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Yes because he is a Vietnam War veteran. Proof of this is on page 34 when O'Brien states "I feel guilty sometimes. Forty-three years old and I'm still writing war stories. My daughter Kathleen tells me it's an obsession, that I should write about  a million dollars and spends it all on a Shetland pony. In a way, I guess, she's right: I should forget it. But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present."

-Jackson B

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Yes I think that he is trying to say that war is a twisted place and that it is not the glorified place people make it out to be.

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Yes I think that he is trying to say that war is a twisted place and that it is not the glorified place people make it out to be.

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"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct nor encourage virtue, not suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. 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" (O'Brien, pg 68).

Here O'Brien talks about how war is not moral and that if you here a war story and feel any sort of positive feeling that you have been lied to. Which furthers his argument that war is not a place to be glorified but is a terrible thing.
-Jackson Baschnagel

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I didn't really believe the story O'Brien told about how he almost booked it to Canada and evade the war.

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I didn't really believe the story O'Brien told about how he almost booked it to Canada and evade the war.

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I don't believe this part because it seems to fake to be true and I feel like by the way O'Brien writes he initially liked the idea of war and was a willing volunteer which is another reason I don't believe he tried to draft dodge.
--Jackson B

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O'Brien is definitely in a position where he can talk about the Vietnam War. For he fought in it. He is now a writer, and is writing stories about the war. This can be proved on page 31, "I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and the war has been over for a long while. Much of it is hard to remember. I sit at this typewriter and stare through my words and watch Kiowa sinking into the deep muck of a shit field, or Curt Lemon hanging in pieces from a tree, and as I write about these things, the remembering is turned into a kind of re-happening."

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The author places in certain passages that stick out to the reader in some way throughout the book. He describes the war, not entirely as a bloody battle, but as a spiritual, emotional experience. O'Brien explains that you feel certain ways during the war, that is truly indescribable and sometimes beautiful. "In other cases you can't even tell a true war story. Sometimes it's just beyond telling. It was near dusk and we were sitting at my foxhole along a wide muddy rive north of Quang Ngai City. I remember how peaceful the twilight was. A deep pinkish red spilled out on the river, which moved without sound, and in the morning we would march west into the mountains (Page 68)." O'Briens way of writing is filled with powerful imagery, that really helps the reader visualize his emotions.

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Yes. O'Brien definitely has the acceptable background to speak on the subject of the Vietnam War. He lived it. He was one of the men that suffered through it and survived to write his stories. This is shown through this quote on page 58: "I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to war."

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I do think that he is trying to manipulate our emotions, and I think he succeeds. He does this through his confusing descriptions. In one scene, he will write about a death with a passive depiction that seems as if it is almost commonplace. Then in another scene he details a man's death in ways that are morbid and beautiful all at once. It is surreal. This is shown through O'Brien's portrayal of Lemon's death on page 67: "... I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight. His face was suddenly brown and shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms."

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Yes, for sure. O'Brien was in Vietnam, he was a soldier who fought beside the men these short stories are about. O'Brian even states this on page 58, "I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to war."

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The section where Sanders tells O'Brien of the noises on the mountain seems to be blown out of proportion. The likelihood of that kind of situation is too much too believe. Sanders even admitted to O'Brien later that he had exaggerated the reality of the situation. What seems more likely is that the men on the mountain were hallucinating. That's about it though...

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I do believe that O'Brian is trying to manipulate the readers emotions. He is trying to show you the hardships and lows of war, while also the brief moments that war can be beautiful and peaceful. He needs to manipulate the readers emotions if you are to truly understand Vietnam. A great example of this is when O'Brian describes Curt Lemons Death, "They were just goofing. There was a noise, I suppose, which must've been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight. His face was suddenly brown and shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms". Even though he is describing death there is a certain beauty to it. It is an emotional low contrasted with the high of the beauty.

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Nothing has truly striked me as unbelievable so far. O'Brian has already conceded to the fact that many stories are untrue involving war but based of his own rule none of his stories have held a strong moral or life lesson, they are just events that occurred, no matter how gruesome they are. Also I believe that this book is a form of O'Brian getting things off his chest that he never has before. This is his therapy.

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Yes, O'Brien does have an acceptable background to talk the Vietnam War. From the beginning of the book O'Brien establish ethos by presenting his real experiences in the Vietnam War and reestablishes his credibility with quotes such as "I am forty-three years old, and a writer now, and the war has been over for a long while. I sit at the typewriter and stare through my words and watch Kiowa sinking into the deep muck of a shit field, or Curt Lemon hanging in pieces from a tree,  and as I write these things the remembering is turned into a kind of rehappening." (O'Brien 32)

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Yes, I do think O'Brien attempts to manipulate the readers emotions to help them better understand soldiers point of view. Quotes such as "His face was suddenly brown and shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms." (O'Brien 70) This quote in particular could easily manipulate a reader by describing death and beautiful and using imagery that helps create a "beautiful" scene in which someone has died.

