Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"
How does death affect the behavior of people? Although death affects everyone's behavior differently, knowledge of one's imminent death is a main force behind behavioral changes. This knowledge causes emotions that motivate people to act in ways that they normally would not. In Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried,'; the knowledge of death and its closeness causes the men in the story to alter their behavior by changing they way they display power, modifying emotions to relieve guilt, and by exhibiting different actions to ease anxiety.
Death can change how people display their power or how they use their existing power by altering their behavior. Power is an emotionally strong element to have; power can make someone feel better by knowing that they have control over someone or something else. When fear is present, power can aid in easing the anxiety by giving the person the emotional lift that is present when control is felt. The power, which is present in the story, is physical power and an example is Norman Bowker carrying a thumb of a boy that had been killed. The carrying of the thumb shows that he had power over the boy; this gives him some relief to know he had that kind of control. Cross's power, over the rest of the men, increased his fear of death for all the men not just himself because he is responsible for them. With his responsibility, Jimmy Cross alters his behavior to keep all of his men safe, and he only does this because of his power. An example of Jimmy Cross changing his behavior because of power was after Lavender was killed, when he led the troop into the town of Than Khe to destroy everything they could. Jimmy had been acting more passively about the war before Lavender was killed, but after he was shot Lieutenant Cross's power over the town and his men made him take them into the village to destroy it when he would not have normally. The destruction of the village does not bring Lavender back or even make Cross feel better, but it shows how death can alter behavior with power.
Guilt can cause people to change actions or thoughts very rapidly. It does this because guilt makes the person regret how they ignored their values or ideals and the change comes from wanting to not repeat the misjudgment of their actions. The involved changes to relieve guilt are modifications...
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... men's actions did not seem cruel to them; it was just their way of battling against fear. This type of separation is a major change in behavior because it is natural to become attached to others when they are close. Another major change in behavior is the men killed other men; it is not normal for these civilized men to walk through a jungle and kill other men. Why do they kill the other men? Because if they don't kill, they will be killed and they know this and respect it. The men have respect because of the fear they have of death, and the fear is entered into them by experience and it is a major part in their behavioral change.
The reason the men changed behaviorally in the story was mainly due to fear, but there are many other reasons why people change. Taking orders is another way of changing as the men did in the story, separate themselves, lose compassion, and kill, because someone else told them to. The orders gives the person an excuse that 'I was just following orders,'; well in a sense that is what the men were doing in the story. In the story they were following the unwritten orders of war and they changed their behavior because they were told to by the war.
‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’Brien provides a insider’s view of war and its distractions, both externally in dealing with combat and internally dealing with the reality of war and its effect on each solder. The story, while set in Vietnam, is as relevant today with the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as it was in the 1960’s and 1970’s in Southeast Asia. With over one million soldiers having completed anywhere from one to three tours in combat in the last 10 years, the real conflict might just be inside the soldier. O’Brien reflects this in his writing technique, using a blend of fiction and autobiographical facts to present a series of short narratives about a small unit of soldiers. While a war story, it is also an unrequited love story too, opening with Jimmy Cross holding letters from a girl he hoped would fall in love with him. (O’Brien 1990).
In retrospect chapter one demonstrates how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were influenced by the Vietnam War, many of the soldiers had to face the burdens of war, the lost of innocents and the sexual yearning for women. One of the fundamental themes introduced in the first few pages of the novel was the burdens many of soldiers encounter during the war. The soldiers in the novel carried some remarkably heavy physical and emotional burdens; these burdens almost always seem too much for them to carry. For instances Jimmy Cross the leader of the platoon was responsible for the lives of all soldiers in subdivision, however he was unable to keeping his soldiers alive. Another theme introduces in chapter one is the lost of innocent. The Vietnam War both defiles and terminates the innocence of those soldiers who participated in the war. Most of the soldiers in Vietnam War were young, not even twenty. Nevertheless, Tim O’Brien relentless points out that although they are young, they are killers when commanded. Many of the soldiers had to give up their innocence and become men immediately during the war. Other themes that emerge in chapter one is the sexual yarning for females. In addition with fighting Vietcong, soldiers had to endure living without any females around; which cause a lot of anxiety on them.
