“At one point, I remember, we paused over a picture of Ted Lavender, and after a while Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he’d never forgiven himself for Lavender’s death. It was something that would never go away, he said quietly, and I nodded and told him I felt the same about certain things” (Obrien 27). Another theme is fear of shame as motivation. Tim O’Brien experiences this himself when he is on the boat with Elroy. He decides to go to war because he is ashamed of running from it.
But because he was distracted he couldn’t do anything. Even though it wasn’t his fault he felt guilty and his thoughts would overcome him. An example is “Later we heard that Strunk died somewhere over Chu Lai, which seemed to relive Dave Jensen of an enormous weight.” Dave Jensen feels guilty for not killing Lee Strunk and putting him out of his misery. It seems as if the soldiers are in a damned if you don’t situation. Jensen would probably have felt guilty if he killed Strunk as per their original pact, but not killing his friend made him feel guilty, too.
Kiowa is carrying the fact that he really does not trust white people at times because of the past mistakes they have made. He dies and does not get to return to his family. Norman Bowker who feels as though he is part of the reason Kiowa died because he failed to save him, yet reveals that it really was not him. After returning home he hangs himself on a rope to kill himself which surprises everyone. These soldiers are not only carrying their weapons and their warrior mentality because it is their job after all to kill the enemy for our
When his soldier Ted Lavender died all he could do was cry and blame himself for his death, “He felt shame. He hated himself.... this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of war.” (O’Brien, The Things They Carried 42) but he didn’t let that very heart-wrenching emotion of feeling responsible for someone’s death cloud his judgment or cause him to take his job lightly. Towards the end of the story he stepped up, over-coming the guilt he felt after the death of Ted Lavender. Learning from his mistakes and changing the way he lead his platoon “He would not tolerate laxity. He would show strength, distancing himself.” (O’Brien, The Things They Carried 100) He showed courage while seeing the bigger picture telling himself “that his obligation was not to be loved but to lead.” (O’Brien, The Things They Carried 101) Masculinity is very apparent in this platoon.
____ 1 __________ __________ English 13 May 2014 Courage and survival Arek Hersh was a concentration camp survivor he was born in Poland and his father was a boot maker for the army. Jews in Poland were bothered with anti-Semitism; this was after the ‘polenkation’ of 1938 when Germany forced many polish Jews citizens across the border. September 1st of 1939 the Germany army attacked Poland. Arek’s family had to leave there home town and live in Lodz. In 1940 the Jews who lived in Lodz had to start wearing the Star of David on their clothes and were forced into a ghetto, where food was controlled and people lived in tight conditions.
Night by Elie Wiesel is a story based on his personal experiences during the holocaust controlled by the Nazi army in the concentration camps. Towards the end of 1941 all the Jewish people were taken away from their homes by the Nazi army. When they arrived in Auschwitz they Nazi army separated families by their strength, weakness, and gender. All the men and the women were separated. Then the weak and old ones were separated from the young and strong.
Reb Molinsky is shown to be almost a slave of his own religion, to the point that he is willing to sacrifice the integrity of his household just to serve his God. Like Sara, his will and faith in his goals are so strong that he completely turn his head away from his family’s needs and chooses to lock himself in a room filled with his books while everyone else starves. This is perceived as an inhumane action, but we need to consider that Sara’s actions are no better than her father’s. Once she is an accomplished woman she goes back to her parents, just to find her mother laying on her deathbed. In other words, she turned her head away her family in order to study and fulfill her goals.
Multiple times through out the book Johnny admits that he would like to die, and goes on to describe his frustrations about his lack of ability to do so. He feels pointless, worthless, and disgusting, but later in the book he is content on showing the world what war really is; to let every man who was ever drafted and will ever be drafted know what he is really getting in to.
These feeling are expressed in the story about Rat Kiley's letter, with which the chapter is started - with his feelings of grief about loss and final «cooze», because he was not written back and he could not cope with his loss. His pain is shown in the shoking story of shooting baby buffalo. However, all these stories might have never happened, the soldiers were fighting the war and facing blood, troops and losses, struggling because of their youth and immaturity, fear that cannot be ignored about war. This terrible experience of war is the only truth that author wants to make the readers understand in his
He expresses his grief at losing close friends, as well as, resentment for an overly vengeful God, who would punish men not only their crimes, but also the crimes of their fathers. One of Francesco?s peers, Giovanni Boccaccio observed the human behavior in response to The Plague. He concluded that their behavior fell into three categories: Isolation- No one can get me sick if I break contact with everyone. Denial- If I indulge myself, enjoy life, and surround myself with merriment, how could I possibly die? Moderation- If I refrain from overindulgence and gluttony, and walk a righteous path, then I will be spared from this evil.