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While reading I had a hard time believing the story about the baby water buffalo. For me it was hard to believe because they really had no purpose to harm the water buffalo is the way they did and I couldn't understand the reasoning behind it. After reading it and understanding the scene I could understand O'Brien's purpose for using it to demonstrate how immune the soldiers had become to pain, suffering and death. With that being said I would not be surprised if I found out all the events that have taken place so far were true.

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Yes, the author does have an acceptable background and credible experience. 

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Yes, the author does have an acceptable background and credible experience. 

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Considering the author is a Vietnam war veteran himself,  I would say that he is a very credible source to be speaking on the subject of the war. He does this by presenting actual real life experiences from the war either by his own accord or from primary sources of people who experienced the war. A quote that shows he is a reliable source is on page 33, when he writes " Forty-Three years old and I'm still writing war stories. . . The thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is your life, at the intersection of past and present (pg 33)." This quote exemplifies the fact that he indeed is taking these experiences from his real life and from people he knows to write these stories and speak credibly on them. He also uses direct quotations often to establish that extra sense of credibility.

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I do think the author is trying to manipulate our emotions.

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I do think the author is trying to manipulate our emotions.

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To me, he really manipulated how I felt when he discussed the emotions that he felt when he got drafted for the war. The imagery and point of view he established put me in a pair of shoes that I have never really imagined before. It gave depth to the soldiers, their actual lives that they had to leave behind, and portrayed his emotions. A passage that really affected me was "I was afraid of walking away from my own life, my friends and my family, my whole history, everything that mattered to me. I feared losing the respect of my parents. I feared ridicule and censure" (pg 42). This passage really affected me both with its simplistic but deep sentence structure, and also from the weight of the words he used.

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I do not know if I fully believe the part where the soldiers were hearing the sounds of the cocktail party. To me, that part just seemed kind of blown up more than it needed to be. They were probably just hallucinating and that was the extent of it. I feel like it was told in a more decorated, story-telling fashion. It just seemed kind of unbelievable to me that a situation like that would actually occur with as much significance as the author wrote it with.

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O'Brien definitely has the ethos to speak with authority on the subject of the Vietnam War. He himself, was a soldier in the Vietnam War and the stories he is telling are personal stories of his fellow soldiers. O'Brien even describes him "[remembering Mitchell Sanders smiling as he told me that story" (34).

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O'Brien definitely has the ethos to speak with authority on the subject of the Vietnam War. He himself, was a soldier in the Vietnam War and the stories he is telling are personal stories of his fellow soldiers. O'Brien even describes him "[remembering Mitchell Sanders smiling as he told me that story" (34).

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Yes, I do think that O'Brien is trying to manipulate our emotions.

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Yes, I do think that O'Brien is trying to manipulate our emotions.

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When O'Brien was getting drafted into the Vietnam War. "Beyond all this, or at the very center, was the raw fact of terror. I did not want to die. Not ever. But certainly not then, not there, not in a wrong war. Driving up Main Street, past the courthouse and the Ben Franklin store, I sometimes felt the fear spreading inside me like weeds.
I imagined myself dead. I imagined myself doing things I could not do—
charging an enemy position, taking aim at another human being."(42). Especially the part about fear spreading inside him like weeds, when your fearful or scared YOU KNOW THAT FEELING. Nobody wants to die and almost everyone has thought about death and understanding his position allows him to better manipulate our emotions.

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I think that the story about the music and parties echoing while they're on top of the moountain is over-exaggerated. From a common sense standpoint, when reading this section, it seems like any sense of joy would be amplified in their perspective, but from a scentific outlook it seems completely unreasonable and far fetched.

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I think that the story about the music and parties echoing while they're on top of the moountain is over-exaggerated. From a common sense standpoint, when reading this section, it seems like any sense of joy would be amplified in their perspective, but from a scentific outlook it seems completely unreasonable and far fetched.

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O'Brien definitely has credibility when it comes to telling war stories. He obviously served in the war because he speaks of witnessing his fellow soldiers die. Take Curt Lemon for example, he says "it happened to me" saying that he watched this happened and he can account for this being a true story, even with the embellishments (67). He speaks of glancing behind his and watching Lemon step aside onto the 105 round on page 67. So he was obviously served and seen things.

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In the chapter "On the Rainy River" he's talking about his choice between deserting or serving after being drafted. On page 54 he switches to saying "you're at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and there's a hard squeezing pressure in your chest." He switches from saying "I" to saying "you." He also says "I want you to feel it," which to me sounds like an emotional manipulation bit. However it's very effective.

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The part about where Lee Strunk and Dave Jenson fighting over a missing jackknife. He punched him in the face right in the nose so many times that it cracked his nose into pieces. I find it hard to believe that this was all over a missing jackknife. Something that trivial shouldn't constitute a shattered nose.

