Guilt In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

(H) “They feel guilty for having survived, so they pretend the bad things never happened” (Trumbo). (Th) In Tim O’Brien’s 1990 metafictional novel, The Things They Carried, he exemplifies in the chapters “Ambush” and “The Man I Killed” how the ability to express the inevitable guilt from serving in war often determines whether one will survive post-war life (M) through anaphora, celestial imagery, and vivid imagination.
(Pt) Anaphora manifests how a person’s expression of guilt from serving in war decides whether one can survive after war. (Ce) The author utilizes anaphora to amplify feelings of guilt when he kills a young soldier: (De) “He knew he would die quickly. He knew he would see a flash of light. He knew he would fall dead and wake

(Ce) Through the use of celestial imagery, Tim O’Brien displays how the death of a person relieves them from the guilt of war. (De) O’Brien stares at the dead boy pondering the young man and how “his life was now a constellation of possibilities” (O’Brien 122). (A) Due to his guilt, he considers the man he killed and what his life might have been had he not killed him. Tim even had the urge to warn the young solider of his ultimate demise after he released the grenade. His guilt began before he killed the man since he was aware of the repercussions of his actions. (Ce) The author asserts the guilt a man feels when looking at a corpse killed by his own actions through celestial imagery. (De) The young soldier laid haphazardly on the ground with “his other eye a huge star-shaped hole” (O’Brien 127). (A) Tim feels guilty and makes an effort to get rid of it by relating peace and a new life to celestial references and a star eye. His guilt is fabricated from the idea that he killed a person and that person’s potential to become a hero–somebody a person looks up to just like the stars in the sky. Being able to express this guilt through the writing of a star-shaped eye shows the possibility of him enduring life after

(Ce) O’Brien declares how guilt is emoted through imagination. (De) He contemplates the reason a dead soldier was participating in war: “he was afraid of disgracing himself, and therefore his family and village. But all he could do, he thought, was wait and pray and try not to grow up too fast” (O’Brien 121). (A) Many soldiers in war are drafted and forced to participate–whether that is physically, emotionally, or socially–and how this thought is an attempt to alleviate O’Brien’s guilt. Regardless of the previous encounter or lack of them, O’Brien instinctually threw the grenade to possibly save his own life. However, blame must be placed somewhere, and many will place it with the soldier that threw the grenade. (Ce) The author exhibits how detailed imagination solidifies and intensifies feelings of guilt from war. (De) Character Tim O’Brien visualizes the possible result of the situation had he not made himself known to the other soldier; he may “pass within a few yards of me and suddenly smile…then continue up the trail to where it bends back into the fog” (O’Brien 128). (A) The chapter “Ambush” has a different type of imagination that causes him to feel more guilty. He asks himself what the consequences would have been if he did something differently. His imagination took over, and he thought about the man smiling, being