Nations may pay for the war, but soldiers pay the ultimate price, their lives. A soldier has to be willing to lose everything to gain freedom for others. Therefore a war is not fought by two nations, but rather than the millions of soldiers. With this comes great sacrifice and selflessness. In the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien three soldiers that stand to lose the most are Kiowa, Norman Bowker, and Jimmy Cross. The day Jimmy Cross decided not to take higher ground was the day Kiowa’s future disappeared. “Kiowa was gone. He was under the mud and water, folded in with the war…” (O’Brien, 155). Many soldiers in war may lose an extremity or get bumps and bruises, but Kiowa did not make it out so lucky. Lieutenant Cross got commands to take the route he knew was much …show more content…
He made it out of the war alive, but he said, “It's almost like I got killed over in Nam…”(O’Brien 150). No one at the time knew, but Norman showed signs of PTSD. A mental health condition that can develop after a traumatic experience such as war. When writing a letter to Tim O’Brien about how he was feeling the tone would jump from self-pity to anger to guilt, all signs of PTSD. During the time period of the Vietnam War and others before it, everyone thought you could just go back home and jump right back into a normal way of life. For Norman that was not the case. He wrote, “The thing is, there's no place to go. Not just in this lousy town. In general. My life, I mean” (O’Brien 150). Norman had lost his hope. As a result he took his own life. The war stripped him of who he was, who he used to be. In war you're used to thinking at any moment you could die. It had to be hard coming home and trying to relax. Not all men can just forget the draining and relentless circumstances they went through. Now all soldiers are required to get checked for signs of PTSD before being allowed to return
Tim O'Brien, a Vietnam war vet, had similar experiences as the soldier above. Even though O'Brien didn't die, the war still took away his life because a part of him will never be the same. Even in 1995, almost thirty years after the war, O'Brien wrote, "Last night suicide was on my mind. Not whether, but how. Tonight it will be on my mind again... I sit in my underwear at this unblinking fool of a computer and try to wrap words around a few horrid truths" (Vietnam 560). 1 think that O'Brien is still suffering from what he experienced in Vietnam and he uses his writing to help him deal with his conflicts. In order to deal with war or other traumatic experiences, you sometimes just have to relive the experiences over and over. This is what O'Brien does with his writing; he expresses his emotional truths even if it means he has to change the facts of the literal truth.
James was a Marine right out of his second tour of Iraq, during which he faced a bloody
For example Sgt. Collier told Norman, “I started this war killing Germans in Africa then France then Belgium now I’m killing Germans in Germany, it will end soon, but before that a lot more people got to die,” as he stared into a burning city. It is very easy to tell they’re getting tired of war and killing people, as for Norman he finally starts to develop the character he needs to be in war. This is a very good turning point in the movie, it makes his character more mature and therefore it is easier to connect with us. Thanks to his maturity, he starts making the right decisions under pressure. It makes us wonder if he will actually step up to the plate, or if he will just break apart any
While on this mission, when confronted with a traumatic event, instead of a typical reaction like crying, the men would resort to violence to express their pain. For example, when Curt Lemon, Rat Kiley’s best friend, stepped on a mine and was killed, Rat took his agony and suffering out on a water buffalo, slowly and painfully destroying the animal’s life. Rat’s reaction shows that the war itself had begun to consume him and finally did when he was forced to shoot himself in the foot because he could not deal with the aimless hiking anymore.... ... middle of paper ...
The Vietnam War caused many U.S. soldiers to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, so when is the war over, is it really over? For soldiers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD, the war may not ever be over. Doctors are on the peak of finding treatments for the ones affected by PTSD and how to prevent it from occurring or even helping them to recover from PTSD has major affects on Vietnam soldiers, their family members and today’s society.
