When someone experiences a terrible loss in their life usually they can cope with it in a multitude of ways. Some cope with it through deep mournful trials, replace the terrible moment with a more light and peaceful moment, block it out entirely, or they relive the event that caused the loss of that close friend or loved one over and over in their head. These coping mechanisms are evidently used in the entire cast of characters in the short story The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. In the story the characters experience the loss of a member in their unit during a patrol through the jungles of Vietnam. After they experience the loss of their comrade in arms the entire unit undergoes a process of mourning in their own distinct way. Likewise, …show more content…
Along with his usual gear, though, he carries with him the burden of not being able to be with his girlfriend and , “walking barefoot along the Jersey Shore, with Martha, carrying nothing,” (O’Brien 1480). Therefore in order to forget this burden Cross carries a pebble in his mouth because it is one Martha picked up, and he also stares at pictures of her in his foxhole every night. This is what keeps Cross, in a sense, sane during the war because he can escape the horrors around him and at the same time witness something beautiful and peaceful in a place that would be considered ugly and horrendous. Cross’s escape from the war can be contrasted to the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” in the sense that the speaker in this poem cannot escape the war he is in, but rather he has to face it every day without a break in the war since the troops have to march on until the soldier’s, “distant rest began to trudge,” (N). Both instances show that during a time of war some soldiers use the coping mechanism of replacement in order to escape the horrors of war, and some have absolutely no escape from the war so they have to face it every day. Another coping mechanism used in The Things They Carried could also be defined as an escape but from an unexpected