Death is one of life's most challenging obstacles. Tim O'Brien was exposed to more than his fair share of death. To manage the emotional stress, he developed methods of coping with the death in his life. O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried, demonstrates his attempts to make death less real through psychotherapeutic tactics like telling stories about the dead as if they were living and conceiving the dead as items instead of people.
Everyday individuals face decisions in which they must choose whether to do what is appealing to them or to choose a more suitable and compliable choice. In the fictional work of ‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’ Brien, certain characters such as Tim O’ Brien himself must face decisions similar to these. The novel demonstrates that when an individual is faced with a decision in which there is a choice that he may have to conform, the individual tends to conform due to not wanting to embarrass themselves or to not be portrayed as a coward to others. However when the individual is challenged with these types of decisions, the choice does not matter since the outcome will be what the individual was trying to avoid. That is to say that in the excerpt “The Rainy River” Tim O’ Brien was going through a conflicting decision on whether or not he should go to the war. Yet, as we see it turns out that either choice will lead to either shame or cowardice. If he goes to the war he feels that he will be a coward and that he gave up his own morals and values and accepted something he does not believe in, but if he does not go to war he will be shunned by society and will be labelled as a coward because he will not fight for his country.
The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, transports the reader into the minds of veterans of the Vietnam conflict. The Vietnam War dramatically changed Tim O’Brien and his comrades, making their return home a turbulent and difficult transition. The study, titled, The War at Home: Effects of Vietnam-Era Military Service on Post-War Household Stability, uses the draft lottery as a “natural experiment” on the general male population. The purpose of the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) study is to determine the psychological effects of the Vietnam War on its veterans. In order to do this, they tested four conditions, marital stability, residential stability, housing tenure, and extended family living. However, it neglects the internal ramifications of war that a soldier grapples with in determining whether they are “normal” in their post-war lives. Thus, effects such as alienation from society, insecurity in their daily lives, and the mental trauma that persist decades after the war are not factored in. After reading the NBER study, it is evident that Tim O’Brien intentionally draws the reader to the post-war psychological effects of Vietnam that may not manifest themselves externally. He does this to highlight that while the Vietnam war is over, the war is still raging in the minds of those involved decades later, and will not dissipate until they can expunge themselves of the guilt and blame they feel from the war, and their actions or inaction therein.
A work's infallibility cannot be defined by imagination's input, facts become false when they are exaggerated. The Things They Carried, is a collection of short stories that revolve around The Vietnam War. Tim O'Brien takes the reader back in time to the late 1960s, and contemplates on experiences that emotionally scarred Vietnam soldiers. O'Brien shares multiple war stories that are claimed to be authentic during the war, and migrates to the 1980s in states like Iowa and MA to discuss how these stories have influenced his life. The Things They Carried, is a collection of false war stories, the stories' authenticity is altered in hopes of evoking strong emotions from readers.
Tim O’Brien wrote the novel The Things They Carried in 1990, twenty years after the war in Vietnam.In the novel,Obrien takes us through the life of many soliders by telling stories that do not go in chronical order. In doing so we get to see the physical and mental things the soldiers carry throughout the war in Vietnam.Yet the novel is more than just a description of a particular war. In the things they carried Tim O’Brien develops the characters in the book slowly, to show the gradual effect war has on a person. O’Brien shows this by exploring the life of Henry Dobbins, and Norman Bowker.
Guilt acts as one of the strongest and most prominent emotions humans feel throughout their lives. Guilt can cause people to help others, push through obstacles, or make friends. Guilt, however, may not stop one from doing amoral actions. This can happen as a result of a perceived bonus outweighing the negative feeling one may experience from completing the action, or a heat of the moment action, where one may not fully understand the consequences of their actions.