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I dont really find anything as unbelievable. I feel like all the destruction and death that comes with war is unbelievable, but its real, and it feels like i am desensitized to it because of how much i have learned about it.

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"All those eyes on me—the town, the whole universe—and I couldn't
risk the embarrassment. It was as if there were an audience to my life,
that swirl of faces along the river, and in my head I could hear people
screaming at me. Traitor! they yelled. Turncoat! Pussy! I felt myself
blush. I couldn't tolerate it. I couldn't endure the mockery, or the
disgrace, or the patriotic ridicule. Even in my imagination, the shore just
twenty yards away, I couldn't make myself be brave. It had nothing to do
with morality. Embarrassment, that's all it was."(38)
He writes this to show his emotions and to appeal to yours. He writes it in a way where you can relate to it, its not in a war zone, its in america.

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Yes, he does he was in the war. He fought along-side and lived along side and was one of the soldiers in Vietnam. "I would go to the war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was
embarrassed not to." (39)

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After reading the chapters, I do think that O'Brien has a very credible background in regards to the war stories that are being told.  He lets the reader know what is going in within his own mind, which allows the reader to gain some sort of insight on how life was in the war. On page 37, he even states that "For more than twenty years I've had to live with it, feeling the shame, trying to push it away..."

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I one hundred percent think that he is trying to manipulate the readers emotions. On page 36, he states that "stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story," which leads the reader to think that the war is taking an emotional toll on each veteran affected. I think he wants the reader to gain a sense of sorrow when reading this in order to be able to put themselves in the shoes of these men.

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Personally, whenever I read about something that gives off the vibes of being remotely sane and/or happy-feeling, I automatically think "No, there's literally no way." I think that the one thing I've always understood, is that there are very few opportunities as a soldier to be happy-go-lucky and carefree. They have some of the most stressful lives on the planet and I personally find it hard to believe that any of them have the ability to provide themselves with their own source of happiness. In regards to the dinner-party type context, I don't think they truly heard anything of that nature. I feel like they WANT to believe it, but they know that they can't.

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O'Brien is in a position where he can and should talk about the war. He has the authority to speak on the subject because of his experiences in the war, and his vivid memory even so many years after. "Even now, I'll admit, the story makes me squirm. For more than twenty years I've had to live with it, feeling the shame, trying to push it away, and so by this act of remembrance, by putting the facts down on paper, I'm hoping to relieve at least some of the pressure on my dreams." O'Brien is clearly not looking for honor by telling these stories, but a relief from the trauma the war left him with. That makes him credible because even though this is a book, it almost serves as a diary for him, a way to escape these horrors by facing the straight on.

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O'Brien is 100% trying to manipulate the readers emotions by presenting war as something beautifully horrific. He does this by describing feelings and emotions that are hard to put into words, but many people can relate to. For example, on page 72 he says "I could tell how desperately Sanders wanted me to believe him, his frustration at not quite getting the details right, not quite pinning down the final and definitive truth." I think this is something most people can relate to, and it pulls at my heart strings, at least.

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There are no particular stories that strike me as untrue, but it wouldn't surprise me if none of it were true. However, O'Brien tries to get across the fact that sometimes you have to tell lies, make up stories, to truely enrapture the horrors and beauty of war, so I don't think it really matters if it's untrue, because we are still seeing the truth of war.

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Yes, O'Brien has a more than acceptable background to speak about the Vietnam War.

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Yes, O'Brien has a more than acceptable background to speak about the Vietnam War.

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In 1968, O'Brien was drafted to fight a war he "hated" (O'Brien 38). O'Brien watched as people around him died and recounts his and others numerous war stories in vivid detail. O'Brien also asserts details about the war that he would not be able to if he was not a credible source,  such as that "a true war story is never moral" (O'Brien 65).

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O'Brien is trying to manipulate the reader's emotions.

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O'Brien is trying to manipulate the reader's emotions.

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O'Brien goes about telling the book in a way that combines brutality and beauty, highlighting the horrors and highs of war. "It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can't help but gape at the awful majesty of combat...It's not pretty, exactly. It's astonishing. It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not...any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage gas the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference--a powerful, implacable beauty--and a true war story will tell you the truth about this, though the truth is ugly" (O'Brien 77). O'Brien wants the readers to feel what war is to its full extent, not just relay back to their opinion that war is honorable or shameful. He wants the reader to understand all the aspects of it, including the beauty and the levity, along with the darkness and unspeakable moments.

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I haven't found any of it to be completely unbelievable.

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I haven't found any of it to be completely unbelievable.

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The story about the soldiers on the mountain seems a little exaggerated, but I could believe it. I certainly think parts of it are exaggerated but I wouldn't dismiss it completely.

