So Similar Yet Different In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Trauma: So Similar Yet Different. The antagonizing adversity, the convoluted hardships, and the reassuring lies — a war story that taps into a soldier’s memories to indulge its audience in morality. The memories of Tim O’Brien are documented in The Things They Carried, as it details the constant dread of thinking about the possibilities of the war. It is a tragedy from the perspective of insiders versus outsiders, as one will never understand the other and vice versa. Revisiting old memories like a distant familiarity, Tim O’Brien compounds the circumstances between insiders and outsiders to demonstrate the ways we treat people differently from our perspective. Nobody understands what an individual feels from the inside, representing an outsider

‘You feel terrible, I know that.’... There was some silence before he said, ‘Stop staring’” (121-2). However, nothing seems to reach out to O’Brien as if he is grieving in his small world, demonstrating an outsider. People try to sympathize with O’Brien from their experiences but fail to realize that they did not go through what O’Brien underwent, similar to Kiowa as he admits it. Nobody could comprehend how a body turns cold, arms shivering tremendously, and eyes wavering at the sight of the dead body like O’Brien. Therefore, people treat outsiders with a false relatability as people do not understand how an individual feels from the inside. It parallels how we treat outsiders, as society tries to understand what a person is going through without understanding their perspective. Trauma plagues a person’s mind by isolating how they feel, and how difficult it is to reach out to them, meaning that we treat outsiders with uncertain compassion as we fail to understand. The weird dynamic between outsiders and society demonstrates how people play charades to understand outsiders’ emotions as we attempt to comfort them in these trying times, establishing the isolating feeling of an

Vulnerability was not an option, as they believed in remaining strong for the war, so they found humor to laugh away their sorrows instead. “They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it. They told stories about Ted Lavender’s supply of tranquilizers, how the poor guy didn’t feel a thing, how incredibly tranquil he was” (19). Everyone seems to be in unity, everyone laughing away from the fact that they just witnessed someone die. While everyone puffs up their chest for a good laugh, their shared predicament demonstrates an insider, as everyone appears to be a part of a crude joke. Everyone in the platoon treats each other with a sense of community, with everyone understanding each other’s burden. Jimmy Cross witnessed it, Dave Jensen witnessed it, Kiowa witnessed it, and everybody in that platoon witnessed Ted Lavender’s death. It demonstrates how people can curate a small, communal gathering to cope with the tremendous guilt in their hearts because it does not feel so