The Things They Carried an Example of the Topic Literature Essays by

The Things They Carried The Things They Carried is a novel describing the War in Vietnam as seen by a soldier who is both the narrator and the protagonist of the 22 stories that make up the book. Although the events are fictional, it is worth noting that the author, Tim OBrien who is also the narrator/character was deployed in Vietnam, so the descriptions of events and people are done using very realistic details, a technique called verisimilitude, which gives the novel a sense of authenticity. Women appear to play a small role in the novel but in fact they are crucial both to the story and the character. Present or not, named or unnamed, the role of women is incredibly important to understanding not only the novel itself, but particularly the characters. Thesis statement: the women in The Things They Carried are idealized by men and this ideal image is seen as a means of surviving the war, but in the end, their ideals are shattered by reality. Need essay sample on "The Things They Carried" topic? We will write a custom essay sample specifically for you Proceed Students Very Often Tell EssayLab support: Who wants to write essay for me? Specialists propose: Entrust Your Essay Paper To Us And Get A+ Custom Essay Review Review Essays For Money Do My Online Classes For Me Cheapest Essay Writing Company The title of the book is actually the title of the first story of the novel, a compelling description done by 21-year old soldier Tim OBrien, of the equipment that the average American soldier carried during the Vietnam War. In the end, the list is enlarged to encompass not only military equipment, but also the hopes, dreams, and fears that each young man carried into battle. The weight that the soldiers drug through the mud is thus not only physical, but deeply emotional. The women in The Things They Carried do not seem to have thoughts, fears, and feelings of their own. They are idealized and their imaged serves as a kind of solace from the atrocities of war; they represent what is outside their world, i.e. the battlefield. In fact, their presence is sometimes invoked, in the sense that with the exception of Mary Anne Bell, the rest of the female characters - Jimmy Crosss girlfriend Martha, Linda, OBriens first love, Henry Dobbinss girlfriend etc are not actually there; they are present through memories, photographs and stories (Bloom: 23). In the end, Jimmy Cross realizes that his love for Martha is not sustaining, but destroying him; he needs to leave his love for her behind which leads him to burning her letters (Posek). In fact, OBrien later explains his belief that in order to fill the emptiness in ones life, one must let go of some of the things that he may think he needs; in other words, the excessive burdens that weigh him down must be left, and only then can they become like the soldiers in their dreams who gave themselves over to lightness, they were carried, they were purely borne (OBrien: 22) (Posek). Mark Fossie brings his girlfriend from back home, Mary Anne Bell hoping that he could reconstruct their relationship and continue it during the war. She is de-idealized during the war because she loses her femininity and becomes more of a soldier than any of the male combatants. She arrives dressed in "White culottes and a sexy pink sweater" which was a very traditional outfit for a woman (O'Brien: 90) and is presented wearing cut-off blue jeans and a swimsuit top that was black (OBrien: 95) which made her attractive in the eyes of the male characters. Her shift is drastic; upon her arrival she is not only unprepared for war but also appears quite unwilling to become involved in the actual combat. Nonetheless, she becomes very fond of military paraphernalia and even blackens her face with charcoal and carries around an M-16 (OBrien: 102). Also, she stops using cosmetics and adopts a masculine look: "No cosmetics, no fingernail filling. She stopped wearing jewelry, cut her hair short and wrapped it in a green bandana"(OBrien: 98). Moreover, in the end she leaves Mark. Thus the loss of femininity along with her decision to leave mark destroys the ideal that was centered on her. In the case of Henry Dobbins, who carries his girlfriends pantyhose with him as a connection with the outside world, more precisely with his life back home, the love for his unnamed girlfriend is the element which gives him hope and something to look forward to during the war. His idealized memory of her is shattered when, upon returning home, she breaks up with him (Bloom: 27). Nevertheless, his experience with the war and the fact that he survived it determine him to hold on to the pantyhose and think it will still bring him luck. During the war, Jimmy Cross carries pictures of a girl he only went out with once; again, the love for Martha is what keeps him going and gives him something to look forward to, i.e. being with her. And again, upon returning home, Jimmy is faced with the impossibility of winning Marthas heart. Linda, the narrator/protagonists first love from the fourth grade represents a slightly different kind of idealized feminine image. She represents Timmys first experience with love: It had all the shadings and complexities of mature adult love, and maybe more, because there were not yet words for it, and because it was not yet fixed to comparisons or chronologies or the ways by which adults measure such things. I just loved her. (OBrien: 228); symbolically, on their first date they see a war movie; this establishes a deep connection between love and war, one that is recognizable in all the other romances too. Also, the fact that Linda had died establishes an inextricable link between love and death (OGorman), one that later develops and results in an implicit conclusion that in fact, the two are the same thing (OGorman) when Linda appears in one of Timmys dreams and tells him to stop crying and that death does not matter. Perhaps more significantly, Linda, their love, is the first in stance when OBrien the writer and narrator wants to write and immortalize a moment in time, a memory, a feeling: And as a writer now, I want to save Linda's life. Not her body her life. (OBrien: 236). The difference compared to the other romances is not only the naivet of their love, but also the fact that ironically, death is what keeps her image idealized in Timmys mind: I loved her then and then she died. And right here, in the spell of memory and imagination, I can still see her as if through ice, as if I'm gazing into some other world, a place where there are no brain tumors and no funeral homes, where there are no bodies at all. (OBrien: 246) His implicit conclusion at the end of the novel is that war only brings destruction, both in terms of actual war casualties but also in terms of those who survive the war whose lives are ruined and whose potential is never fully realized because of war trauma: If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. (OBrien: 68). His characters are victims of their own idealizations which never fully materialize simply because life is never ideal. Most importantly perhaps, a big part of the emotional burden that the men are forced to carry with them during combat consists of being forced to abandon ones individuality: You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted or believed in. (OBrien: 211). Even after the war, the psychologic al burdens of the former soldiers continue to affect them, and to them romantic rejection and failure are added; some of the soldiers, as OBrien tells us, have no one to share the pain and grief with, and are unable to come to terms with the experience of the war. Thus one can assume that this collection of war stories is OBriens therapeutic method of dealing with the past and contributing to others understanding of it as well. References Bloom, Harold. The Things They Carried: Summary and Analysis. Bloom's Guides: The Things They Carried. Infobase: 2005. p. 20-71. O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1990. OGorman, Farrell. The Things They Carried as Composite Novel. War, Literature & the Arts. An International Journal of the Humanities Posek, Jacquelyn. The Paradox of Necessity in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. Fresh Writing 1997.