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He does. He was involved in war and understands the trauma and significant effects. He has first hand knowledge on what happened, and his own experiences to tell. "This is a story I've never told before. Not to my parents, not to my brother or sister, not even to my wife." page 37

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For sure. We are all accustomed to a typical story having a sense of moral centered around the theme and a black and white understanding but the author make it clear that is not the case regarding war. War is moralless, We can never understand the horrific things that happen until we go through it. "In many cases, a true war story cannot be believed.if you believe it, be skeptical. It's a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn't." Page: 68

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Honestly I can't say that any story I heard I didn't believe. The battlefield is a traumatic, dark place that we can't even imagine. And just to think of what our soldiers go through and witness seems unreal to us. But it is so real.

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Yes, O'Brein has the qualifications because he was a soldier in the was and had first hand experiences. "It's all exactly true. It happened, to me, nearly twenty years ago, and I still remember that trail junction..." (67)

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I think O'Brein is trying to manipulate our (the readers) emotions so we can get a little closer to understanding what he and all the other men went through. " They don't talk. Not a word, like they're deaf and numb." (72) this quote is an example of the shock soldiers went through. they were so shooken up or frightened they could not talk about it. O'Brein is wanting you to feel how they felt in that moment.

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I believe most of what is happening because like O'Brein said, Its the crazy and immoral war stories that are true. The only part I have a hard time wrapping my head around is the one about hearing music and parties up in the mountains. I think they were exaggerating a lot on that.

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He does have the acceptable background, he was in the war and understands the hardships of combat and the after affects. On page 37 it says " This is a story iv'e never told before...Not even to my wife"

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Yes, i think he does try and manipulate the emotions of the readers because he is writing to get you to understand the feelings and the lives of the soldiers. I think he wants the reader to feel the emotions that they are feeling.

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O'Brien has the acceptable background that gives him the authority on this subject of the Vietnam war, as he is a veteran r and he writes intending to show the explicit truth of war. He demonstrates how the Vietnam war impacted him firsthand, and he even expresses how hard it is to tell a war story. He says "often in a war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn't hit you until twenty years later, in your sleep and you wake up and shake your wife and start telling the story to her, except when you get to the end you've forgotten the point again"(pg.78).This quote demonstrates how he is writing with the background to this subject as he understands how it feels to have been through the war.

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O'Brien is trying to manipulate your emotions throughout the book to demonstrate the complexity behind war, because even he is still trying to comprehend his own idea of what war is. As truly there is nothing that explicitly defines war because it's something that reaches the deepest and darkest emotions of each individual. This is what makes it hard for so many veterans, is after the war the emotional burden stays with you and the idea of how the war itself is manipulative.

"to generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing  is true. At its core, perhaps, war is just another name for death."pg. 77

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I had a hard time believing the story from sanders about the noises the soldiers heard in the mountains. It also just didn't make a lot of sense to me in general and maybe that's why I thought it was unbelievable. I also feel like it was "story-truth" because it seemed like a story that was altered over time, and he didn't personally experience himself

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Tim O' Brien was drafted in the Vietnam war in 1968, when he was 22 years old. He was a combat soldier in Vietnam, and when he returned to America he became an author, describing his experiences throughout the war through his novels such as "The Things They Carried, Going After Cacciato, and If I Die in a Combat zone." He goes in depth on his life as a soldier, and because of his time as a infantryman himself, he does earn the credibility to speak on the Vietnam War. On page 58, he summarizes the next chapter of his life explaining, "I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war." (58)

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It is imperative to O' Brien that he makes his readers understand and somehow feel exactly what the Vietnam soldiers were feeling. He uses mass amounts of pathos in the chapter, "On the Rainy River," describing the tug- of-war struggle inside him on whether to flee the country or stay and fight. On page 54, O' Brien tried to get in the mind of his readers, bringing up that the same questions that were going through his brain at the time. He asks, "What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would you feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?" (54) O' Brien uses repetitive parallel structure, and polysyndeton to make the reader understand the depth of his struggle.

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Mitchell Sanders was explaining a story about a six-man patrol going up in the mountains and were trying to listen for the enemy. Over the course of seven days, the began hearing noises such as chimes, operas, and inanimate objects talking. On page 71, Sanders is explaining to O' Brien in detail, "All these different voices. Not human voices, though. Because it's the mountains. Follow me? The rock-it's talking. And the fog, too, and the grass and the goddamn mongooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, the monkeys talk religion. The whole country. Vietnam. The place talks. It talks." (71) It seemed of the upmost importance to Sanders that O' Brien believed him. He went in so much detail that it began seeming exaggerated, for trees obviously can't talk politics. But you can't blame the soldiers because as stories get passed down, or told, details change. As Mr. Clare explained in his lecture, when placed in such horrific and violent conditions, your brain seems to kind of black out of each and every detail. O' Brien explained this in his chapter, "How to Tell a True War Story." It seems difficult for the soldiers to fully comprehend the magnitude of gore and violence that they are suddenly living in. It brings such a shock to their bodies, sometimes they have to even question the truth.

