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Death In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

1152 Words5 Pages

Death is something that occurs often in a war due to the violence and dangerous areas. Everyone takes on the thought of someone dying in different ways, whether they maintained a close relationship with the person or not guilt could become an instant reaction of the persons' death because of a feeling of maybe being responsible for the death that occurred. The thought of maybe being responsible for one of the soldiers that you have spent day night serving with could leave an enormous amount of guilt in one person. When witnessing a death or anything traumatic it is easy to blame someone else or even yourself for the tragic accident. Multiple characters in the book The Things They Carried demonstrated the guilt and responsibility of another …show more content…

Whether you were responsible for the death of a person or it was something that was put into your head, you still have the belief that the death was caused on your behalf. “Even now I haven’t finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don’t. In the ordinary hours of life I try not to dwell on it, but now and then, when I’m reading a newspaper or just sitting alone in a room, I’ll look up and see the young man step out of the morning fog” (O’Brien, 128). Tim O’Brien killed a man while he was on guard although it was to protect the rest of the soldiers he was fighting in the war with he still felt guilty. Tim imagined how much of a great life or how he may have lived his life up until the day that he was killed by Tim O’Brien. Tim felt both the responsibility and guilt of the person that he killed while saving his own life in the process. Seeing a body as it is lying down in front of you nearly dying and there is not a chance of saving them could leave a scaring memory that would never go away all due to the fact that it happened right in front of your eyes and mostly because of you. Tim may have tried to forget or not think of what had happened but the death of someone usually never goes away and is somehow always a lingering memory that could not be

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