Grief And Horror The Themes Of War In 'The Things They Carried'

960 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Vietnam war and american involvement essay

Homesick, Grief and Horror the Themes of War

War stories have reoccurring themes because war impacts so many peoples’ lives. War can make a person homesick where all the can think of is going home. Some people suffer from grief the loss of a loved one or someone they knew being killed in battle. Others recall absolute horror and shock from the things they have seen. War takes its toll on everybody, from the people on the battlefield to the family’s at home. Soldier’s on the battlefield or just away from home all deal with homesickness, they are taken away from their families, sent to a place with a culture they know little about, and try to learn a language they have never heard before. Soldiers suffer from homesickness a lot harder than …show more content…

A soldier is always carrying a ton of stress, whether it is a physical strain or a mental one. The constant burden of weight being on a soldier 's shoulders is enough to break a man. In the story "The Things They Carried" by author Tim O 'Brien he writes constantly about the weight of the objects they carried with them during the Vietnam war, and at the same time explains things that caused the mental strain that they all carried. In the story the narrator describes the underlying grief all the characters experienced after one of their squad mates was shot while walking back to the campsite. It may not be spoken of at times, but even the characters themselves allude to going through different phases of grief, such as giving up the drugs or when Lt. Cross burned the photos. Soldiers were not just subject to grief America was hurting at the time with all the riots, protest, and families coping with their sons being sent off to war. In the movie Letters Home from Vietnam, a letter was left at the Vietnam memorial of a grieving mother who had lost her son, who was killed in a firefight. She goes on throughout the letter hearing of all the things he had done while in Vietnam, and how he was one of the few that didn 't change while being there. Grief effects everyone in different ways but it will always be a reoccurring theme when it comes to

Show More
Related

  • Impact of War in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    For young people, the Vietnam War is a thing of the past and they can

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried Rhetorical Analysis

    1033 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • O'Brien's Things They Carried Essay: Experiences and Emotions

    1608 Words  | 4 Pages

    Experiences and Emotions in The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is not a novel about the Vietnam War. “It is a story about the soldiers and their experiences and emotions that are brought about from the war” (King 182). O'Brien makes several statements about war through these dynamic characters. He shows the violent nature of soldiers under the pressures of war, he makes an effective antiwar statement, and he comments on the reversal of a social deviation into the norm. By skillfully employing the stylistic technique of specific, conscious detail selection and utilizing connotative diction, O'Brien thoroughly and convincingly makes each point.

    Read More

  • Things They Carried in The Great Train Robbery and The Things They Carried

    1746 Words  | 4 Pages

    The soldiers that fought in the Vietnam War had to endure many incredibly horrifying experiences. It was these events that led to great human emotions. It was those feelings that were the things they carried. Everything they carried affected them, whether it was physical or mental. Everything they carry could in one way or another cause them to emotionally or physically break down.

    Read More

  • The Role of Storytelling in The Things They Carried

    2570 Words  | 6 Pages

    ...n amnesiac nation into “working through” its troubled past.” (Bly ,189) Story telling was the soldier’s salvation, their survival method. Being able to tell their stories let them express everything they were feeling and ultimately cope with the horrors of war and the guilt the carried.

    Read More

  • The Negative Impact Of War In The Wars By Timothy Findley

    1408 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many individuals look at soldiers for hope and therefore, add load to them. Those that cannot rationally overcome these difficulties may create Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tragically, some resort to suicide to get away from their insecurities. Troops, notwithstanding, are not by any means the only ones influenced by wars; relatives likewise encounter mental hardships when their friends and family are sent to war. Timothy Findley precisely depicts the critical impact wars have on people in his novel by showing how after-war characters are not what they were at the beginning.

    Read More

  • Post-Traumatic Stress In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    1214 Words  | 3 Pages

    ccording to the 1990 Veterans organization report, one in every three Vietnam veterans that were in heavy combat suffers from post-traumatic stress; this includes thirty-three percent of soldiers who went to Vietnam, or nearly one million troops, who gave into post-traumatic stress. PTSD must have been common in the group of soldiers in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” due to the amount of burdens each soldier carried. Throughout the story, O’Brien demonstrates theme of psychological, physical and mental burdens carried by every soldier. He emphasizes these burdens by discussing the weight that the soldiers carry; their psychological and mental stress they have to undertake as each of them experience the brutality of the Vietnam War. The physical burden that each soldier carried was a necessity for them due to their emotional burdens that they carried.

    Read More

  • Intangible Objects In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    868 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Vietnam War was a challenging time for soldiers both physically and mentally. They often didn’t have a choice on whether they were going to war due to the drafting system that had been in place. Many had tangible and intangible things that they carried with them for the sake of their sanity or their job in the unit. The chapter, “The Things They Carried”, in the novel The Things They Carried, captures this immaculately. The author, Tim O’Brien, speaks of the things each man within his unit carried with him. Each man did not just carry tangible objects with him, but also intangible objects as well .

