Theme Of Death In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

The novel, The Things They Carried, teaches valuable morals and presents themes that are unusual to find in a war novel. War can teach a person many things and has a variety of stories that contain said morals and themes. In war, there is a lot of death. In Vietnam, especially, casualties on both sides grew higher and higher with each passing day. The narrator and author, Tim O’Brien, shares his stories regarding death no matter how gruesome or disturbing. All of the soldiers had a different and unique attitude regarding death, and their attitude was dependent on who died. Throughout the novel, O’Brien addresses how the soldiers dealt with death.

Rat Kiley deals with the death of his best friend, Kirk Lemon, very inhumanly. In a passage …show more content…
The buffalo represented more than just itself. When describing the water buffalo, O’Brien states that “it went down hard, then got up again.” He later says the same thing, but the buffalo couldn’t get up because of its intense injuries. The buffalo symbolizes intense determination. It would have accepted defeat, but it fought back by taking the bullets and allowing Kiley to take his anger out on it. Kiley continues to shoot the animal in an to attempt to absorb its strength and determination. The image of the suffering animal refusing death is a testament to war and Rat Kiley sees past it and continues to mutilate the innocent animal. During the murder of the innocent animal, Rat Kiley “went to automatic.” The phrase parallels the gun to Rat himself. The automatic shooting of the gun parallels to his automatic reaction of shooting the animal. Secondly, the act of switching to a single shot to automatic takes time, and that time allows for some thinking. Rat could’ve thought how malevolent he was being, yet he didn’t stop. He was rationalizing his actions as a coping mechanism and continued to shoot the poor animal. O’Brien uses very atypical words to describe the shooting. O’Brien described the shooting as being “randomly” and “casually” orchestrated. O’Brien’s use simple minded diction alludes to the fact that Rat didn’t care about what he was doing. The randomness and casualness of the whole situation make …show more content…
In the final chapter, “The Lives of the Dead”, O’Brien explains how the men were treating a dead body. They casually went up to the body and shook it’s decapitated hand. The uncomfortable thing about it was that they were so comfortable to go up to the body and do that. Death has a certain formality to it that causes comfort. The soldiers treated the man like he was alive. O’Brien reflects that the soldiers, “grabbed the old man’s hand and offered a few words.” The imagery of these burly, young men walking up to a dead body and shaking its hand is very eerie, and the fact that they were talking to it is even more uncanny. Trifling with a dead body is an inhumane act and dehumanizes the person, which may not seem like much, but it is still disrespectful to him. If it is do disrespectful, then why do the men do it? It is because they have grown accustomed to death and they don’t see it as disrespectful. They believe that if you don’t offer some words then that is disrespect. The soldiers’ interpretations to many words and phrases have been skewed as a result of the war. When the soldiers are pressuring Tim to shake the man’s hand they assert, “be polite now”, “show a little respect for your elders”, and “never too late for manners.” The words “polite”, “respect”, and “manners” are the words that war has skewed. Traditionally, those words are used in a gentle, good-natured environment as a sign of consideration toward others.