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Aaron Lipsky - Yes because he lived it. He experienced everything he is referring to, all centered around his main message that there is no good side to war. He can say this with credibility because he saw what war does to people, like when a fellow soldier lost his best friend and mauled an animal just for the sake of doing something to torture another soul. He saw what war does to people.

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Aaron Lipsky - Yes because he lived it. He experienced everything he is referring to, all centered around his main message that there is no good side to war. He can say this with credibility because he saw what war does to people, like when a fellow soldier lost his best friend and mauled an animal just for the sake of doing something to torture another soul. He saw what war does to people.

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O'Brien is definitely trying to manipulate his emotions. One heavy example is when he described the mauling of the water buffalo by a soldier who just lost his best friend, saying "It was still alive, though just barely, just in the eyes (page 76)." This scene is so disturbing and unsettling to me, which is an emotional feeling and was meant to do so by O'Brien.

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It is unbelievable to see just how twisted someone's brain can become by the stress and trauma of war. Soldiers on his platoon blew up a village because they heard music coming from it all day, but when they blew up the village, they still heard the music pounding in their ears. This is an example of madness not even directly started from combat, just music, which came to symbolize the innocent Vietnamese civilians and the rates at which they were being slaughtered.

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I believe that there is a pretty solid basis for O'Brien. His history seems to prove this, with his time spent at Vietnam and his claim of writing to ease the pain. This is not completely stable though, as "the war has been long over [and] much of it is hard to remember now." (O'Brien 31) This gives some unreliability to the stories.

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I do believe that the author is trying to twist the readers' emotions to see the horrors of the war. For example, he likes to place the readers in the shoes of himself. "You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and there's a hard squeezing pressure in your chest." (O'Brien 54). O'Brien uses "you're" to impose empathy upon the reader for the experiences he went through.

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The section where the men hear the noises on the mountain seems awfully unrealistic. As much as it is written to seem real, I believe that this is designed to show how the men would exaggerate things into hallucinations because of the psychological paranoia that came with being on the forefront.

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O'Brien does have the authority to speak about the Vietnam War. He was witnessed many events happen during his time of service. for example, he witnessed one of his platoon members, Lee Strunk, get his leg blown off, noting that how "The stump of his right  leg was twitching. There were slivers of bone, and the blood came in quick spurts like water from a pump" (O'Brien, 62). He saw what no one should be able to see, and he felt what no one should ever have felt: your brothers in arms being killed just for taking one wrong step.

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O'Brien does have the authority to speak about the Vietnam War. He was witnessed many events happen during his time of service. for example, he witnessed one of his platoon members, Lee Strunk, get his leg blown off, noting that how "The stump of his right  leg was twitching. There were slivers of bone, and the blood came in quick spurts like water from a pump" (O'Brien, 62). He saw what no one should be able to see, and he felt what no one should ever have felt: your brothers in arms being killed just for taking one wrong step.

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I don't think that O'Brien is trying to manipulate the reader's emotions intentionally, but he is for sure altering our emotions. There are many instances where his description for what happened (whether that may be before, during, or after the war) to him have been pretty powerful. A great example of this is when O'Brien is with Elroy Berdahl on the small fishing boat on the river, debating whether or not he should escape to Canada or submit to the draft and fight in Vietnam, especially when he says "I tried to will myself overboard. I gripped the edge of the boat and leaned forward and thought 'Now'. I did try. It just wasn't possible . . . And right then I submitted" (O'Brien, 56-57), it represents the trying mental battle he had, whether to save his own skin, be a traitor to his nation and have everyone make a mockery of him, or to fight in Vietnam, save his pride, and have the possibility of being killed.

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I don't think that O'Brien is trying to manipulate the reader's emotions intentionally, but he is for sure altering our emotions. There are many instances where his description for what happened (whether that may be before, during, or after the war) to him have been pretty powerful. A great example of this is when O'Brien is with Elroy Berdahl on the small fishing boat on the river, debating whether or not he should escape to Canada or submit to the draft and fight in Vietnam, especially when he says "I tried to will myself overboard. I gripped the edge of the boat and leaned forward and thought 'Now'. I did try. It just wasn't possible . . . And right then I submitted" (O'Brien, 56-57), it represents the trying mental battle he had, whether to save his own skin, be a traitor to his nation and have everyone make a mockery of him, or to fight in Vietnam, save his pride, and have the possibility of being killed.

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As O'Brien is a Vietnam veteran himself he carries a multitude of credibility with his writing as he is able to share his true experiences and he has a very in depth knowledge of what fighting a war is like. "The war isn't all terror and violence. Sometimes things could almost get sweet. For instance, I remember a little boy with a plastic leg. I remember how he hopped over to Azar and asked for a chocolate bar" (30).

