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Example research essay topic: Things They Carried Playing Basketball - 1,178 words

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William Timothy O'Brien was born on October 1 st, 1946 in Austin, Minnesota. He planned on having a good career, and to follow in the foot- steps of his parents. His father, William, was an insurance agent, and his mother, Tim graduated from high school, and then went on to college to continue his education. At the age of twenty-two, he was drafted into the United States Armed Forces to fight during the conflict in Vietnam. Tim was less than thrilled. Being a soldier in the Army was not something that he saw himself doing.

He saw himself being a writer, trying to earn himself a good living. As he wrote in one of his stories in the book The Things They Carried, a week before he was supposed to be shipped out to boot camp, he took his car and drove up North. He spent about four days there, wondering whether or not he should flee to Canada, which was only about 15 yards away from where he stood. He ended up going back home, because he didn't want to be known as a coward.

He didn't want to go to Vietnam. There was a lot of what we would now call "peer pressure." There were many anti-war movements going on, and they also made it very hard on a new soldier. They were wondering if they were making some big mistake. There were those who wanted to fight, and then there were those who didn't care if they went, or not. Then there were those who knew in their hearts that it was the biggest O'Brien served in the Army from the year 1968 through 1970, during which time he earned the rank of sergeant. He also received a Purple Heart, from an injury that was sustained during the time he spent in Vietnam.

After he returned home from Vietnam in 1970, he decided to finish off his college education at Harvard University. He went on to become a writer, and also a national affairs reporter for the Washington Post. A few years later, he was a teacher at the Breadloaf Writers Conference, in Tim O'Brien is very well known for his fictional, yet still very emotional, accounts of the Vietnam war. He bases his writings on his own experiences, and those experiences not only reflect on what he may have felt physically, but also emotionally, and mentally.

Many soldiers who returned from the battlefields had emotional problems to accompany their already mixed-up feelings. The following statement was taken from The Progressive, December "Besides the well-deserved guilt and shame and anguish evoked by the- war, Americans can take rightful pride in two great national achievements: The anti-war movements, and the other is the great literature that was produced One of O'Brien's' novels, The Things They Carried, was one of his more emotional books. Filled with a collection of short stories, this book "carried" much more than the usual blood-and-gore tales found in books relating to war. He described his feelings as he killed one man: "A young man came out of the morning fog, " he read. "I did not hate the young man. I did not see him as the enemy. I did not ponder issues of morality.

I haven't finished sorting it out, " he added. "Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don't. " (The Things They Carried). The Things They Carried referred to to things that a soldier will remember forever. Maybe they weren't all physical items, but things such as fear, exhaustion, and memories. In Times Literary Supplement, Julian Loose described this book as "a style that combines the sharp, unsentimental rhythms- of Hemingway with gentler, more lyrical descriptions which give the reader a shockingly visceral sense of what it felt like to tramp through a booby-trapped In the chapter entitled "Notes", O'Brien explained everything in further detail. A main character in all of the stories in The Things They Carried was a man named Paul Berlin. "Paul Berlin" was a fictitious name...

used to protect the privacy of a man named Norman Bowker. Norman Bowker was a soldier, a man who had to suffer through many flashbacks and midnight sweats. Norman Bowker was a major influence on Tim O'Brien's writing. He was one of Tim's best friends, and he was suffering through a very hard time. As a teenager, Norman was a very happy, and outgoing person. He made friends easily, and had plenty of them, too.

He had plans of going to college, and he didn't even mind when he got drafted into the Army. He basically looked at it as a way to That is why Norman's family was rather surprised at how he was affected by the war. When he came back from Vietnam, he wasn't the same person at all. His physical appearance was altered drastically, but he wasn't very mentally stable anymore. He wasn't outgoing anymore. He kept to himself, playing basketball by himself, hours at a time.

He did keep in touch with a few of his friends that he met over in 'Nam, but other than that, he was very much a loner. Norman Bowker was someone that O'Brien considered a good friend, as he wrote in "Notes." He was someone who had not been able to recover from his Vietnam experience. Bowker spent every day after his return to the United States at his local YMCA playing basketball. He had a major problem. He felt that he had "no meaningful use" for his life after the war. He tried many different jobs, as a attendant at a car wash, and working at the local fast food joint.

None of his jobs lasted very long, and he felt "useless." He lived with his parents, and although they were very supportive, he felt like they viewed him as a failure. He wrote many letters to O'Brien, telling him how he was doing. In one letter, a letter which covered seventeen full pages, "My life. It's almost like I got killed over in 'Nam. Hard to describe. Or getting his back clapped by a bunch of patriotic idiots who don't know jack- about what it feels like to kill people ot get shot at or sleep in the rain or watch your buddy go down underneath the mud?

Who needs it?" He later wrote another letter to O'Brien, and this is where O'Brien got his inspiration for The Things They Carried. Below is an excerpt from the letter: "What you should do, Tim, is write a story about a guy who feels like he got zapped over in that [expletive]. A guy who can't get his act together and just drives around town all day and can't think of any damn place to go and does not know how to get there anyway. This guy wants to talk about it, but he cannot... If you wan't, you can use the stuff in this letter. (But not my real- name, O. K. ? ) I'd write it myself, but I can't ever find any words.

Something...


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Research essay sample on Things They Carried Playing Basketball

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