dies people will still be listening to his lectures and reading his stories. He will re-live through his stories after he is dead. He also re-lives through his stories now by writing them. He 'carries' on memories, truths and lies which will still be carried on after he dies. 'The Things They Carried' is a symbol for why he writes. The things the soldiers carries will be carried on from soldier to soldier, just like he wishes his life will be after he dies.

O'Brien's Purpose For Writing the Novel

O'Brien tells stories to attempt to bring the dead back to life, but he publishes these stories in a novel to immortalize himself. At the end of the novel O'Brien clearly reveals that he keeps "dreaming Linda alive [,] and Ted Lavender too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man [he] killed", "but in a story, which is kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world" (O'Brien 213) (O'Brien 213). For Linda, Ted, Kiowa, and Curt, he dreams them into stories so he can see and love them again; whereas for the man he killed, his dreaming is a coping mechanism to bring the man he killed back to life and show his regret for what he did. O'Brien has a separate more selfish motive for publishing the novel, to make himself immortal. Although O'Brien is not yet dead he will be some day, and by sharing these stories he can make the dead "sit up and return to the world" (O'Brien 213). The entire novel is in first person through the eyes of Tim O'Brien himself, and at this point millions of people are telling his story to themselves and others because of the novel. In the last paragraph O'Brien reveals that this is in-fact a motive, claiming that " [he's] young and happy, [he'll] never die" (O'Brien 233). O'Brien also specifically states that he is young, because The Things They Carried tells of Tim's life, but also Timmy's. O'Brien does "realize it is Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story", by bringing him back to life every time his story is told (O'Brien 233).

O'Brien's Purpose

O'Brien's purpose is controversial. However, there are two main reasons O'Brien wrote this story. The first reason is to immortalize people, not only victims of the war, but people whose lives have been unjustifiably taken from them like Linda. By telling their stories in his book, O'Brien makes the characters "come to life". In the "Lives of the Dead" short story, he says, "But this too it true: stories can save us. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda alive. And Ted, Lavender too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed and an old man sprawled besides a pigpen, and several others whose bodies I lifted and umped into a truck. They're all dead. But in a story, which is kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world." (O'Brien 213). By writing (dreaming) about the dead he brings them back to life and allows people to be aware of them, making their characters immortal. The second major reason is O'Brien uses it as a form of therapy, or in his words, "clarity and explanation". In the story "Notes", O'Brien says, "...the act of writing had led me through a swirl of of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain." (152). So, by writing, O'Brien and the reader can better understand the war and O'Brien can acquire the comfort in clarity.