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The things they carried narrative
The things they carried narrative
The things they carried narrative
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A lot of people change because of some tragic event or some mishappening in their life. They become more responsible, feel guilty and regret their behavior in the past. A friend of mine started taking care of his business after his father's death and stopped being an irresponsible jerk. He feels guilty about not having a good relation with his father. Whereas, the story "the things they carried" is about the fantasies, fears and desires and dreams of the soldiers. For instance, Ted lavender was afraid of death. Jimmy cross dreams about the girl Martha and lost his consciousness sometimes while marching and sitting. He also had some wild fantasies about her. He is a careless officer who doesn't pay any attention, no matter how hard he tries. He felt guilty about the death of his coworker Ted lavender. Ted died of a sniper shot in his head and that was the day irresponsible, daydreamer and careless jimmy changed into more responsible man focusing on war.
In the beginning of the story jimmy cross was a dreamer and dreams about dating Martha. The author writes, "He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire" (409) telling us about the small world of dreams jimmy has made in the surroundings of war. In the nights he holds the picture of Martha and rejoice every moment he spent with her. He keeps thinking about the little things which might have improved his chances with her. This is supported in the lines "He remembered kissing her good night. Right then, he should've done something brave. He should've carried her to her up the stairs to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that knee all night long." (411), this also supports his carelessness towards his duty and risking life of others with him.
There were sixteen other soldiers who just march from sunrise to sunset, and they don't even know what the next step holds for them. The author writes, "After five minutes, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross moved to the tunnel, leaned down, and examined the darkness. Trouble, he thought- a cave- in maybe. And suddenly, without willing it, he was thinking about Martha.
One of the first women introduced to the reader is Martha. Martha is Lt. Jimmy Cross's love interest, even though she has only ever considered him as a friend and nothing more. O'Brien's uses the story of him and his misguidedness to show how the soldiers were completely separated from the war. After the war is over, the soldiers returned home attempting to get back to their normal lives. But as was shown with Cross and Martha, it didn’t turn out that way. Trying to cope with all the death that he found in Vietnam, Cross does not believe that Martha isn't a virgin and believes that they still could have a life together. This was meant to be a comfort and safety mechanism when he was possibly faced with rejection and death all around him. It got to the point that it was all he thought about up to Ted lavenders death. Trying to rid himself of the guilt he “burned Martha’s letters. The he burned the two photographs… He realized it was only a gesture… you couldn’t burn away the blame” (O’Brien 23) This shows that he knew that his obsessions with Martha is what lead to the death of ted Lavender, and even when he reali...
In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the readers follow the Alpha Company’s experiences during the Vietnam War through the telling’s of the main character and narrator, Tim. At the beginning of the story, Tim describes the things that each character carries, also revealing certain aspects of the characters as can be interpreted by the audience. The book delineates what kind of person each character is throughout the chapters. As the novel progresses, the characters’ personalities change due to certain events of the war. The novel shows that due to these experiences during the Vietnam War, there is always a turning point for each soldier, especially as shown with Bob “Rat” Kiley and Azar. With this turning point also comes the loss of innocence for these soldiers. O’Brien covers certain stages of grief and self-blame associated with these events in these stories as well in order to articulate just how those involved felt so that the reader can imagine what the effects of these events would be like for them had they been a part of it.
The things they carried, by Tim O'Brien. "Oh man, you fuckin' trashed the fucker. You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like fuckin' Shredded Wheat." I chose to start off my essay with this particular extract from the book because I think that it very much represents the story in itself. Azar said this, after Tim (supposedly) killed a Vietnamese soldier with a hand grenade. It shows that in times of war, how callous men can become. However, callousness varies, whether they choose to be apathetic, like Tim shows us after his grenade episode.
By allowing the reader the "[privilege of] the soldiers experience" (Chattarji) it shows how difficult it is to get rid of the weight as begins to define you and the more it becomes a part of a person the harder it is to remove an aspect of yourself. In his repetition, O'Brien wants to give readers a deeper meaning into the everyday struggles of soldiers. He portrays the ways that soldiers were effected in the war and focused on the burdens that developed. O'Brien highlights how war changes those involved as "[the individual dreams of soldiers rise and fall and] their hopes riddled by disillusionment, their fantasies broken by shrapnel edged realities" (Timmeran). Wartime altered soldier’s perception and caused them to develop these emotional and physical weights that followed them for years. When many solider returned they were now stuck with daily burdens that had started since the day they landed in Vietnam. Constantly, these soldiers endured the long lasting results of participating in the war and unable to escape or forget the weight that they endure. "The Things They Carried" serves as a constant reminder to readers about the true realities of soldiers and the impact of war. How soldiers are not stable as they return home because of these weights that have become a part of them and how simple acts such as carrying around a weapon has now manifested itself into an emotional burden that will not leave. Often the realities of being a soldier are not portrayed accurately but O'Brien attempts to put into perspective what it really is like to go through warfare by drawing on his own experiences as a foot
The text reveals that the soldiers have a hard time with the death of ted lavender. For example, they describe ted’s death as if he just ‘’flat fuck fell’’— [The things they carried] The lieutenant cross felt the pain of losing one of his men and he blamed himself for it. One of the characters Kiowa explained how fast it had been. The guy had dropped like so much concrete.’’ Boom – down like cement’’. The lieutenant cross felt the pain of losing one of his men and he blamed himself for it.
