I believe the significance of the section was to introduce each character within the platoon. In the section it gave brief descriptions about the characters themselves but gave great details into what they carried both physically and mentally. (Hence the name of the chapter “The Things They Carried”.) This spoke volumes about each of the characters, (probably more than it would just to describe each character). The things the men carry define them. What they carry shows what their innermost burdens are. For instance Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries pictures and letters of his love, Martha. His love for Martha is an example of “unrequited love”. (Like what we learned about from the Shakespearean Sonnets we read in class.) His love for Martha consumes him he constantly daydreams about her. He wants her but he can't have her. She’s at college and he's at war. Even when one of …show more content…
That the soldier’s greatest fear was the fear of blushing. I think all men have this fear, to be a “man” and not a “pussy”. The fear of dishonored and becoming a lesser man. This fear was so compelling that each man within the platoon went off to war to die rather than to die of embarrassment of not going. I felt sympathy for the men to have to face death and war in order not to be called a “pussy”. It’s a terrible ordeal. In my own life there are instances where I’m forced to “man up” in order to not be ridiculed. However, the obstacles I have to overcome usually don't have a result of dying like the men of the book do. That's why I feel sorry for the men. Component 6: Jimmy cross seems to be a lonely soldier on the hump whose mind wanders to his love Martha. He sees Martha everywhere he looks it seems. He even tries to escape it by burning the letters and pictures Martha sent him, but unfortunately for him cannot. He is head over heels for a girl who maybe doesn't even like him back. He is stuck in his
One of the first women introduced to the reader was Martha. Martha is Lt. Jimmy Cross's love interest, even though she has only ever considered him a friend and nothing more. O'Brien 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 return home attempting to get back to their normal lives.
One of the main characters in the short story “The Things They Carried”, written by Tim O’Brien, is a twenty-four year old Lieutenant named Jimmy Cross. Jimmy is the assigned leader of his infantry unit in the Vietnam War, but does not assume his role accordingly. Instead, he’s constantly daydreaming, along with obsessing, over his letters and gifts from Martha. Martha is a student at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, Jimmy’s home state. He believes that he is in love with Martha, although she shows no signs of loving him. This obsession is a fantasy that he uses to escape from reality, as well as, take his mind off of the war that surrounds him, in Vietnam. The rest of the men in his squad have items that they carry too, as a way of connecting to their homes. The story depicts the soldiers by the baggage that they carry, both mentally and physically. After the death of one of his troops, Ted Lavender, Jimmy finally realizes that his actions have been detrimental to the squad as a whole. He believes that if he would have been a better leader, that Ted Lavender would have never been shot and killed. The physical and emotional baggage that Jimmy totes around with him, in Vietnam, is holding him back from fulfilling his responsibilities as the First Lieutenant of his platoon. Jimmy has apparent character traits that hold him back from being the leader that he needs to be, such as inexperience and his lack of focus; but develops the most important character trait in the end, responsibility.
Towards the end of the story I kind of felt just as the soldiers did, weighed down and dead tired. The second half of the story leaned toward the emotional burdens the soldiers went through besides the physical quantities.
The story takes place through the eyes of a German infantryman named Paul Baumer. He is nineteen and just joined up with the German army after high school with the persuasion of one of his schoolteachers, Mr. Kantorek. Paul recalls how he would use all class period lecturing the students, peering through his spectacles and saying: "Won't you join up comrades?"(10). Here was a man who loved war. He loved the "glory" of war. He loved it so much as to persuade every boy in his class to join up with the army. He must have thought how proud they would be marching out onto that field in their military attire.
The point of stories it to tell a tale and inflict certain emotions onto the reader. Tim O’Brien uses this in his novel The Things They Carried. These stories were fictional but true, regaling his experiences of war. In the last chapter he writes that stories have the ability to save people. He does not mean “save” in a biblical sense, but as if a person saved the progress on a game they have been playing.
Tim O'Brien's The Things they Carried put both my logic and emotions to great test. As it is a novel composed of war stories, one may automatically assume that reading The Things They Carried would be an enlightening endeavor, and an educational experience. However, I never thought that a book could captivate me the way that the stories in this novel have.
The idea of love is very complex and can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Both “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien and “Araby” by James Joyce portray the lives of two individuals who are in love. “The Things They Carried” is about a young lieutenant named Jimmy Cross during the Vietnam War. Lieutenant Cross was incapable of focusing on the war because of his constant thoughts of the girl he loved, Martha. “Araby” is about a boy who is infatuated with a girl he has never had a conversation with. Although both protagonists in “The Things They Carried” and “Araby” eventually realize that the girls they loved didn’t feel the same way about them, Lieutenant Cross tried to move on by destroying everything he had that reminded him of Martha, while the boy in “Araby” was left disappointed.
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.
In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien the author tells about his experiences in the Vietnam war by telling various war stories. The quote, "It has been said of war that it is a world where the past has a strong grip on the present, where machines seemed sometimes to have more will power than me, where nice boys (girls) were attracted to them, where bodies ruptured and burned and stand, where the evil thing trying to kill you could look disconnecting human and where except in your imagination it was impossible to be heroic." relates to each of his stories.
There is a major change in the men in this novel. At first, they are excited to join the army in order to help their country. After they see the truth about war, they learn very important assets of life such as death, destruction, and suffering. These emotions are learned in places like training camp, battles, and hospitals. All the men, dead or alive, obtained knowledge on how to deal with death, which is very important to one’s life.
... 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.
Thus, Lieutenant Cross is weak because he loved Martha, he was always distracted from the real world, and he always wished to return to his normal life not in the war. This will make him both physically and mentally weak, making him an easy target for enemies. This is how love may affect soldiers during battle. Therefore, I think that soldiers should not love when they are at war.
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.
...nd bloodshed. Women gave a reason to go to war, a reason to come back from the war, and oddly, a reason to want to return to the war. The men were in a fraternity of life, and with no women around for so long they began to rely on themselves, and no longer had the needs that were provided them by women. They wanted to play in the jungle with their friends, only this time with no guns. They missed the life that they spent together eating rations and swapping stories. When they went home they were veterans, like the old men of the World Wars. If they stayed, they were still heroes, warriors, and victims. They still loved deeply the women at home, because they had no reason to fight or bicker, or possibly realize that the women they assumed would be waiting for them had changed in that time. The men were torn between love of women, and the love of brotherhood.
As the soldiers take a good look at the people they love;the beautiful sun setting in the background ;and the life that they’re leaving behind. They begin walking down a path of no return. While on this path, the soldiers face constant battle against their morals and the burden that each of the men must carry on a daily basis ;this creates a huge dilemma that the men must face head on in order to survive. Fear, anger ,shame , courage: these are the emotions that resonate within the very being of the soldiers during the course of the story. Some are able to overcome these hurdles, while others allow the obstacles to eat away at them until it consumed them. To demonstrate this truth, Norman Bowker is unable to overcome his need to be useful to those around him which led to his untimely demise.This could have been avoided if he would of looked in different places to see what he excels in, rather than doing so he took his own life .The author uses the choices that each of the soldiers make to show that the fear of shame can be used as a motivational factor, that allows them to act courageously in critical situations.