Shanahan AP Lit

"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien is written in a very fragmented fashion, with many short stories pieced together to form an overall story arch. O'Brien wrote his novel like this very deliberately, because it reflects one of the central themes of his book: the uncertainty of war. Numerous times throughout the novel, O'Brien comments on how nothing is as it appears in war. He states that everything that is true is a lie, and that every lie is the truth; essentially, nothing is as it seems. I believe he emphasizes this point so heavily for two reasons, the first of which is in a more literal sense. When fighting for one's life, things become a blur, and it becomes very hard to keep track of everything going on around oneself. Because of this it's borderline impossible to know for certain what really happened out on the battlefield, as soldiers in many cases don't actually have eyes on the events that are unfolding or look away at the last second,...

In "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, the horrors of war are discussed at great length. O'Brien (the protagonist) repeatedly tells horrific stories of his time in Vietnam, many of which he still hasn't gotten over, as evidenced by the fact that he attempts to distance himself from his war memories in the first chapter. Instead of using a first person point of view like he does throughout the rest of his novel, O'Brien uses third person to both make the reader feel more in-touch with how horrendous his experiences were, while at the same time attempting to evade any feelings of guilt by refusing to even comment on said experiences. A great example of this is in the chapter about the man that O'Brien supposedly killed. O'Brien (the narrator) repeatedly gives the reader a more and more detailed description of the dead man's appearance and fabricated past, while O'Brien (the protagonist) doesn't have any of his thoughts on the matter in ...

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie uses the short stories from her novel The Thing Around Your Neck  as a medium for her to express her thoughts on certain subject matter/issues. One of the issues that she addresses quite a few times is parenting. Rather than giving her outright opinion on such a controversial topic, she uses the plot of her short stories to do so for her. In  Cell One , the parents of the spoiled boys who were in gangs and causing chaos in the college town openly wondered what could possibly be causing so many problems. These parents were so over-indulgent that their kids had grown up to believe that they could do whatever they wanted, and their parents were too naive to think that their own children were criminals (mainly because of the lack of discipline instilled in them). The other end of the parenting spectrum is shown in the short story  On Monday of Last Week . We see through the eyes of a Nigerian nanny how over-protective a white Jewish man name...

In Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's collection of short stories titled  The Thing Around Your Neck , physical appearance has a monumental impact on the fortunes and lives of numerous protagonists. Through the plot of her stories, both the negative and positive impacts of having good looks in life is put on full display. The first example of how an attractive appearance can give someone an advantage in life is shown through Nnamabia from Cell One . Nnamabia is an immature young man who steals jewelry from his own mother and hangs out in gangs that terrorize local residents. Because of how dashingly handsome he looks though, his parents let him off the hook every time with no serious punishment. Another instance of looks working in one's favor is in the form of Nkem from Imititation . Nkem grew up in poverty on the streets of Nigeria, but because she was very beautiful, a rich businessman decided to marry her. Her appearance was able to single-handedly lift her from a life of destituti...