To begin with, both Lieutenant Cross and the boy in “Araby” showed a level of immaturity by acting the way they did towards the girls they loved. In “The Things They Carried” Cross touched Martha’s left knee while they were at a movie. He constantly thought about that moment and was completely obsessed. His obsession is evident in they story when it states “Right then, he thought, he should’ve done something brave. He should’ve carried her up the stairs to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left knee all night long” (O’Brien 936). Misinterpreting such a simple gesture and turning it into a sexual fantasy shows immaturity. In “Araby” the boy also made more of a situation than it actually was in reality. When he finally talked to the girl he was obsessed with, he took the conversation the wrong way. She expressed to him that she was not able to attend the bazaar because she had to go to a retreat. He responded “If I go, I ...
The story, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is both a story of love and a story of war. But more than either of those types of stories, The Things They Carried is a story of losing one’s innocence. Innocence is the idea of not knowing the horrors of the world. The horrors of war and the horrors of heartbreak. When people are born they are born with an air of innocence, they believe in the good in the world as they do not yet know of the evils. As people grow up they lose their innocence, the learn of violence and of war and of the hate of other people because they are different, they also learn the pain of heartbreak. All of these things tears the innocence away from people, some people lose their innocence younger than others. For Lieutenant
In Tim O' Brian's, The Things They Carried, he talks about the Vietnam War and it's effects country. O' Brian uses the psychological approach to tell the sorrows of war . The things that they carried had all represented a part of each soldier. In the days of the Vietnam war, they did not expect a woman to fight in a war. The story is better understood because the reader knows the background of the story and the characters personality. The thought was just unacceptable and definitely not normal. The two methods of interpreting a story fused together brings about a great understanding of the characters and the event which is about to take place. The deceitful interpretations presented, the things they carried, and a transformation of a dainty girl that turns into a survivor are examples of each method presented.
... ahead of his men ever again, the letters he carried were only ten ounces but probably felt like a 1000 pounds. The morning after Ted was shot, Cross-burned his letters and even though he knew that he would always remember Martha, it meant a passage a lifting of the burden. No more wanting at night, no more wishing he was with her, no more letting his men die because of his love. He decided that he would become straighter, harder, a real leader even if his men didn’t like it. He would move on to the next village and after that the next until his tour was up and never again did he want to lose another man.
One of the main points in The Things They Carry, by Tim O’Brien, is that war changes people. This is evident in the behavior of Norman Bowker, Bob “Rat” Kiley, and the character Tim O’Brien. They each started out as kind young men but near the end had become very distraught. These men each shared many experiences but these experiences affected each one differently.
Joy Kogawa and Tim O’Brien: two authors that have wielded their mastery of the English language to yield literary masterpieces that reflect not only their own struggles, but the hardships of multitudes around them. In her acclaimed Obasan, Joy Kogawa illustrates the intense discrimination that was faced by Japanese-Canadians during World War 2, and provides many reflective anecdotes to give the reader some insight on her personal situation. Tim O’Brien accomplishes basically the same goal in The Things They Carried by giving the reader many brief stories about his time in the Vietnam War. These two books- though incredibly different on the surface - share a plethora of themes and symbology, as well as many similar events. They do not, however, emphasize or present these ideas in the same way. Each of these authors has a unique way of incorporating their own themes or values into their writing, which gives the reader an entirely different view of what may be happening.
Jimmy comes to the conclusion that it was indeed his ideation of Martha that leads him astray. He develops a cynical outlook, and tells himself to resent Martha. The narrator expresses this by stating "He hated her. Yes, he did. Love, too, but it was a hard, hating kind of love."(111) The feeling he has for Martha is not burning hatred, rather he hates himself and Martha for how his this pathetical relationship with a woman that didn't love him back effected him drastically. This is derived from the author's statement on the nature of his hate, "He was realistic about it, there was a new hardness in his stomach, he loved her but he hated her."(111) As Jimmy works on the emotional aspect of hating Martha, he decides to deal with the physical ties he has to her as well. In a symbolic gesture Jimmy burns all his correspondence with the young English Major. The text describes the scene: "On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha's letters. Then he burned the two photographs ." ( 110) The notion of Ted Lavender's death forces Jimmy to revaluate his priorities to stay alive himself. It could have easily been him who was shot while relieving himself. The narrator reinforces this by saying "This was not Mt. Sebastian, this was another world... a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity."
His love for Martha was unhealthy and almost obsessive. He still remembers clearly "touching that left knee" of Martha's. Even out in the field he still reminisces how her knee felt. During a mission to destroy some tunnels, Cross imagines the tunnel collapsing on him and Martha. He also wonders if she is still a virgin or not and wonders why her letter are signed "love". This distraction and incompetence of himself lead to the death of one of their fellow soldiers, Ted Lavender. He has been shot and killed, partly because of Cross' lack of focus on the situation. He keeps to himself as he blames the incident on only himself. Shockingly, as they were waiting for a chopper to take his body away, he digs a foxhole. While sitting in the hole, crying, he was also thinking of " Martha's smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than his men " at the same time. This abnormal love for Martha has defected his ability to perform his duties as a leader. Martha has possessed him so much that even "without willing it, he was thinking about Martha." This shows that he has lost control on where and when is the right time to think about things like that.
In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, numerous themes are illustrated by the author. Through the portrayal of a number of characters, Tim O’Brien suggests that to adapt to Vietnam is not always more difficult than to revert back to the lives they once knew. Correspondingly the theme of change is omnipresent throughout the novel, specifically in the depiction of numerous characters.
War defines what type of person someone is. The Things They Carried specifically uses the objects that people carry to explain their personalities. Kiowa carries with him “an illustrated New Testament” as a symbol of his religious beliefs; Ted Lavender carries tranquilizers and “six or seven ounces of premium dope” to help calm himself in times of distress (4). As the story progresses, the objects that people like Kiowa and Lavender carry come to define their characters, both to the readers and to the soldiers within the story. Because of the war, soldiers do not care about each other’s personalities, they only know about the personal objects that they carry with them. Soldiers are not only defined by the physical objects they carry; they