Similes In The Things They Carried

Although people think soldiers are characterized as tough killing machines, they are still humans with emotions, memories and lives beyond the military. According to soldiers, it is not easy being a soldier and living the life as a soldier. Life as a soldier has many struggles that people do not see and often go unaccounted for. This common dilemma comes to light in the short story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. The burden of war on soldiers is more than physical strain. Tim O’Brien displays the extra burdens of soldiers through the use of poetic elements such as repetition, onomatopoeia, symbols, metaphors, similes and irony.
Ultimately, the use of metaphors in “The Things They Carried” adds importance to soldiers and the burdens that they carry through war. O’Brien writes about the things soldiers carry such as ammunitions, ponchos and weapons. Furthermore, O’Brien continues on additional burdens such as emotional and social burdens that soldiers endure. In the short story, O’Brien uses the metaphor” Kiowa also …show more content…
O’Brien uses similes such as “Like cement” to describe the death of a fellow soldier. O’Brien furthermore uses onomatopoeia such as “just boom, then down” to describe the death and falling of the same soldier. The use of onomatopoeia is also used to resemble the body of the falling soldiers to a falling tree. The use of similes and onomatopoeia places a visualization of how the soldier might have died in combat. Therefore, the repeated use of such poetic elements through the short story of how a soldier died in puts emphasis that soldiers are affected by the death of a fellow soldier. Indeed, Tim O’Brien uses irony in the short story “The Things They Carried” that the soldier who was the most heavily armed ended up being killed. Thus, no matter how armed a soldier is the risk and burden of thinking of being killed is always going to be