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Importance Of Shame In The Things They Carried

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Importance of Shame in The Things They Carried
Have you ever felt shame and made decisions that haunt you every day of your life? It’s okay to feel shame because other people have had worse experiences. In the book “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien shame causes soldiers to act differently and to make choices that they would have never thought that they would’ve made. Even though shame drives some soldiers towards heroism, not stupidity, it plays an important role in the novel because it changes the characters’ personalities and it stays with the soldiers when they are Vietnam, which causes them to make unnecessary decisions, shame is the reason in which Tim O'Brien decided to go to Vietnam. In fact, shame drives some soldiers towards …show more content…
Shame causes soldiers to act different and do things they have never thought they would do. It’s okay if you have felt shame, because there have been other people who have gone worse experiences.

Works Cited
Beaumont, Leland R. “Shame.” Emotional Competency - Shame, www.emotionalcompetency.com/shame.htm. Accessed 26 Sept. 2017.
Heshmat, Shahram. “5 Factors That Make You Feel Shame.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 4 Oct. 2015, www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-choice/201510/5-factors-make-you-feel-shame. Accessed 26 Sept. 2017.
O’Brien, Tim. “Night Life.” The Things They Carried, Mariner books, 1990, pp. 208-212
O’Brien, Tim. “Speaking of Courage.” The Things They Carried, Mariner books, 1990, pp. 131-148
O’Brien, Tim. “In the Field.” The Things They Carried, Mariner books, 1990, pp. 155-170
O’Brien, Tim. “The Man I Killed.” The Things They Carried, Mariner books, 1990, pp.

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