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I honestly was dumbfounded when t O'Brien brought up the water buffalo story. I mean, I can understand the aggression and remorse all of the soldiers had, but I couldn't believe while  Rat Kiley was completely obliterating the poor creature, everyone else just watched, staring at the pure carnage Kiley was inflicting. no intervention, no aid. Just them staring.

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I honestly was dumbfounded when t O'Brien brought up the water buffalo story. I mean, I can understand the aggression and remorse all of the soldiers had, but I couldn't believe while  Rat Kiley was completely obliterating the poor creature, everyone else just watched, staring at the pure carnage Kiley was inflicting. no intervention, no aid. Just them staring.

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O'Brien definitely manipulates the readers emotions as he provides very vivid details of his experiences as a means to reach a sympathetic and caring side of the reader. "I felt isolated; I spent a lot of time alone. And there was that draft notice tucked away in my wallet" (41).

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I find some of O'Brien's experiences with Elroy unbelievable. I find it hard to believe that with how much time he spent with O'Brien at the lodge that he would have offered no insight into O'Brien's decision on weather or not to flee to Canada.

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Tim O'Brien is a direct source of information on the subject of the Vietnam war since his writing and stories are evolved around his experiences and how he personally listened to and witness other stories. He recalls events that have happened to him and how he felt such as when, "The day was cloudy. I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war" (O'Brien, 58).

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O'Brien is most definitely a credible source because he lived and fought in the war and continues to tell many different stories from it. "A true war story is never moral" (68)

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I think O'Brien is definitely trying to manipulate the readers emotions by passing the horrific stories along, down to the smallest details. ""I tried to will myself overboard. I gripped the edge of the boat and leaned forward and thought, Now." But his use of "manipulation" isn't used in a malicious way, he's trying to get the point across that war stories are not something to be taken lightly.

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The author is definitely trying to manipulate our emotions by sharing all the traumatic memories he's had from the war and after the war, how he felt, and he is sharing those emotions with us giving us a sense of sorrow and empathy for all of the fear and pain he expresses. When he says "And I want you to feel it --- the wind coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. You're at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and there's a hard squeezing pressure in your chest. What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?" (O'Brien, 54). He isn't just expressing the pain he felt, he asked us as an audience, what would we do? How would we feel? and that takes us deeper into our emotions trying to figure out how we personally would handle a life-changing experience such as this.

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I haven't read anything that doesn't necessarily seem untrue to be. Even the things that do come off as being a little embellished are used for what I think are good reasons. It all goes back to the second question of him manipulating the reader into understanding the seriousness of war stories and any grey areas overall have good intentions.

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For the most part, there are stories in this book that may seem exaggerated or twisted, but in ways that make sense because O'Brien went through some mentally challenging events that may have caused some illusions, seeing how he would rather see it, etc. Personally I believed them all, it's his story, the way he wrote it and his point of view. Although, when he talked about how he "saw the faces from [his] distant past and distant future" (O'Brien, 56) I found it hard to believe he knew the faces of people he hadn't even met yet such as his "unborn daughter."

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The author, O'Brien, definitely has an acceptable background to speak about the Vietnam War and all of the hardships that everyone experienced because he was actually there. O'Brien was a soldier in the Vietnam and witnessed his fellow soldiers fight and die. He, like many others, knows the trauma it caused being there and a part of the war. "In June of 1968, a month after graduating from Macalester College, I was drafted to fight a war I hated. I was twenty-one years old. Young, yes, and politically naive, but even so the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong" (O'Brien 38).

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I do think O'Brien is trying to manipulate our emotions in this book. He does with the purpose of trying to get us to understand the scary and overwhelming emotions that came over him when put in this situation of fighting for something he was not even willing to fight for. He shows us this when explaining how he just wants to "run" and escape to Canada. "Twenty yards. I could have done it. I could’ve jumped and started swimming for my life. Inside me, in my chest, I felt a terrible squeezing pressure. Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it---the wind coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. You're at the bow boat on the Rainy River. You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and there's a hard squeezing pressure in your chest. What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood in your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?" (O'Brien).

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In my opinion none of the stories really strike me as unbelievable, but more so exaggerated at some points. For example, when Rat was shooting the baby buffalo with the intent of just torturing it while everyone watched. Then how he elaborates that Rat was whispering into the animal's ear and it lay silent. It just seems like for Rat to treat the baby buffalo in that way with everyone staring and them him to leave crying, doesn't make a lot of sense.

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I think O'Brien is trying to appeal to our feelings and this is the quote I picked to represent that "I was afraid of walking away from my own life, my friends and my family, my whole history, everything that mattered to me. I feared losing the respect of my parents." (pg. 44-45) That was right after he found out he was going to be drafted and he goes through everything he's feeling. I thought this quote was important because he's saying how scared he is and I feel like everyone would be feeling that way, it's just a very relate able chapter.

