No Title: The Biography of William Timothy O'Brien
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Alexandra Leigh Kalafut
No Title: The Biography of William Timothy O'Brien
Middletown High School
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William Timothy O'Brien has become known as an American greatest author. His works
have inspired many by expressing the hardships and terrors faced by those who partake in war.
His collection has amounted to about twenty six short stories and novels, all representing the
Vietnam war and others like it. However, it was not always Tim O'Brien's dream to peruse
writing and certainly not to partake in the war itself.
William Timothy O'Brien was born on October 1, 1946 in the small town of Austin,
Minnesota. He was named after his father, William T. O'Brien, a salesman and his mother Ava
O'Brien was a schoolteacher. In many interviews, O'Brien describes himself as shy and lonely as
a child since he had difficulty making friends. He attended Macalester College in St. Paul and
upon graduation was drafted into the Vietnam war. Although he considered refusing the draft,
O'Brien changed his mind after considering those fighting with much worse conditions than his
own. Tim O'Brien served in the third platoon for two long years and even participated in some
of the world's most memorable battles, including My Lai. After being affected by the disasters
of My Lai he was awarded the Purple Heart and resigned from war. Once he was back home, he
attended Harvard for graduate studies and became a news journalist. Timothy O'Brien used
many of his own wartime experiences, settings and other situations in his writing, like Ernest
Hemingway.
Ernest Hemingway, also one of America's most influential writers, has been known as a
symbol of O'Brien's writing style. Like Tim O'Brien, Hemingway participated in a war that
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changed his outlook on his work. He signed up for World War I when he hit the age of eighteen
to support the soldiers in the medical field. After injury in the front line, he was sent back home
where he began writing his many famous pieces of our time. Both Tim and Ernest share the
same ability to express the horrors and first hand experiences of the front line. This is why
many critics claim O'Brien to be representing Hemmingway's choose of style.
Timothy O'Brien is most famous for his ability to inform the reader of the war and its
devastating events indirectly through his own experiences. The authors audience is those
interested in the war and pursuing it as a career. He is most famous for giving the audience a
vivid outlook on the events that take place. The stories, in which Tim creates makes the reader
almost feel as though they were a part of the gruesome events as they unfolded. For example,
In the Things They Carried, Tim explains when the soldiers lose his temper after being exposed
to his friends death. Unable to handle himself, Tim explains this soldier taking out his anger on
an innocent buffalo, mangling it to the point where it was unidentifiable as a previously living
creature. These epic events unfold the underlying truth within the Vietnam War.
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References:
Horst, F. 21 April 2011. Ernest Hemingway- Biography. The Nobel Prize of 1954.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1954/hemingway-bio.html
Holt, Reinhart and Winston. Tim O'Brien. Tim O'Brien- Author Biography.
http://eolit.hrw.com/hlla/authorbios.html
O'Brien, T. 1990. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books.
Quentin Miller, D. 2011. Tim O'Brien Biography. Tim O'Brien's Biography: York, Vietnam, Stories,
and Press. http://biography.jrank.org/pages/4637/O-brien-Tim.html
Hulse, Caroline. 1999-2011. Ernest Hemingway. The Greatest of Writers: Ernest Hemingway.
http://www.ernest.hemingway.com/