“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.
Baggage: Inside and Out “The Things They Carried,” written by Tim O’Brien helped recognize particular aspects of the Vietnam War as it associated with the soldiers and their lives individually and collectively. O’Brien described the overall mood of the war and the soldiers involved regarding the physical, psychological, and emotional weight the soldiers bared. We too, as individuals carry things with us in our daily lives that attribute something to our physical or mental well-being. For me, these are feelings as well as tangible objects. The men in this story carried “all the emotional baggage of men who might die.
Many of the men come to war somewhere between the age of 18 and 21, and are forced to deal with things no one else their age would have to. Those who are younger, quickly lose their innocence, faith, and sometimes even their mind. As they go through the war they see so many things such as death, wounds, and others losing
Ted Lavender was shot in his head on his way back from peeing. Lieutenant cross blamed himself because he was fantasizing about the girl instead of worrying about the safety of his men. I think this incident brought Jimmy the realization that”he loved Martha more then he loved his men” and realized she did not love him. Jimmy burnt her pictures and letters and decided to change the way he was running things. It took the death of one of the Lieutenants men for him to re-examine the importance of his love for Martha and realize he wasn’t focusing on what should have been his first priority the war and safety of his
Although O’Brien is unclear about whether or not he actually threw a grenade and killed a man outside My Khe, his memory of the man’s corpse is strong and recurring, symbolizing humanity’s guilt over war’s horrible acts. Norman was right on the side of him when he died, after about a couple of years passed by after the war he was in Kiowa home town he started crying because he didn’t do anything to try to save him. In Fallen Angels Richie see’s how almost his whole team died he and Peewee were the only ones that survived, which emphasizes the theme of youth and innocence. In calling the novel Fallen Angels, the author implies that the soldiers’ youth and innocence are more important than any of their other aspects, such as their religion, ethnicity, class, or race. They wanted them to know what war is really like and wants to help them understand what is experienced.
In the novel, Montag made Mildred friends cry. After he made her friends cry from telling them the truth they all left hurt. However, in the movie John almost killed a man because he thought the man killed his son. John felt bad at the end, because he was not looking at his son’s killer. Even though, he didn’t kill the man, he still hurt him physically and emotionally.
In NCIS they seem to portray ex members of the armed services in a negative connotation. I recently watched an episode about how a retired navy serviceman was wanted for the killing of his wife. At the end of the show they say he was sick with some bullshit disease that caused him to not remember things when he gets mad. And no matter what happens it always works out okay in the end. In most TV shows they do this for viewing purposes because no one wants to watch the machine run for a long time but by cutting time out they make it seem a lot more interesting to the regular person whose sitting at home watching the show.
Some of these include death of others around them Vietnamese men, women, and children. Also they saw many of the people in their platoon get killed or die. Men tried to close themselves off from what was going on “they carried shameful memories” (482). “Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, not dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor.
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.
His enrolment in the war is due to his guilt over Rowena’s death and his need for independence. After Rowena’s death, Robert was burdened with feeling of guilt and grief that he was not able to protect his sister. “It was Robert’s fault. Robert was her guardian and he was locked in his bedroom. Making love to his pillows,” (15).