This calamitous incident occurs when he gets shot in the head and is killed while returning from using the latrine. Just moments before this tragedy occurs, Cross is daydreaming about his obsession, Martha, back in America and how he loves her and how she cannot relate with his feeling of affection. It is while his mind is wandering when Ted Lavender gets shot. Cross cannot help but feel responsible for Lavender’s death. Despite that deaths like this are commonly caused by freak incidents, he feels that if his attention had been focused on the war at the very moment Lavender died instead of the girl whose love he can never obtain, he could have prevented this loss of life.
They were both 19. At 19 years of age Rat had watched his buddy die in front of his eyes. In the beginning of the story Rat has written a letter to his buddy’s sister and really “poured his heart out in it” ( 287-288).The “cooze” ( 288) never writes back. Many soldiers, male and female, are young, when they are sent to war. They are forever changed and their way of talk is just one thing that is altered.
Walter also gives a first person point of view of facing war as a young man, and how o cope with deaths and tough struggles. In my eyes there are allot of harsh events that take place in the book. Richie experiences soldiers dying during a mission. “I couldn’t think of her wondering why I didn’t do something, why I didn’t save him.” In the quote it states that Richie witnessed his team member die in front of him, and then he thought about his member’s family and mother and how she felt about her son’s death. Secondly, while everyone was sleeping they all got woken up by choppers early in the morning.
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.
The more the movie went into depth, the more stronger the similarities and differences presented themselves. As the stories of these heroes unraveled, comparing and contrasting the psyche, the brutality ,the moral and ethical conflicts in great war movies such as the “Lone Survivor”(Berg.2014), and “Apocalypse Now”(Coppola.1979), was not as hard as imagined. The psyche of a man in war is really captured in both these movies. Of the two movies,”Apocalypse now”() really captures a stronger sense of what war can do to a soldier’s mental status, one example of a deteering mind is Colonel Kurtz. This man reputation was one of the greatest to ever represent his country, he was the 4.0 kid who never did anything wrong and was on pace to be up at the very top of the ranks the military can offer.
This too, strengthens the reader’s understanding of the main themes. The themes that aid in the reader's understanding are how wars can bring either the best or worst out of someone and how war can leave such a lasting effect on a society that fallen victim to war. The well thought-out strategies created among the commanders and their confidants that the author writes in complex details can make one feel as though they were sitting down among the generals themselves, planning what the next step will be! Straying far from the historical book stereotype, McCullough writes 1776 what many others have written beforehand, but in a way that makes one be on the edge of their seats, continuing to turn the pages to know what happens next. The author goes straight into the point leaving no small details out, for what the objective the author desires from the reader, is to see how the wrong words or changes in weather conditions can be contributing factors to the outcome of
Both of these ate away at the men; mind, body and soul. ‘Carry’ means to hold or support while moving, to transport, transmit, or transfer, but figuratively, ‘carry’ connotes bearing a grievance. After Ted Lavender was killed Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried Lavenders burden with him because he felt personally responsible for his death. He was to busy thinking about Martha the one he loved, even though he knew she didn’t love him in return. L.T.
The hermit hut sub plot is a great way to define good and evil. The hermit was said to have killed his wife and son, many people read what he did and said he was a murderer. When Ellie, Fi etc. found the notes in the hermits hut they realised that the hermit was not actually a murderer but he was a hero. He killed his wife and son to save them from having a horrible death from beings severely burnt.
The grenade went off and the man fell on his back, his sandals blown off and he was dead. O’Brien always wondered if he never killed the young man would he be died, was that young man a good guy, did he have a family, and was it the right thing to do by killing him? To me every war story comes out to be the same. Everyone dying, families sad, and the other country is celebrating their victory. In the story “Falling Angels” they fight for their lives, watch others die, and return home.
A.P. English 11 May 27, 2014 What is a true war story? One that tells of death and gloom, or one that defends the peaceful front? The Things They Carried written by Tim O’Brien explains to the world of readers what a true war story is. O’Brien tells these stories with different tones depending on which recollection; it is light and hopeful during “Love” or dark and hopeless within “The Man I Killed.” To create these works he uses imagination and invention to describe the true difficulties of a true war story.