Examining the Importance of Death in “The Things They Carried”
The longest war in American history, the Vietnam War, lasted from 1954-1973 and was a horrific and cold war, resulting in a total death toll ranging from 1.3 million casualties to 3.9 million (Bia 1). In just the United States alone, 58,220 total casualties are recorded, with 47,434 of them considered ‘hostile deaths’ (DCAS 1). Vietnam War veteran and American novelist Tim O’Brien, in The Things They Carried, examines the varying effects of war, death, and violence on Vietnam soldiers through a collection of fictional short stories that convey the struggles of these men as before, during, and after returning from the war. Death is a heavy and extremely prevalent subject throughout …show more content…
O’Brien states that he is a forty-three year old now “still dreaming Linda alive in exactly the same way,” (232). This fictional comrade O'Brien's mind has developed for its own sake expresses O’Brien’s reliance on her to cope with his depression that resulted from all his encounters with death. He then compares his own method of coping with death to other soldiers in his unit, such as Kiowa, who “believed in the New Testament stories of life after death,” (226). This conveys how everyone has something that isn't proven, something debatably fictional that they rely on to cope with difficult experiences with death. He metaphorically compared his visions of Linda to the strategies of the other men: shaking of hands and acting, which allowed them to pretend death “was not the terrible thing it was,” (226). Through the mens “hard and wistful,” language, they were able to transform the dead bodies into “piles of waste,” (226). They used the harshness and vulgarity of their language to psychologically justify the deaths in their head, so they would feel remorse or mourn for the rest of their lives. Though it sounds inconsiderate and cruel, it was necessary for these soldiers to employ any strategy that would help them to live on. If a soldier excised these strategies, or rejected them, they would end up like Norman Bowker, who felt ostracized from society because, of what he believed to be, too extreme, complex memories that society just wouldn't understand. Finally, O'Brien states that when he looks at Linda it's as if he is “gazing into some other world, a place where there are no brain tumors and no funeral homes, where there are no bodies at
The longest war in American history, the Vietnam War, lasted from 1954-1973 and was a horrific and cold war, resulting in a total death toll ranging from 1.3 million casualties to 3.9 million (Bia 1). In just the United States alone, 58,220 total casualties are recorded, with 47,434 of them considered ‘hostile deaths’ (DCAS 1). Vietnam War veteran and American novelist Tim O’Brien, in The Things They Carried, examines the varying effects of war, death, and violence on Vietnam soldiers through a collection of fictional short stories that convey the struggles of these men as before, during, and after returning from the war. Death is a heavy and extremely prevalent subject throughout …show more content…
O’Brien states that he is a forty-three year old now “still dreaming Linda alive in exactly the same way,” (232). This fictional comrade O'Brien's mind has developed for its own sake expresses O’Brien’s reliance on her to cope with his depression that resulted from all his encounters with death. He then compares his own method of coping with death to other soldiers in his unit, such as Kiowa, who “believed in the New Testament stories of life after death,” (226). This conveys how everyone has something that isn't proven, something debatably fictional that they rely on to cope with difficult experiences with death. He metaphorically compared his visions of Linda to the strategies of the other men: shaking of hands and acting, which allowed them to pretend death “was not the terrible thing it was,” (226). Through the mens “hard and wistful,” language, they were able to transform the dead bodies into “piles of waste,” (226). They used the harshness and vulgarity of their language to psychologically justify the deaths in their head, so they would feel remorse or mourn for the rest of their lives. Though it sounds inconsiderate and cruel, it was necessary for these soldiers to employ any strategy that would help them to live on. If a soldier excised these strategies, or rejected them, they would end up like Norman Bowker, who felt ostracized from society because, of what he believed to be, too extreme, complex memories that society just wouldn't understand. Finally, O'Brien states that when he looks at Linda it's as if he is “gazing into some other world, a place where there are no brain tumors and no funeral homes, where there are no bodies at