The reactions that Cross and his troop have to the death of Lavender are very indicative of the psychological trauma that death in war can have on soldiers. Kiowa, a member of the troop, frequently refers to Lavender 's death with "boom, down" or "zapped while zipping" (108). Although, he is not the only soldier who utters these two phrases. Rat Kiley, can only express the phrase "the guys dead" (106) over and over again. The reactions these soldiers have are neither out of the ordinary, nor normal for an environment and profession ravaged by death constantly. To make joke or light of the death may seem as cruel and insensitive, yet it is a way of coping with death so that one does not become consumed by it, like Cross does. Not only does he forgo love because of Lavender 's death he also relives the death constantly. O 'Brien makes this very apparent in the way he present 's Lavenders death to the reader. He never tells Cross ' story in order from start to finish. Yet he intertwines the happenings before and after the occurrence of Lavender 's death with the actual day he dies. In this way the story can be viewed in the present and past. It can be read as if the events are happening as they are told, or as if Cross is reliving these memories years after the Vietnam war in a night terror or flashback. Death can have such a lasting impact that it permanently scars you mentally, so much that it
Lieutenant Cross is a character who, until the death of a soldier, has been very loose and not taken the war seriously. He had let his soldiers throw away their supplies, take drugs, and sing happy songs in the middle of the serious war. He was only concerned with Martha; he dreamt about being with her, and he was delighted when he received letters from her. Tim O’Brien says, “Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin.” (p. 2) This shows how all he cared about was Martha; he was not paying attention to his real life and his surroundings. He was basically living in a world of fantasy because they lived in two separate worlds. Being unable to wake up from this dream made him potentially weak because his mind was always wandering elsewhere, never in the current situation. This made him an easy target for his enemies because if this had gone on, then he would start to fear death, fear fighting, and fear the war. He would become a coward because he would wish for the day when he could be with Martha again after the war. This would greatly weaken him and his army both, and they would most likely lose to the enemy.
The word "hero" is so often used to describe people who overcome great difficulties and rise to the challenge that is set before them without even considering the overwhelming odds they are up against. In our culture, heroes are glorified in literature and in the media in various shapes and forms. However, I believe that many of the greatest heroes in our society never receive the credit that they deserve, much less fame or publicity. I believe that a hero is simply someone who stands up for what he/she believes in. A person does not have to rush into a burning building and save someone's life to be a hero. Someone who is a true friend can be a hero. A hero is someone who makes a difference in the lives of others simply by his/her presence. In Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried, the true heroes stand out in my mind as those who were true friends and fought for what they believed in. These men and women faced the atrocities of war on a daily basis, as explained by critic David R. Jarraway's essay, "'Excremental Assault' in Tim O'Brien: Trauma and Recovery in Vietnam War Literature" and by Vietnam Veteran Jim Carter. Yet these characters became heroes not by going to drastic measures to do something that would draw attention to themselves, but by being true to their own beliefs and by making a difference to the people around them.
The Things They Carried is a funny little book in the sense that it isn’t told how most books are. It goes from war to camping on the borderline of Canada, back to war, and then into present day times. It works marvelously well, showing you what actually happened and then what he thought about what happened and what he could have done to change the outcome. There are many things that I think people can learn from his experiences in the Vietnam war and the way he tells those stories and lessons really bring you along for the ride.
.... Jimmy was leader and should have been patrolling to make sure the platoon was safe. Instead he was dreaming about Martha and Lavender was shot and killed. Now Cross had a new motivation, he would forget about Martha and be a better leader. He didn’t want any more men to die because of his careless day dreaming. The other men had the motivation of fear to keep them working and in good health. The only thing they would all dream about would be the plane that would take them away from Vietnam.
Guilt acts as one of the strongest and most prominent emotions humans feel throughout their lives. Guilt can cause people to help others, push through obstacles, or make friends. Guilt, however, may not stop one from doing amoral actions. This can happen as a result of a perceived bonus outweighing the negative feeling one may experience from completing the action, or a heat of the moment action, where one may not fully understand the consequences of their actions.
People say the mind is a very complex thing. The mind gives people different interpretations of events and situations. A person state of mind can lead to a death of another person. As we all know death is all around us in movies, plays, and stories. The best stories that survive throughout time involve death in one form or another. For example, William Shakespeare is considered as one of the greatest writers in literary history known for having written a lot of stories concerning death like Macbeth or Julius Caesar. The topic of death in stories keeps people intrigued and on the edge of their seats. Edgar Allan Poe wrote two compelling stories that deal with death “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Raven.” In “The