Preview

Similarities Between The Things They Carried And The Hollow Men

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
358 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Similarities Between The Things They Carried And The Hollow Men
In “The Hollow Men” and the story excerpt “The Things They Carried” both authors, T.S. Eliot and Tim O’Brien, utilize similar techniques such as imagery and tone, while having a different purpose for writing. In the poem “The Hollow Men,” T.S. Eliot apples imagery and tone to help his audience apprehend how life without a purpose proves to be a waste when the world's final hours are close. As for in the excerpt, “The Things They Carried”, the author uses his techniques to demonstrate the toll that war can have on a person and how it causes some individuals to lose themselves. For the author, Eliot, to illustrate his main idea in “The Hollow Men,” he uses imagery. For example, in the first stanza Eliot writes, “…Our dried voices, when / We

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, the author uses symbolism in order to show the soldiers emotional and physical burdens they carry. For example, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from this woman he loved named Martha, everywhere he went in his backpack. Also, another example of the symbolism, Kiowa, another soldier from the story, carried around a New Testament that his father gave to him. And the final example of symbolism is when soldier Ted Lavender died, Jimmy Cross was emotionally and physically beat up. The story shows the symbolism in an indirect way, which is what makes the story unique. O’Brien really shows the physical, but mainly, the emotion burdens/ baggage all of the soldiers have.…

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Images that are used to create feeling. They help us experience the words with our five senses. Touching, smelling, hearing, tasting, and seeing are used in The Most Dangerous Game to create imagery. This sentence is a perfect example of astounding imagery “It’s so dark,” he thought, “that i could sleep without closing my eyes; the night would be my eyelids--.” The setting of the story is immediately given. When you read this sentence, you can imagine how dark it is by actually closing your eyes like Rainsford and experience how dark the night sky really was. Another example of imagery is, “The hunter shook his head several times, as if he were puzzled. Then he straightened up and took from his case one of his black cigarettes; its pungent incense like smoke floated up to Rainsford’s nostrils.” You can smell the incense like it was right in front of you. You can imagine the smoke rising in the air as Rainsford breathed it in. You can also sense the nervousness and suspense, and suspense is a reader’s favorite…

    • 625 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The first example of imagery is on the first page first sentence:” It was a dull autumn day and Jill Pole was crying behind the gym.” The narrator simply starts the reader imagining a sort of sad day sometime between August and December. Behind the gym assuming it is like an alleyway of some sort. With a character crying causing the reader to believe that the character is upset.…

    • 121 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In poem the imagery job was to put reader in the shoe of the young white narrator. Imagery allowed reader to come to a conclusion of why would narrator think like she did. An example of this were in line nine through ten, where narrator claimed that IQ the African American man had a casual, cold, alertness in his eye as if he planned to may her. Another examples is line twenty six through thirty one, as she explained how man can break her back like a stick maybe for vengeance on people that are breaking his.…

    • 280 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Richard Wilbur's Juggler

    • 285 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Imagery is used in multiple points around the text and is possibly the most important poetic element. For instance in the text the speaker uses imagery such as “the boys stamp, the girls shriek, and the drum booms…” by adding this imagery the author is showing how caught up in the action everyone is. This quote reveals the atmosphere…

    • 285 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried, applies multiple techniques in his memoir in order to produce the theme of horror in war. He utilizes word connotation, literary/rhetorical techniques, sentence structure, and overall structure in the memoir. In an excerpt on page 199, O’Brien employs the combination of anaphora, metaphor, and negative word connotation to illustrate the horror of the Vietnam War.…

    • 492 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As evident by the title of this poem, imagery is a strong technique used in this poem as the author describes with great detail his journey through a sawmill town. This technique is used most in the following phrases: “...down a tilting road, into a distant valley.” And “The sawmill towns, bare hamlets built of boards with perhaps a store”. This has the effect of creating an image in the reader’s mind and making the poem even more real.…

