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Have you ever had someone close to you die? Have you ever been faced with the trauma watching someone you love die? In both of my sources I learned of how men lost their friends while on duty. I learned of the pain and distress it caused them. In this essay I will compare the stories of both men. In Of Men and War(source 1) there was man who was traumatized with watching his friend die. He had to deal with the misery of his friend dying in his arms just milliseconds after speaking with him. In Watching a Friend Die in Iraq Cort Reed was faced with the exact same trauma. He watched his friend fall to his death in just seconds. Both men could do nothing about the situation. They both had to deal with the thoughts of ‘why am I still here?’ or
In the aftermath of a comparatively minor misfortune, all parties concerned seem to be eager to direct the blame to someone or something else. It seems so easy to pin down one specific mistake that caused everything else to go wrong in an everyday situation. However, war is a vastly different story. War is ambiguous, an enormous and intangible event, and it cannot simply be blamed for the resulting deaths for which it is indirectly responsible. Tim O’Brien’s story, “In the Field,” illustrates whom the soldiers turn to with the massive burden of responsibility for a tragedy. The horrible circumstances of war transform all involved and tinge them with an absurd feeling of personal responsibility as they struggle to cope.
Tim O 'Brien 's 1986 “The Things They Carried,” tells a story of how impactful war can be. It describes the struggle of overcoming grief and the struggle to deal with death; it shows the human side of war. The passage above provides an excellent example of the way O 'Brien uses first person narration to explain the complexity of war. In particular, the real meaning of “The Things They Carried” is revealed, because they show the actual burden the soldiers carried was not materialistic, but emotionally, “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love,” (O’Brien 608).
military members who share harsh, traumatic, or even funny events obviously become closer through the bond of a mutual experience. This is particularly true for Marine infantry; many Marine are brought up in different areas of the US, with different values, ages, religious and political beliefs. However different we all might look on the outside, the fact that we’ve all been through good times and bad with each other makes us closer than any civilian could understand. After being a Marine, I find that I’m close to, and always will be, than my civilian friends who I’ve known for years. Along with this, Pressfield talks about how, under all the glory and allure of fighting for one’s country exists the real reason that warriors fight; for our brothers in arms. Political beliefs, government stances, and flags go out the window, only to be replaced by concern for the safety and well-being of the men to our left and right. All of these things are reasons why it is difficult for civilians to understand what it’s like to be a warrior. This is perhaps embodied best in our motto, Semper Fidelis; Always Faithful, to our brothers and those who depend on
An emotional burden that the men must carry is the longing for their loved ones. The Vietnam War forced many young men to leave their loved ones and move halfway across the world to fight a ...
After an event of large magnitude, it still began to take its toll on the protagonist as they often “carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die” during the war (O’Brien 1187). The travesties that occurred with the brutality of war did not subside and began to affect those involved in a deeply emotional way. The multitude of disastrous happenings influenced the narrator to develop a psychological handicap to death by being “afraid of dying” although being “even more afraid to show it” (O’Brien 1187). The burden caused by the war creates fear inside the protagonist’s mind, yet if he were to display his sense of distress it would cause a deeper fear for those around him, thus making the thought of exposing the fear even more frightening. The emotional battle taking place in the psyche of the narrator is directly repressed by the war.
One of the worst things about war is the severity of carnage that it bestows upon mankind. Men are killed by the millions in the worst ways imaginable. Bodies are blown apart, limbs are cracked and torn and flesh is melted away from the bone. Dying eyes watch as internal organs are spilled of empty cavities, naked torso are hung in trees and men are forced to run on stumps when their feet are blown off. Along with the horrific deaths that accompany war, the injuries often outnumber dead men. As Paul Baumer witnessed in the hospital, the injuries were terrifying and often led to death. His turmoil is expressed in the lines, “Day after day goes by with pain and fear, groans and death gurgles. Even the death room I no use anymore; it is too small.” The men who make it through the war take with them mental and physical scarification from their experiences.
