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Juxtapositions In The Things They Carried

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In the short story “The Things They Carried” the general theme revolved around the emotional struggles of all the men and how they dealt with issues of war, love, fear, and loss. The tale is intended to symbolize the internal warfare of soldiers in war and the mental struggles of dealing with the risk of danger on a day to day basis. Author Tim O’Brien being a Vietnam War veteran, experienced this firsthand and uses imagery and physical juxtapositions to compare both the emotional and physical baggage that the men carried throughout the war. One of the main characters in the story, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who was the leader of the platoon in the story, faced many emotional problems. He was struggling with a love interest back in the United States and torn between putting emotional energies into both the thought of her while still maintaining the wellbeing of his troops and being a respectable officer. During the story, these internal struggles as a man cause him to have regret over the loss of one of his troops during a tunnel digging mission. This event amplified his suffering he was already experiencing due to the pain he was going through with his love interest and his fears of her not …show more content…

After the death of character Ted Lavender it was obvious that many of the men dealt with the loss in many ways. They coped by joking about the situation and discussing the event multiple times. Each of the men all had to deal with the death as well as the potentiality of their own death themselves. While the men were scared of death they also secretly longed for a release from the hellish situation of war that they were forced into. Throughout these grievances, the men still had to remain strong throughout the situation. They felt compelled to hide that they were living in misery during their time in Vietnam and dealing with the grief of the events that

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The heaviest of the weightless load was fears that they would not speak of, or perhaps could not speak of, lest it come alive and eat up their sanity. Instead, they shallowly laughed off the threat of death in this war, all the while alienating each other, thinking that this isolation wouldn’t allow their fellow soldiers to see how afraid they were of the dark shadow of death. It’s easy to feel the weight bearing down on the soldiers shoulder’s as O’Brien goes over the detailed list of items strapped to these men’s backs. Perhaps the most haunting of his words being “They all carry the emotional baggage of men who might die.” Nonetheless, they marched on.

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