Things They Carried While I Essay

Total Length: 615 words ( 2 double-spaced pages)

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Mary Anne becomes obsessed with the war in a strange way. It is as if she sees another kind of life that is so radically different than her own that it consumes her. She seems to be so sweet and innocent at the beginning of the story and at the end she is like an animal that She adopt the Green Beret way of life and becomes one of them in just a few days. She states, "I'm full of electricity and I'm glowing in the dark -- I'm on fire almost -- I'm burning away into nothing -- but it doesn't matter because I know exactly who I am" (121). Mary Anne's change was one that made me think of the war in a way that I never had before because I had never thought of the rituals of war becoming something that someone could become obsessed with and actually want to do. The fact that this happened to a girl made it even more powerful because we always think of the stereotypical girl as being opposed to war - especially fighting in one.

These are just a few examples of why the Things They Carried made me stop and think about a life that could be so different than my own.
It was not the fact that the book was about war - it was how the message comes across. When I read this book, I felt like O'Brien knew me and was trying to tell me something. I wanted to read more even though I do not like war stories. O'Brien was not tryng to capture the world with eloquence; he was trying to tell a story.

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https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/things-carried-while-28244