    • 2400 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Things They Carried

    • 517 Words
    • 3 Pages

    “The Things They Carried” By Tim O’Brien was a short story based during the Vietnam war that was hard on a soldier named Jimmy Cross and his platoon called alpha company , This story is about the physical objects they carried that had emotion and significant meanings. O’Brien uses physical objects that the soldiers to show the emotion burdens that resulted from being in and at the war. Soldiers carry items to remind other times and places other than there currently situation.…

    • 517 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Crossing the Swamp

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages

    At the beginning of the poem, there is a use of cacophonic sounds of “branching vines.” “Burred faintly belching bogs” are used to describe the ugly sounds of the swamp as the character takes a step forward; which only add more to the misery and struggle of the speaker. The repetition of the word “Here”” is also very unique because it is emphasizing the location of where the character is being tortured by having to walk into this swamp of misery and struggle. There is another sound the speaker describes “that sink silently on to the black slack earthsoup” (lines 20-22). This diction considered as imagery, because it is making a comparison between the swamp and earthsoup.…

    • 507 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    An author commonly uses literary devices in their text to both interest the audience, and to create a bigger depth to their work. In “The Things They Carried”, there are a few different elements Tim O’Brien uses to captivate his audience. Imagery, symbolism, and theme were a few of the devices he chose to use in this work. Throughout the story, he explains what the men carried, and by doing so, created a depth to this story that wouldn’t have been shown otherwise. The things they carried were of importance to them, as well as important to explaining their story and their life at war.…

    • 1172 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Things They Carried

    • 1437 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Kiowa is in awe of Lavendar’s death because he was the only one to see it happen. He and the others realize that death can take them at any time, even when they think they are safe. Kiowa could not get his mind off the event and repeats the story to the other men, revealing his thoughts and fear of death. In order to deal with death, he dehumanizes Lavendar by comparing him to cement, thus making death seem less personal. Even though Kiowa is portrayed as not feeling emotions, it is this detachment from death that enables him to hide his fear.…

    • 1437 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Things They Carried

    • 731 Words
    • 3 Pages

    For the era of the Vietnam War, it was definitely most advanced in technology. Yet it was almost impossible for the soldiers to overcome the war because there were no war limitations. The combats were more horrendous and petrifying in the Vietnam War. The soldiers also worried about the weather, land, viruses and more important their selves. The many physical and physiological factors of war multiplies the burdens of stress on the soldiers. In The Things They Carried, the soldiers had a duty of fighting two wars at once, an external war and an internal war.…

    • 731 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Things They Carried

    • 656 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien continuously uses repetition of talking about the items the soldiers carry mentally and physically to show the burdens of war. Each item O’Brien talks about tells a little about each character and what fears they try to escape from. An example would be “Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr.Scholl’s foot powder as a precaution for trench foot.” (O’Brien pg.1) Jensen carried these things so you could be very clean and sanitary this what his break to get away from the chaos that the war brought. All the soldiers have a common fear of death or being seen as a coward during many hardships of the war. To get away from all the pressure and terror war brought each soldier had their own way of coping.…

    • 656 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Things They Carried

    • 638 Words
    • 2 Pages

    “War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.” O’Brien would say the Vietnam War was a negative experience for those involved because soldiers struggled with the loss of others, coping with those losses and witnessed graphic death scenes at the ages of 18-23. The Things They Carried is a book written by Tim O’Brien that contains semi-autobiographical stories about the men that served in the Vietnam War and O’Brien’s experiences during that time.…

    • 638 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    A literary technique is a device employed in literature to add depth to a writer’s work. These techniques can be obvious, such as the technique of rhyme in a poem, or subtle, such as juxtaposition, which can go unnoticed by the reader. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses many such techniques to provide more depth to his book. Four literary techniques used by Tim O’Brien are symbolism, pathetic fallacy, irony, and juxtaposition.…

    • 1287 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays