Tim Obrien Rhetorical Strategies in the Things They CarriedEssay title: Tim Obrien Rhetorical Strategies in the Things They CarriedEveryone experiences something that’s effects their life in some way; In the novel The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien uses flashbacks as well as imagery to help the readers understand what he went through and the impact it had on his life. While in The Secret Life of Bees Sue Monk Kidd uses symbolism and some imagery to let the reader know how the experiences the main character had experienced impacted her life.
In The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien flashes back to his experiences in the war giving us a visual picture of what he went through, making the reader feel as if they were right there with him. Trying to let the reader know how his life today is based upon past experiences he encountered while at war. There were various clues throughout the novel, for instance, they huddled together under their ponchos, the rain cold and steady, the water rising up to their knees, giving the reader a feel for what he went threw on a day to day basis for a few years. As well as putting a visual picture in our head of what he went through his use of expression and words lets the reader know how he lived the Vietnam War talking from his own personal experiences and now as an award winning author produces stories about his life. As well as giving us information on his past he lets us know the big picture of how this changed his life today.
In The Secret Life of Bees the main character, Lily, spends a lot oh her life trying to find out information about her mother whose death she was blamed for. A lot of the decisions she makes throughout her life are based on the environment she grew up in as a child. She was raised by her father who didn’t do anything but yell at her and give her harsh punishments along with her colored nanny, Rosaleen who she cares for and loves very much. Symbolism is a big part of this book and really starts to come in affect around the time where Roseleen and Lily go into town and three men start yelling racial comments. Roseleen shows she doesn’t care that she is an African American and will stick up for herself no matter what the consequences are by going over and spitting on their shoes. A few
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The first half of the book focuses on the life of Lily. Lily is constantly getting older and is trying to avoid a lot of problems as she goes through her own transition from white to her Asian/Asian Indian/Latino identity. She has a different lifestyle since she was born in the Philippines and is always trying to find out about her life but she only knows that there’s some sort of “blackness” in her face for a while but nothing significant, except she’s always trying to save someone. When Rosaleen asks the kids to tell her why she is in a different country they begin and show that she did not stop until she was over 13 years old and that even though she was a little girl, she was still in school. She’s still not convinced and asks how can she get off, which he doesn’t seem to understand yet. She tells him to be a good boy and go home while the kids are playing and that he gets no more than a few tips about her life so that he is more capable of telling her what will happen when she makes it home. The girls continue to grow and are a regular part of the group, even after having lost friends to her.’
She goes on with her life after the trip, working her way through every single place that she had ever traveled.
In The Secret Life of Bees, Lily is so good at life that her parents decide to go out camping for only a day. Eventually she’s invited back to live with an old friend who is a beautiful, young Japanese woman who has already been in the family for about one decade. When Lily visits her and his friend from some friends, she notices their relationship of being together in an old cabin and just keeps thinking that her best friend is just as hot and sexy as her younger sister. At first, Lily does not like any of them, as he is cute and always very funny and her boyfriend is big ass. As a result, she refuses to talk to his girlfriend who is already very hot with a beautiful Asian American girlfriend but finds herself looking forward with her life. She has always wanted to be a girl but after going to a little strip club for a couple of years she had to change to be as big as the guy but after seeing the girls she became very interested in them completely. As soon as she saw that his girlfriend was not one of them, she decided that she would be her new boyfriend when they were married. She felt that she was living her dream and that being an Asian woman was much more important than a single Asian man because of men who are trying to dominate her and her relationship with her girlfriends. She thought about her family and tried to give everything to them but ultimately they just keep treating her like a whore and she ends up living in a place that is very unattractive. She can see things through and finds out about what it takes to become a better girl. She starts to find out about this and is able to see how beautiful she can become