Dante essays

Dante essays Upon meeting Dante in the zone of the sodomites, Brunetto Latini tries to convince him that he should follow the path to earthly fame and glory. This is an especially tempting proposition for Dante, whose role models have achieved that goal. The danger is that this would become his sole aim, and he would lose sight of what should be the highest of human goals, the union with God in heaven. The main point of Brunetto's argument is to try and convince Dante that he should pursue fame on earth and do it by means of poetry, not politics. He tells Dante to follow his "star...to reach a glorious port (line 55/6)." He also says that "Heaven so favors you [Dante] (line 59)," by which he implies that he is destined for success on earth, during the "happy life (line 57)." He urges Dante to stay out of politics by referring to the politicians of Florence as a "malignant, thankless rabble (line 61)" as well as "greedy, envious, and proud (line 68)." He encourages Dante to "stay untainted by their habits (line 69)," thus encouraging him to avoid politics at all costs. He, like Farinata degli Uberti, tells of Dante's future exile, but unlike Farinata, Brunetto assures Dante that he can still achieve earthly fame. Not only that, but Brunetto also implies a certain obligation on Dante's part, for "Heaven's favor" is his. Temptation for Dante becomes a factor when Brunetto begins mentioning honor. With the line "Your destiny reserves for you such honor.... (line 70)" Brunetto tells Dante that he is destined to have honor/fame. One must remember, however, that the use of the word "honor" in the Inferno was used the most in the description of the inhabitants of Limbo. It was these inhabitants, especially Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, and Virgil, that Dante most admires and was very honored to be made one of (the poets, that is, not a member of ...

Discuss the view presented by Nasim and Sushil (2011) that managing Essay

Discuss the view presented by Nasim and Sushil (2011) that managing change invariably involves managing paradoxes and in partic - Essay Example This view of organisation change’s reality indicates a postmodernist oncology, where change remains fluid and elusive. As a result, to understand it demands acknowledging and accepting its dynamic, fluid nature. Managing changes requires managing paradoxes through a postmodernist ontology with postconstructivist epistemology because of the existence of diverse types of changes, resistance to changes, and narratives for attaining individual and organisational changes. The paradox of change lies in the postmodernist ontology with postconstructivist epistemology. Postmodernist thinking on the study of being views reality as a combination of different ways of seeing. The study of organisational changes has intersected various concepts from diverse fields, such as child development and evolutionary biology, and yet not many scholars have integrated them in a systematic manner (van de Ven and Poole, 1995: 510). Poggie (1965: 284) remarks on the paradox of knowing reality: â€Å"A w ay of seeing is a way of not seeing.† One epistemological view of reality is one way of not seeing reality through another perspective. van de Ven and Poole (1995: 511) urge for an interdisciplinary approach to seeing the reality of organisational change: â€Å"It is the interplay between different perspectives that helps one gain a more comprehensive understanding of organisational life, because any one theoretical perspective invariably offers only a partial account of a complex phenomenon.† They promote a postmodernist view of seeing and knowing the reality of organisational change because it enriches its understanding. Furthermore, the paradox-of-change approach uses postconstructivist epistemology using competing theories to explore and to illustrate it. van de Ven and Poole (1995) offer a typology of process theories that examine how and why change happens in social or biological units. These are life cycle, teleological, dialectical and evolutionary process theor ies. These four theories stand for essentially different event chains and generative components that they called â€Å"motors† to depict the processes and causes of changes (van de Ven and Poole, 1995: 511). van de Ven and Poole (1995) stress that organisational change do not neatly fit only one of these process theories because some conditions can stimulate interdependent changes across different organisational elements. They stress the complexity of changes: â€Å"Even though each of these types has its own internal logic, complexity and the potential for theoretical confusion arise from the interplay among different motors† (van de Ven and Poole, 1995: 534). The paradox of changes arises from the reality of spontaneous effects of changes, anticipated or otherwise. Sturdy and Grey (2003) criticise the one-sided view of organisational change management (OCM) discourses that emphasise stability over changes. They offer different views of changes using discourse analysi s. They conclude the need for using different lenses in understanding changes and in attaining effective changes. Hence, this essay finds it useful to see changes from a postmodernist view of organisational reality and knowledge. The paradox of change and continuity affects different kinds and stages of changes. Managing changes in different types of changes require balancing change and continuity. Nadler and Tushman (1989) examined diverse large-scale organisational changes and provided several insights and generalisations. They reviewed