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\input mla8
\numberfirstpage
\name{Holden} \last{Rohrer}
\prof{Jones}
\clas{AP Lang}
\header
\title{Rhetorical Essay on {\it The Things They Carried}}
% Rhetorical Analysis in __ minutes
Tim O'Brien's {\it The Things They Carried} is only topically about the
Vietnam War. Throughout the book, he often tells stories directly, but
will afterwards analyze it through the lens of why he wrote that or will
tell a story while at the same time delivering a series of philosophical
messages and questions about his own storytelling, from his own and the
reader's point of view, and about how this bleeds into other components
of his life. O'Brien uses fanciful language to emphasize that ``unreal''
stories and dreams and ideas are philosophically equal to ``real''
experience.
This excerpt follows that pattern to connect the material and the
immaterial. O'Brien describes his dreamlike state as a ``spell of
memory and imagination'' with what would be impossible qualities in the
material world like ``no brain tumors and no funeral homes.'' This mist
of thought is meant to make this place seem magical because O'Brien is
trying to convince the reader that this imaginative trance and by
equivocation stories in general are a sort of window past the horror
that is war and the human condition.
But O'Brien doesn't imply that all stories are tonally fanciful like
his with Linda. Because even those in this book aren't; his war stories
about Lemon and Lavender are sense horrific and a type of pointless
that O'Brien talks about in {\it How to Tell a True War Story}. He does
imply that, at their core, every story has this wonderful ability. In
the true story that's never happened, where a group of soldiers are on
patrol, one jumps on a grenade, but they all die anyway, O'Brien's
telling has a fanciful, ridiculous humor to it. O'Brien says that this
story is true because it explains the emotions that he and his comrades
experienced.
The idea that the emotional core of a story matters most is a central
theme here because it means that a story can exist with equal value
regardless of its source. And O'Brien uses ridiculousness and
impossibility to achieve this end: bringing someone back after death or
calling a dead Vietnamese child a ``crispy peanut'' are ridiculous, but
their binding to reality---to the war or to O'Brien's life require the
reader to recognize that these stories are just as valid regardless of
which parts of Kiley's tale of the Sweetheart on the Song Tra Bong
really happened.
%% 32:35.
This last chapter provides the most examples of wondrous language
because the story is itself wonderful. O'Brien describes his love with
her as deep and adult-like and talks about the great swells of emotion
he felt when he was around her. The experiences he has in his dreams,
like the birthday party with a grandiose cake, and the ``thrill and
mystery'' he feels about seeing her in his dreams, lead the reader to
a conclusion that follows from the immaterial being philosophically
real: wonder and fancy are very much parts of ``real'' life. The war
stories where the men cope with the dead by playing it up as if the
people were objects or as if they were still alive are extensions of
this fancy. O'Brien uses fancy to compel the reader into believing that
the immaterial and material are the same because its allure is so
powerful. %%44:55
\bye
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