One of the hardest events that a soldier had to go through during the war was when one of their friends was killed. Despite their heartbreak they could not openly display their emotions. They could not cry because soldiers do not cry. Such an emotional display like crying would be sign of weakness and they didn’t want to be weak, so they created an outlet. “They were actors. When someone died, it wasn’t quite dying because in a curious way it seemed scripted”(19). Of course things were scripted especially when Ted Lavender died. It had happened unexpectedly and if they didn’t have something planned to do while they were coping they would all have broken down especially Lieutenant Cross. Cross...
The strength of a significant bond allows one to cope with traumatizing events. This idea is explored in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried through the rhetorical usage of connotations. The novel describes the grisly reality of war and the relationships formed during the grueling experience. O’Brien describes the battlefield experience, “They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak.” (O’Brien ch.1). O’Brien puts emphasis on the comradery formed between soldiers with the use of connotations. O’Brien’s compelling diction illustrates the powerful relationship formed between the
Re-deployed to Vietnam as part of an eight man team that performs long range reconnaissance patrol, he forms friendships that serve as the basis for later trauma. The first of which is the death of best friend, who dies in his arms due to an explosive shoe shine box while the team was on leave. This event is known to have haunted him for the rest of his life.
“Boom-down, and you were dead, never partly dead” (23). In The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, soldiers cope with death in multitudes of ways. While none of the coping mechanisms described in the book can truly be characterized as “healthy,” some can definitely be perceived as less destructive behaviours to the soldiers coping with their loss or losses, as well as to the other members of the platoon surrounding them, in both a physical and emotional manner. As implied by Tim O’Brien, one of the most utilized methods, internalization, in comparison to violence, is considered to be, for the soldiers, the most harmful way of handling death.
Events that occur randomly and are traumatic can take a toll on all aspects of an individual that endure them, what if an individual were in a gruesome situation and the lives of human beings were lost under their unintentional control? How would they feel for the rest of their lifetime? In the article “The Moral Logic of Survivor Guilt” by Nancy Sherman, she describes the emotional reality of soldiers at their home are often at odds with the civilian public, and are struggling to garry the burden of feeling responsible of traumatic situations. Survivor’s guilt is the profound feeling that survivors have after a tragic event taking place when others have passed away. Soldiers in battle experience losses during combat. They will have a subjective
... could not help themselves, they were not going to be helped. If struggle were encountered, men had personalized ways to reconnect with the real world, and if a tragedy were encountered which affected the entire company, they also found a combined way to cope with this pressure. The priorities of men during the war shifted greatly toward emotional connections to people and events other than the war, and it was these connections that helped them survive and return home. Coping with the stress and burden of war is not an easy task for anyone, yet in The Things they Carried, O'Brien depicts men dealing and coping as much as they can, using only their primeval resources. They learn how to cope with the barest necessities in life, and they learn how to make use of the smallest opportunities to obtain the most relief and joy from every moment in life.
Through O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”, he shows us how constant situations of stress and ambiguity of death, can lead us to be driven to an inhumane behavioral drive. O’Brien’s book is set during the Vietnam war and he’s talking about a fallen Vietnamese soldier. “He knew he would fall dead and wake up in the stories of his village and people.” (O’Brien 124). He says this because he wants to show how everyone is always remembered. He sets a distinct value on life and he wants to make sure people know how serious war is. The claims are relevant because it shows how everyone is affected by traumatic experiences all the time, as in how the soldier or the people who remember him have trauma because of death. “They felt bad for Kiowa. But they also felt a giddiness, a secret joy, because they were alive, and the rain was preferable to being sucked under a shit field, and because it was a ll a matter of luck and happenstance.” (O’Brien
The soldiers feel that the only people they can talk to about the war are their “brothers”, the other men who experienced the Vietnam War. The friendship and kinship that grew in the jungles of Vietnam survived and lived on here in the United States. By talking to each other, the soldiers help to sort out the incidents that happened in the War and to put these incidents behind them. “The thing to do, we decided, was to forget the coffee and switch to gin, which improved the mood, and not much later we were laughing at some of the craziness that used to go on” (O’Brien, 29).
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you” (C.S Lewis).The novel A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway engages numerous themes associated with love and death. Taking place during World War 1, Hemingway displays the horrors of war, yet he contains Henry and Catherine’s love story in the midst of it all. Hemingway demonstrates themes such as religion and reality of war associated with love, and uses weather and loss related to death.