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Similarities In The Things They Carried

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The Things We Carry Can Be Similar to Others But They All Have Different Meanings. “They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.” (O’Brien 7) In the book The Things They Carried the soldiers are at war and there is a list given for each soldier of the items he carried. In the book Wild Cheryl hikes the PCT trail to use as a way to recover from a recent personal tragedy. Several of these things they carried are intangible (untouchable), including guilt and fear, and some touchable like physical objects: matches, drugs, weapons, candy, books, good luck charms, ETC... While some differences between emotional and physical things carried are noticeable, the similarities …show more content…

And doing heroin. …Never shoot it. Absolutely not. Then we shot it” (Strayed 53) Cheryl used the heroin for a way to grieve for her mother. “The place where there was no pain…. Okay that my mother was dead.” (Strayed 53) In the book The Things I Carried one of the soldiers named Ted Lavender, “who was scared carried tranquilizers” (O’Brien 2) to calm him and he, “carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity,” (O’Brien 3) In the book The Things I Carried “They carried all emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief…..”(O’Brien) The soldiers could not really show grief, “…. It required perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried their greatest fear…… fear of blushing.”(O’Brien) But no only in the war did they carry grief. “In the spring of 1956, when we were in the fourth grade…..” (O’Brien 216) “She had a brain tumor. She lived through the summer…and then she was dead…. Timmy stop crying.”(O’Brien 224) Tim would close his eyes and whisper her name almost begging to come back. “Linda. Please.” (O’Brien …show more content…

They carried the fear but against the Vietnamese people who they were at war with. They carried grief when their fellow soldiers were killed, and for Tim his first love who had cancer. Some of them carried a good luck charm to help them face an ambush, or they simply just thought it would keep them alive so they can make it back home. Ted carried drugs because he was scared so he used it to stay calm. And Tim carried disappointment because he was thinking of running away from war, something he was forced to do, even though he didn’t believe in it. The soldier’s in The Things They Carried, carried these items, “Pocket knives, salt tablets, canned peaches, mosquito repellent, two or three canteens of water, diary, comic books, lighter, extra clothes and they dug fox holes to sleep in.” (O’Brien 2) They carried these things to survive the war, either from hunger and thirst, weather, insects, death, and a safe sleep

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