Wars of any kind can not only affect the physical state of soldiers but they also greatly affect their emotional state. The Vietnam War was no exception and it is seen many times throughout the The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien how the events of the war change the character’s thoughts, actions, and feelings. As the novel progresses and more of the stories are told, it is seen how damaging the war is to characters such as Tim O’Brien, Mary Anne Bell, and Rat Kiley. Each of these characters had their own backgrounds, their own stories, and their own lives, however they all have one thing in common, the war ultimately killed their spirit.
In “On the Rainy River” the character Tim O’Brien recalls “I was too good for this war. Too smart, too …show more content…
As a medic Kiley saw a lot of tragedy, he witnessed things that young men his age shouldn’t ever have to see or go through. Kiley manages to cope with the death that surrounds him everyday until his best friend Curt Lemon dies. Part of Kiley’s spirit left him then, and from that point the war began to take its toll on him. It is noticed by the other men in “Night Life” later on that Kiley was different, O’Brien recalls Mitchell Sanders telling him “With Rat Kiley, though, it was different. Too many body bags maybe. Too much gore. At first Rat just sank inside himself, not saying a word, but then later on, after five or six days, it flipped the other way. He couldn’t stop talking” (O’Brien 209). The night life, death, and brutality of the war ultimately got to Kiley, it got inside his mind. It lead Kiley, a young man who was smart, determined, and put together, to shoot himself in the foot simply so he could just escape from the war and get away from all the …show more content…
Some of them suffered from PTSD, some never talked about it at all, and some wrote about the stories they were told and their own personal stories. The characters Tim O’Brien, Mary Anne Bell, and Rat Kiley show the greatest change throughout the novel and prove that the war damages people not just physically but emotionally as well. Each of these characters were young, naive, and had their lives ahead of them, but the war ultimately aged, toughened, and even killed Bell and Kiley. In a sense, the war killed them all, it killed the spirit and liveliness they held within themselves and in the end their faith in
In “On the Rainy River” the character Tim O’Brien recalls “I was too good for this war. Too smart, too …show more content…
As a medic Kiley saw a lot of tragedy, he witnessed things that young men his age shouldn’t ever have to see or go through. Kiley manages to cope with the death that surrounds him everyday until his best friend Curt Lemon dies. Part of Kiley’s spirit left him then, and from that point the war began to take its toll on him. It is noticed by the other men in “Night Life” later on that Kiley was different, O’Brien recalls Mitchell Sanders telling him “With Rat Kiley, though, it was different. Too many body bags maybe. Too much gore. At first Rat just sank inside himself, not saying a word, but then later on, after five or six days, it flipped the other way. He couldn’t stop talking” (O’Brien 209). The night life, death, and brutality of the war ultimately got to Kiley, it got inside his mind. It lead Kiley, a young man who was smart, determined, and put together, to shoot himself in the foot simply so he could just escape from the war and get away from all the …show more content…
Some of them suffered from PTSD, some never talked about it at all, and some wrote about the stories they were told and their own personal stories. The characters Tim O’Brien, Mary Anne Bell, and Rat Kiley show the greatest change throughout the novel and prove that the war damages people not just physically but emotionally as well. Each of these characters were young, naive, and had their lives ahead of them, but the war ultimately aged, toughened, and even killed Bell and Kiley. In a sense, the war killed them all, it killed the spirit and liveliness they held within themselves and in the end their faith in