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The quote I picked to represent O'Brien's credibility to write about the war is "Stupidly, with a kind of smug removal that I can't begin to fathom, I assumed that the problems of the of killing and dying did not fall within my province." (pg. 41) This quote is a little weird for this but I picked it because he was going on and on about how he didn't support the war and then his life was complete turned upside down by it. I just felt like him hating the war and then having to fight in it just gives him a unique perspective to write about.

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I don't feel like anything was unrealistic but I've also never been in any situations similar to what hes been through so it's a little difficult to judge

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O'Brien definitely has an acceptable background to write about the war because he fought in it.  "In June of 1968, a month after graduating from Macalester College, I was drafted to fight a war I hated"(pg. 38).

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I think that O'Brien is trying to manipulate the reader's emotions. They way he describes some of the deaths/injuries, like Strunk's, is meant to make you feel what Strunk and Jensen were feeling at that time, which it did.

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I think the story of the men on the mountain is somewhat fabricated. Those men had been living in total silence and had probably started hearing/hallucinating things.

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Yes, as a Vietnam War veteran he is perfectly justified in writing TTTC. He states himself on page 58,  "I was a coward. I went to war." And beyond that, he had close connections to many of the other soldiers in Vietnam so he has their validity and stories as well.

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He is definitely trying to stir up your emotions throughout the book. For example, when talking about Rat's letter to his dead friends sister, "A tremendous human being, Rat says. Pretty nutso sometimes, but you could trust him with your life. And then the letter gets very sad and serious. Rat pours his heart out." In that moment you could truly feel the heartbreak of the moment. Even if you've never been to war and watched your friend die, just by listening Rat talk about his friend and how the guy was his best friend in the world, you can't help but just cry a little inside. Because everyone has that one friend who you just couldn't stand to lose. And then he further provokes your emotions when he says the sister never wrote back. "I write this beautiful f***** letter, and what happens? The dumb cooze never writes back."

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I think the only story that has seemed a little unbelievable was the one about the 6 soldiers in the mountains hearing music. I doubt there were full on operas and symphonies out in the middle of Vietnam in the middle of a war. However, I do believe that maybe the soldiers were driven mad because of psychological damage from the war in general, or the fact that they had to stay completely silent for days on end with the eminent threat of death looming over them, and you couldn't joke your worries away.

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Yes of course Tim O'Brien has an acceptable authority to speak on the Vietnam war he was a veteran of the war. Proof of this is on page 38 where it says "In June of 1968, a month after graduating from Macalester College, I
was drafted to fight a war I hated. I was twenty-one years old. Young,
yes, and politically naive, but even so the American war in Vietnam
seemed to me wrong. Certain blood was being shed for uncertain
reasons." He fought in the war and he became very close with his platoon to the point where he has the authority to write about their stories as well.

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Yes Tim O'Brien is most definitely trying to manipulate your emotions towards war and military systems such as the draft. He wants us to understand it's ruthlessness and how things such as war and the draft do not discriminate. This is especially evident on page 41 when he explains how he felt after he received his draft notice. "I remember, it was tough getting dates that summer. I felt
isolated; I spent a lot of time alone. And there was also that draft notice
tucked away in my wallet."

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Most of the things in the story so far seem true to me. The only thing I remember that is a little iffy is the scene with the music on the mountain. I think that they must have been going crazy and hallucinating or something like that.

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Yes, O'Brien most definitely has the acceptable background and authority to speak on the Vietnam War as he is a Vietnam veteran and many of the stories being told are his personal experiences. As O'Brien states on page 36 "the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering it makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for." This goes to show that O'Brien's insight into the war and memories are important for us to view, as their stories bring us into their world and what they experienced, expanding our view on the topic.

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O'Brien manipulates emotions throughout the novel and this can be seen his reaction to his draft notice. He pushes the idea it was not fair for him to be drafted into this war, but also that he was just plain scared, as "Beyond all this, or at the very center, was the raw fact of terror. I did not want to die. Not ever. But certainly not then, not there, not in a wrong war" (Page 42). O'Brien is getting the audience to sympathize with him and his message that he doesn't deserve to die for this cause, and also he connects with the audience on an emotional level through expressing his fear of death, as many can sympathize with this.

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He absolutly can speak with authority on this subject. He is a Vietnam war veteran, and throughout the book, not only tells stories from his friends point of view, but also his own. This verifies that he was heavily involved in the war and has first hand experience with all of the subjects he speaks about. For example, on page 66, O'Brien says " In any war story, but especially a true one, its difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen." In this quote, O'Brien is speaking directly to the audience, and we can assume that he has the authority to direct the readers on "How to tell a war story" because just before this passage, he is sharing a first hand experience which once again, validates his knowledge on the subject

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I do believe that O'Brien is trying to manipulate out feelings, but not necessarily in a bad way. To make the readers truly understand what he was going through at this time in his life, the author uses intense and vivid imaginary, as well as lending his own inner thoughts to further an explanation as to why he feels the way he does. One example can be found on page 39: " I remember opening up the letter, scanning the first few lines, feeling the blood go thick behind my eyes. i remember a sound in my head. It wasn't thinking, just a silent howl". This extensive use of imagery is followed by O'Brien's own inner thoughts at the time, such as "I was too good for this war" These two combined, force the reader to be placed in the authors shoes and empathize with him.

