Bradley Wyatt Prof. Woodard English 1301 October 6, 2012 A Moment in Vietnam Take a moment to imagine yourself in the heart of the Vietnam War. Surrounded by pocket knives, heat tabs, wrist watches, mosquito repellant, cigarettes, salt tablets, letters, mine detectors, drugs, bibles, and the men that carried these things, their emotions, and each other. Through the difficult and perilous battles, the men of the Alpha Company Squad are noted within the story, “The Things They Carried.” These men faced various difficult situations and one notable moment is when Ted Lavender faces his untimely yet impactful death. We will look at how Ted Lavender’s death affects the Alpha Company, the readers of “The Things They Carried”, and take a look
The thought always in their head that beyond any field of grass or behind any tree the enemy could be waiting. John Wade the protagonist of the story found himself witnessing first hand how horrid war can be and what it can make out of individuals. He saw his whole company turn into evil selfless animals who raped and murdered the innocent and weak. In the novel, In The Lake Of The Woods by Tim O'Brien, small footnotes were attached at the end of each important chapter which give the reader clues and symbolic twists that made the novel somewhat unpredictable. The Footnote I chosen explains related truth on the Vietnam War, symbolizes what John Wade witnessed, and finally how it portrays the rest of the novel.
As a semi-autobiographical recount, Owen criticises the suffering and psychological scarring of soldiers in ‘Mental Cases’. He depicts the aftermath and trauma experienced by soldiers through anecdotal experience. He begins the poem with a bombardment of rhetorical questions, ‘Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?’ to create an interrogative tone which demand an explanation regarding why the soldiers have been so tortured with misery. He further portrays their dehumanised state through religious diction, ‘Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows’ to create a visual of soldiers rocking back and forth, trying to shake off their mental torment.
Both Dawe and Slessor use powerful imagery to illustrate their anti-war sentiments. The two poems address the gravity of war and the awful sacrifices of men too young to die and the use of imagery in each adds another dimension and plays a crucial part in emphasizing the message of pieces. Imagery is used in both poems to create a sense of unification in death, both between the families of the dead boys as in homecoming when Dawe used imagery such as ‘the spider grief swings’ through the ‘wide web of suburbs’ as the news of death reaches each house and unifies the whole country in mourning. But a different type of unification in beach burial as Slessor unifies the dead soldiers from both sides of the war, ‘the sand joins them together’ in their graves, they are all labelled as ‘unknown soldiers’ and Slessor describes them all as ‘gone in search of the same landfall’. Another type of imagery that appears in both poems in the description of the war itself and the imagery used reinforces the brutality of it, so is the aim of both poems.
The Things They Carried Tim O Brien’s “The Things They Carried” is a short story about soldiers caught in the confusion of the Vietnam War. O Brien a lot of apparent themes to his audience. In this short story, Martha symbolized hope, death, and a destructive path that Lieut. Jimmy Cross could not afford to take. Irony developed the moment Lt Cross destroyed the pictures of Martha.
At war the motto is “kill or be killed” and the choice you make can lead to your survival or your death. In Tim O’Brien’s “The Man I Killed” shows the traumatized side of war, the effect the death of another human being can have on a person, even if the person is your enemy. Death in general can put a person in a traumatic stage, a mourning stage. Witnessing a death happen right in front of your eyes is something people remember for a long time, if not until their own death. Most of the soldiers that come back from war suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder as shown on many news channels.
130). By emphasizing the death of this man consistently throughout the chapter, it pin point the agony he felt once he killed basically a man who was not fit for war. Through the constant descriptions of the dead body, it shows the emotional truth behind the feeling of killing a human being and from that readers can understand the anguish of taking the life of another person. These soldiers also had to endure killing people “because they were embarrassed not to” and the men had to sacrifice themselves so “they died so as not to die of embarrassment” (21). In “The Things They Carried” chapter, O’Brien goes in to great detail to tell every little thing each soldier carried and a major thing they carried was the feeling of honor and to die a man.
The Guilt They Carried The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a set of connected short pieces that tell the stories of the men of the Alpha Company before, during and after the Vietnam War. Far from a combat story of pride and glory, it is a compassionate tale dealing with the surreal and ambiguous nature of war. O’Brien illustrates the true brutality of war, beyond the glamour of Hollywood or the excitement of a game. Guilt is present throughout the novel as all the characters in The Things They Carried are haunted by guilt and look for someone or something to blame. They feel guilty for the deaths of men in their platoon, for the deaths of Vietnamese, and for their own inadequacies.
Title Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried blends the truth of a Vietnam War memoir and the facts of a writer’s autobiography. He combines imagination with reality, all the while meditating on the war, his memories, and the power to redeem oneself through storytelling. The song “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried both The “things” of the title that O’Brien’s characters carry are both literal and figurative. While they all carry heavy physical loads, including steel helmets, boots, guns, ammunition, and flak jackets, they also all carry heavy emotional loads, made up of responsibility, anguish, horror, love, and longing. Each man’s physical encumbrance accentuates his emotional encumbrance.
Steinbeck wants the reader to understand the harsh and difficult living conditions the soldiers are living in. Also, Steinbeck wants the reader to feel the emotion and physical pain the soldiers are feeling, “Under extended bombardment…the eardrums are tortured by the blast…your skin feels thick and insensitive. There’s a salty taste in your mouth. A hard, painful knot is in your stomach with undigested food…This is how you feel just after a few days of constant firing.” Steinbeck’s writes such a strong description that the reader can fully understand and even feel the pain the soldiers feel. The essay “Why Soldiers Won’t Talk,” is marked by a clear narrative description of what war is truly like and gives the reader a strong sense of perspective.