Stereotypes In The Things They Carried

It was recorded nearly 2.6 million soldiers were sent to Vietnam to fight a gruesome war. About 58,000 of those 2.6 million soldiers perished by the time the Vietnam War was over (Vietnam War Statistics, 1997). These men had to live and die with strength, wits, impassive, and remorseless, all given by the society they were viewed in. Tim O’Brien a Vietnam War veteran born in Austin, Minnesota, was drafted into the war in 1968. He went through hell and back to write his book the Things They Carried (1990). With his experience, he shows how the war directly and indirectly changes a man through the repercussions of war. Soldiers in the Vietnam War embody a hyper masculine role that is constantly being exemplified throughout society, thereby

It didn’t matter who they were before the war. It mattered who they were going to be in the war, side by side other men. As their time progresses in Vietnam, they begin to build a tolerance to the horrors of war, and begin to embody a hyper masculine personality. All signs of emotions are hidden from their face. They embody the stereotype of all real men being able to stay composed and not let their emotions impair their judgement and duty. In the chapter The Things They Carried, O’Brien introduces the character Lieutenant Jimmy Cross who shares these same traits and believes that all men hide their emotions. In the chapter Lieutenant Jimmy Cross says, “They were tough. They carried all the emotional baggage of men who mights die. Grief, terror, love, longing - these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight” (O’Brien, 1990, p. 21). He explains how his men are carrying all those bottled up emotions waiting to be express but aren’t being express. Due to the hyper masculine role they adopted

This causes some men make decisions based on what they believe. One common decision is men not wanting join the war because they’re afraid of dying and taking another person's life. The men don’t receive any mental training when it comes to taking a life or seeing a comrade fall. In the chapter The Rainy River, Tim O’Brien introduces a character named after himself that doesn’t believe he is the right person to be drafted into the war, and he says “I imagined myself dead. I imagined myself doing things I could not do--charging an enemy position, taking aim at another human being.” (O’Brien, 1990, p. 44). He is one of the men that share the common fear of dying and taking a