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While I don't believe that any of the stories so far have been completely fabricated, it seems as though a few have been exaggerated. An example of this is the story of the mountains singing and sounding like a cocktail party, which was told by Mitchell Sanders. While Sanders likely believed the story played out like he told it and some sounds did possibly come from the mountains, hallucinations and anxieties likely made the sounds more prevalent for the platoon.

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I honestly wasnt sure how I felt about the party they heard from the mountain. I'm sure that the hallucinations they probably experienced must have been horrible and seemingly realistic, but being able to hear an entire cocktail party with the martini glasses ans everything, seems a little embellished. It was a well done passage and adds a lot to the atmosphere of the setting, but it just seems fabricated at times.

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Absolutely he does; O'Brien is a veteran of the Vietnam War. O'Brein experienced doubts about the war's purpose, was immersed in the immense violence, lost comrades in arms, and interacted with the land that is Vietnam.On page 77 of The Things They Carried, O'Brien states that "to generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true. At its core, perhaps, war is another name for death, and yet any soldier will tell you, if he tells the truth, that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life. After a firefight, there is always the immense pleasure of aliveness." Who better than a soldier of that war to state the surges of emotion that occurs on a battlefield. He did not
support the war, but like many, he fought in it out of shame and necessity.

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O'Brien simply has to manipulate readers in order to properly express the horrors and contradictions found within war. Every soldier is a brave man protecting others, and yet there is the coward-like relief of not having to be the one to clear a tunnel. They are perhaps going against some morals in fighting a war while fulfilling others in the same action. There is beauty even in the worst deaths. And every life is filled with love, violence, apathy, and empathy; the soldiers live a life is devoid of normality, or perhaps "normal" is replaced, but it also has an overabundance of every contradiction war can imagine. There is relief in a bullet hitting a friend instead of oneself and the immense corresponding grief and guilt. "It happened, to me, nearly twenty years ago, and I still remember that trail junction and those giant trees and a soft dripping sound somewhere beyond the trees. I remember the smell of moss. Up in the canopy there were tiny white blossoms, but no sunlight at all, and I remember the shadows spreading out under the trees where Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley were playing catch with smoke grenades."  Lemon's death in the Vietnam War was filled with a certain innocence with the puerile act of playing catch with a smoke grenade. A weapon made to disconcert enemies before an attack was used for fun between two young soldiers. In that innocent game with beautiful surroundings, Lemon stepped on a detonator and died in a turmoil, which had become a normality of sorts. War is filled with intense contradictions, and emotions have to be manipulated in order for readers to grasp that reality.

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In this story, there are many things that I'd rather not believe to be true, but that does not change their reality. I wish that soldiers did not take out aggression, grief,  and unease upon puppies, water buffaloes, and other innocent lives, but I know that the apathy required towards the lives of the enemy ranks expanded in certain soldiers, in order to deal with the war.  Innocent lives were shattered not as collateral, but as a coping mechanism. It isn't moral nor just, but I believe it to be fact. What I don't believe is that nobody in a platoon would voice objections to such abuse, for there must be other ways of coping.

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O'Brien definitely has credibility and an appropriate background to speak efficiently on this subject being that he himself is a Vietnam Veteran. He was there with these people and experienced the things discussed in the book. "I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and the war has been over for a long while. Much of it is hard to remember. I sit at this typewriter and stare through my words and watch Kiowa sinking into the deep muck of a shit field, or Curt Lemon hanging in pieces from a tree, and as I write about these things, the remembering is turned into a kind of re-happening." (pg 31) Although he may have trouble remembering some of the details, he talks about how he gets flooded with memories and this is what prompts his writing.

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Although it is hard to pick up on when an author is trying to manipulate a readers emotions, I think this devise is rather clear when he is talking about the death of Curt Lemon. He understands that the story would have less of an emotional appeal had Lemon died brutally and painfully. Rather, he incorporates imagery appealing to the  readers senses. "They were just goofing. There was a noise, I suppose, which must've been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight. His face was suddenly brown and shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow- waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms." (pg 67)

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As of yet I haven't found anything in particular which seems to be unbelievable because O'Brien seems to be pretty credible. However, there was a scene that seemed to be overly exaggerated which stood out to me. It was the scene on the Rainy River when he was talking about all of the people he envisioned on his countries coastline. He may just be very imaginative but the way he portrays what he saw is unbelievable.