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Burdens In The Thing They Carried

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Burdens of a Soldier Soldiers are looked up to all around the world. They are heroes. They are role models. The things they do and go through are widely appreciated by all. In the story, “The Thing They Carried” the reader gets to look a little bit deeper into what an everyday soldier does. The narrator describes the things each soldier carries and how a soldier can be identified by these things. Each soldier carries a unique load. Soldiers carry pounds upon pounds of physical burdens that also happen to be precautionary necessities. They carry ammunition, weapons, rations, medical supplies, heavy uniforms, and personal items; but they do not only carry physical burdens. The soldiers carry intangible burdens such as love, the fear of dying, …show more content…

He, like many other soldiers, feared dying like so many had done before them. All soldiers had times of panic. The narrator said, “there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn't, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth... hoping not to die”(104). Soldiers do not always keep their cool. Nobody wants to die, and panic is a natural instinct when it comes to being shot at. Once we learn what fear is, it sticks with us for life, or in the narrator's words, “It was the burden of being alive” (104). Just like all the other intangible burdens, fear is inescapable and a part of being alive, of being human. “Imagination was a killer” (100) says Jimmy. For example, when one of his men had to go into a tunnel they just blew up and check it out. All of the other men would station themselves around the hole, “imagining cobwebs and ghosts, whatever was down there- the tunnel walls squeezing in-...” (100). Their minds were their own worst enemies. The soldiers would imagine their worst fears and end up scaring themselves over nothing. As for, “Ted Lavender, who was scared” (99), his fear cost him his life, but the fear of dying was not the heaviest burden these soldiers carried

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No two people will react the same to life’s challenges. The weight they carried really did not compare to the internal impact they felt. The author emphasized more on the emotional views. As the Lieutenant, Jim Cross carried more of the weight because he had more to carry. Tim O’Brien mentioned he carried the lives of all the other men.

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“The things they carried were largely determined by necessity” (O’Brien 102). The weight of war is a theme strongly represented in Tim O’Brien’s story, The Things They Carried. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross starts off with no desire to be in a leadership position, because of his immaturity, his love for Martha, and inability to handle the responsibilities of lieutenant many of his men die. “He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war” (O’Brien 107). The soldiers carried many burdens, they carried: diseases, good luck charms, pencils, intangibles, memories, fear, responsibility, and on top of all this they carried

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One of the more obvious things they carry, are physical objects. From pantyhose to pictures, all the way to M16’s, the things the men carry, in this book, vary greatly. When it came to actual military equipment, they had a great deal of

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The Things They Carried “They carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives…carried rations…carried a toothbrush. ”(2) In this excerpt, from O’Brien’s book “The things they Carried”, the word “carried” is repeated throughout, to emphasize the importance of essential items the soldiers brought with them to war. “Pocket Knives” emphasizes that these soldiers are taking the responsibility of becoming a man and the fact that they will soon be taking another man’s life in war.

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Every soldier in Lieutenant Cross’s platoon has their own individual burdens to carry depending on their specialty, rank, and the things they had to leave at

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The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery.

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