The chapter “The Man I Killed” includes an in depth examination of the dead Vietnam man. Describing all of the man’s new physical attributes from a grenade explosion. “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman's, his nose was undamaged…” For a full page, O’Brien reminisces about the picture of the man that is now engrained in his head. He further analyzes all of these features deducing and making assumptions about personal details of the life of the dead man. “He would have been taught that to defend the land was a man's highest duty and highest privilege. He had accepted this. It was never open to question. Secretly, though, it also frightened him. He was not a fighter.” This chapter is also extremely influential to O’Brien, who uses imagery as a way to grasp his actions. O’Brien does not try to dull his pain or separate himself from the dead man. Giving the dead man a back-story only makes him more human making this kill so much less detached and much more personal. Kiowa tries to help O’Brien justify his actions, but O’Brien is not focused on the
Kiowa feels guilt and feels like he took something from his more than his life. He stood over the man’s body and imagined what he was really wanting to do than fight a war. Kiowa thought, “He was not a fighter. His health was poor, his body small and frail. He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics.” This quote proves that Kiowa feels guilt over the killing of the soldier because he dreamt of his life outside of the war and he just stands over the body. The other soldiers try to get him to realize, the Vietnamese soldier knew he was going to die as soon as he picked up his gun. It takes Kiowa hours to come to terms with
Back to more agonizing death, in the chapter “In The Field,” the platoon is hit with a devastating loss of life, and one of the men suffers very deep shame and guilt for the part he played. The platoon makes camp in a field along the river, despite the locals warnings to stay out. It’s raining and within a short time, they realize they’ve made camp in the village’s toilet. As the water rises, the field becomes deep muck. During the night, Kiowa’s best buddy, a young soldier, clicked on his flashlight to show Kiowa a picture and within a millisecond mortar rounds started exploding all around them, Kiowa was wounded, went under the water and muck, and drowned. O’Brien himself stated, “There were bubbles where Kiowa’s head should’ve been” (O’Brien
The impact of the Vietnam War upon the soldiers who fought there was huge. The experience forever changed how they would think and act for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons for this was there was little to no understanding by the soldiers as to why they were fighting this war. They felt they were killing innocent people, farmers, poor hard working people, women, and children were among their victims. Many of the returning soldiers could not fall back in to their old life styles. First they felt guilt for surviving many of their brothers in arms. Second they were haunted by the atrocities of war. Some soldiers could not go back to the mental state of peacetime. Then there were soldiers Tim O’Brien meant while in the war that he wrote the book “The Things They Carried,” that showed how important the role of story telling was to soldiers. The role of stories was important because it gave them an outlet and that outlet was needed both inside and outside the war in order to keep their metal state in check.
Fear plays a very large part of life, and when faced with high risk situations it makes a mountain out of a molehill. The Things They Carried is a series of vignettes written by Tim O’Brien that tells his story as a soldier in the Vietnam War. Many of the vignettes he tells are deeply disturbing. They express the fear O’Brien and the men in the Alpha Company felt while stationed in Vietnam. O’Brien shows this through the use of flashbacks of the travesties he witnessed. He uses the unfamiliar setting and the intense, rapidly changing mood to strengthen them. These three elements of style truly bring out O’Briens writing, and show the emotion behind his words, helping the reader fully understand his experiences.
In “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien brings to light the effects of war on soldiers, both physically and psychologically. The title of the story would lead the reader to believe the story is only about the provisions and apparatus a soldier would physically carry into war. After reading the entire story, it becomes evident that there are many burdens seen and unseen that soldiers face during times of war.
The novel, “The Things They Carried”, is about the experiences of Tim O’Brian and his fellow platoon members during their time fighting in the Vietnam War. They face much adversity that can only be encountered in the horrors of fighting a war. The men experience death of friends, civilians, enemies and at points loss of their rationale. In turn, the soldiers use a spectrum of methods to cope with the hardships of war, dark humor, daydreaming, and violent actions all allow an escape from the horrors of Vietnam that they experience most days.
The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is based in Vietnam during the Vietnam War in the 1950’s. Though most of the novel is just a flashback to the Vietnam War, there are some events that occur well after the war. Looking back at their place in time during the Vietnam War, Jimmy Cross and some of his old fellow war vets use some of the objects they carried with them in Vietnam to remember those events that caused their lives to drastically change. The most significant event that changed Jimmy Cross’ life was of watching fellow platoon member Ted Lavender die right next to him. Cross does not go a day in his life without blaming himself for Lavender’s death. Throughout the novel Jimmy is torn between the love of his life, Martha, who does not feel as affectionate towards Cross, and by his actions in the War. In the novel, the author/narrator Tim O’Brien is also a protagonist in the story. He is first presented as a nervous, young, soldier who is in the Alpha Platoon. Because of O’Brien being the author of the novel, he can strongly use imagery to his advantage when he writes of stories he confronted in his point of view. The two main topics of current war and PTSD which are illustrated in the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien can be compared and contrasted with three relevant articles: “Al Qaeda tries to recruit Americans in Syria,” “Ukraine orders Crimea troop withdrawal as Russia seizes naval base,’ and “Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder.”
For Vietnam veterans, nothing could replenish the zest for life they had before the war. According to O'Brien's text, upon their arrival home the veterans imagine, even hallucinate, what things would have been like if they had not suffered through the war. Examples of such occurrences exist in the stories "Speaking of Courage" and "The Man I Killed." Norman Bowker in "Speaking of Courage" dreams and fancies of talking to his ex-girlfriend, now married to another guy, and of his dead childhood friend, Max Arnold. He lives out over and over his unfulfilled dream of having his Sally beside him and of having manly conversations with Max.
Our soldiers not only risked life and limb for our country while serving in the Vietnam War, but they continue to suffer immensely. Americans as well as Vietnamese troops and civilians suffered great losses when it comes to casualties. Witnessing first-hand the pain and death of strangers and allies, isn’t something one is likely to forget. Post-Traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been one of the many repercussions of witnessing these gruesome events (Mental Health America). Veterans, their families, and the government have come together in combat in attempts to address the detrimental effects of PTSD.