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried 'By Tim O' Brien: An Analysis

    1640 Words  | 4 Pages

    Tina Chen’s critical essay provides information on how returning soldiers aren’t able to connect to society and the theme of alienation and displacement that O’Brien discussed in his stories. To explain, soldiers returning from war feel alienated because they cannot come to terms with what they saw and what they did in battle. Next, Chen discusses how O’Brien talks about soldiers reminiscing about home instead of focusing in the field and how, when something bad happens, it is because they weren’t focused on the field. Finally, when soldiers returned home they felt alienated from the country and

    Read More

  • Treatment Of Vietnam Veterans In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    722 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tim O’Brien served in the Vietnam War, and his short story “The Things They Carried” presents the effects of the war on its young soldiers. The treatment of veterans after their return also affects them. The Vietnam War was different from other wars, because too many in the U.S. the soldiers did not return as heroes but as cruel, wicked, and drug addicted men. The public directs its distaste towards the war at the soldiers, as if they are to blame. The also Veterans had little support from the government who pulled them away from their families to fight through the draft. Some men were not able to receive the help they needed because the symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) did not show until a year

    Read More

  • Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in The Things They Carried

    2502 Words  | 6 Pages

    "The war was over and there was no place in particular to go" (157). Thoughts of sorrow and loss overwhelm the Vietnam veterans upon their return back home. Crushed from the horror of war, they come back to even bigger disappointments and sadness. Instead of the mellow lives they lead before they left their native country and the presence of warm and caring everyday life, most of them encounter empty beds, cold family ambiance and overall loss. Already physically and emotionally defeated, they find betrayal instead of recuperating trust. There is nothing to nourish their depleted and deprived psyches; they do not find anything to rely on. Even in instances of supportive partners, the inevitable horrors of the war haunt them in sleep or come back to them in daydreaming. They all came back with multitude of disorders, predominately with a post traumatic stress disorder with the common symptoms of recurring nightmares, hypersensitivity, avoidance behavior, and intrusive thoughts, feelings and memories-commonly found in war vets. The Things They Carried represents a compound documentary novel written by a Vietnam veteran, Tim O'Brien, in whose accounts on the Vietnam war one encounters graphical depictions of the PTSD. Thus, the stories "Speaking of Courage," "The Man I Killed," "How to Tell a True War Story," "Enemies" and "Friends, " "Stockings," and "The Sweetheart of The Song Tra Bong "all encompass various examples of PTSD.

    Read More

  • Wayside Madonna

    948 Words  | 2 Pages

    The painting is organized simply. The background of the painting is painted in an Impressionist style. The blurring of edges, however, starkly contrasts with the sharp and hard contours of the figure in the foreground. The female figure is very sharp and clear compared to the background. The background paint is thick compared to the thin lines used to paint the figures in the foreground. The thick paint adds to the reduction of detail for the background. The colors used to paint the foreground figures are vibrant, as opposed to the whitened colors of the Impressionist background. The painting is mostly comprised of cool colors but there is a range of dark and light colors. The light colors are predominantly in the background and the darker colors are in the foreground. The vivid color of the robe contrasts with the muted colors of the background, resulting in an emphasis of the robe color. This emphasis leads the viewer's gaze to the focal part of the painting: the figures in the foreground. The female and baby in the foreground take up most of the canvas. The background was not painted as the artist saw it, but rather the impression t...

    Read More

  • War and Memory in Irene Zabytko?s ?Home Soil?, Bruce Weigl?s ?Song of Napalm?, and Wilfred Owen?s ?Dulce et Decorum Est?

    755 Words  | 2 Pages

    The three narratives “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, “Song of Napalm” by Bruce Weigl, and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen all have the same feelings of war and memory, although not everyone experiences the same war. Zabytko, Weigl, and Owen used shifting beats, dramatic descriptions, and intense, painful images, to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the devoted awareness of those who fantasize war and the memories that support it.

    Read More

  • The Trauma of War Conveyed in Ninh's Short Story, A Marker on the Side of the Boat and the Film, Barbed Wire and Mandolins

    1810 Words  | 4 Pages

    War is cruel. The Vietnam War, which lasted for 21 years from 1954 to 1975, was a horrific and tragic event in human history. The Second World War was as frightening and tragic even though it lasted for only 6 years from 1939 to 1945 comparing with the longer-lasting war in Vietnam. During both wars, thousands of millions of soldiers and civilians had been killed. Especially during the Second World War, numerous innocent people were sent into concentration camps, or some places as internment camps for no specific reasons told. Some of these people came out sound after the war, but others were never heard of again. After both wars, people that were alive experienced not only the physical damages, but also the psychic trauma by seeing the deaths and injuries of family members, friends or even just strangers. In the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh about the Vietnam War, and the documentary film Barbed Wire and Mandolins directed by Nicola Zavaglia with a background of the Second World War, they both explore and convey the trauma of war. However, the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” is more effective in conveying the trauma of war than the film Barbed Wire and Mandolins because of its well-developed plot with well-illustrated details, and its ability to raise emotional responses from its readers.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Cassatt's The Child And Mother Nursing Her Child

    1035 Words  | 3 Pages

    It differs greatly, in its portrayal of mothers, from Le Brun’s Self-portrait with her Daughter and Cassatt’s artworks. Behind Marie Antoinette, you see a jewelry cabinet, off to the right of the canvas. This illustrates that, although she is with her children, she finds treasure within her own materialistic objects. Furthermore, her expression lacks emotion as she holds the child loosely within her arms. The child looks off, barely acknowledging its mother, who is holding him. Next, the child, on the far right of the canvas, reveals an empty cradle, alluding to a child who has died. Again, Marie seems unfazed or simply chooses not to acknowledge the boy’s actions. Furthermore, the young girl, on the right of the canvas, clings on to her mother as she lovingly looks up to her mother. Marie holds a wry smile, appearing somewhat annoyed or displeased. The color scheme is dark, but Le Brun utilizes contrast to emphasize the royal family. However, it only works to further expose the detached relationship between a Marie and her children. According to the lecture, “To counter people’s hatred of the queen and their criticisms of her as a bad (even a degenerate) mother, Vigée Le Brun was commissioned to paint this portrait of Marie Antoinette and her children” (Gartrell). Sadly, the painting was

    Read More

More about Grief And Horror The Themes Of War In 'The Things They Carried'

Open Document