Hallucinations In The Things They Carried

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Recommended: Literary analysis a good man is hard to find

Stress is very dangerous and can cause severe side effects like hallucinations or even death. For instance, the loss of someone, whether it be another person or one's own self, has the possibility of putting extreme stress on a person. Although there are some healthy ways to relieve this, there are more ways that harm instead of help. One of those ways are hallucinations or vivid dreams that warp the mind. In the stories we have read, two characters especially have this side effect, the Misfit from “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” (Flannery O’Connor) and Jimmy Cross from “The Things They Carried” (Tim O’Brien). They share similarities in the sense that the “dreams” are to cope with the loss of someone and not face real-world problems for a while …show more content…

Jimmy blames the death of Ted on his daydreams and views that if he were a better leader then it wouldn’t have happened. This results in Jimmy deciding on letting the thought of Martha go because he views her as a distraction “He was now determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence.” (O’Brien 125). The Misfit, on the other hand, has these delusions and decides to keep them as a means to not blame himself, “I call myself the Misfit because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment.” (O’Connor 192). Jimmy did not just lose one of his men he lost someone else that was important, …show more content…

For Jimmy and the Misfit, these hallucinations allow both of them not to face the real world problems. With Jimmy’s he is able to forget that he is in the heart of a war and that he had to leave the girl that he adored “he would slip into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha.”(O’Brien 117). Then the Misfit thinks that he is like Jesus and uses that to justify why he thinks he shouldn’t get punished “It was the same case with Him as it was with me except He hadn’t committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had papers on me. Of course they never shown me my papers.” (O’Connor

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