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Summary Of Tim O 'Brien's The Things They Carried'

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In W.H. Auden’s Funeral Blues (pg. 762), the poem takes place shortly after the speaker’s beloved has passed away and shows how the speaker is forever changed by the beloved’s death and that feels that he will never recover. The speaker talks about how he feels that love doesn’t last forever and how he wants the whole world to experience the grief and sorrow he is feeling. In Tim O’Brien’s short story “The Things They Carried” (pg. 433), the story follows Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his command during the Vietnam War. Lt. Cross constantly spends most of his time fantasizing about a girl named Martha, who he has an unrequited crush. However after witnessing the death of one of his soldiers, while he was preoccupied thinking about Martha, Cross …show more content…

In “The Things They Carried”, Lieutenant Cross loses his idealism that he could return to his previous life and act as if the war never happened after Ted Lavender is killed by a sniper. After Lavender is killed, Lt. Cross realizes that he can’t continue to live in the pass and proceeds to get rid of all the objects (letters, pictures, and a “lucky” stone) that Martha gave him and decides to focus on protecting his command. This quote, “On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha’s letters. Then he burned the two photographs.” (pg. 444), helps to show Lt. Cross’s decision to move on from his past and focus on leading his command. Lt. Cross feels that if he hadn’t been …show more content…

The readers don’t know any of the specifics pertaining to the speaker’s relationship with the beloved, only that the beloved has passed away. The gray area in “The Things They Carry” is Lt. Crowd’s past before he was sent to fight in the Vietnam War. There is no real information about Lt. Cross’s past other than the college that he was attending and that he met Martha sometime while he was attending college. I believe that knowing the Lt. Cross’s past, it would have allowed the reader to have a better understanding of his personality and have a deeper understanding of his overall character. The ambiguities that I find to the theme of the moment where the character loses their sense of their idealism and discovers that bad things happen is a person going through life-changing events. When a life-changing event occurs in a person’s life, it has a major influence in the way the that person perceives their life whether it be good or bad. This idea of a life-changing events mirrors the theme perfectly, because it helps to show that a specific event can change your life forever and affect the life that the person knows forever. While knowing the gray areas and ambiguities is crucial to understanding the theme, I believe that “The Things They Carry” does a better job than Funeral Blues in using the two elements in order to explain the

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The Things They Carried Jimmy Cross Character Analysis

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Lieutenant Cross comes to realize “his obligation was not to be loved but to lead” (337). Meaning can be found in the fact that as Cross no longer carries these gifts Martha sent him, he is beginning to free himself of her distraction and the fantasy-like mindset he has. However, now he must carry the weight of the guilt of Lavender’s death and the responsibility of being a tough

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Rhetorical Strategies In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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In The Things They Carried the author, Tim O’Brien, uses rhetorical strategies in order to emphasize the events of war, which then assists the reader into experiencing the burden and overall experiences of the Vietnam War. At the beginning of Chapter One, O’Brien arranges his writing in a way that relates back to the experience of war. By organizing the paragraph into a list, the reader is dragged through the burden of a paragraph with it’s repetition and boring content. This directly correlates with the event of the war, the soldiers are going through the same feeling of burden when they constantly march. Along with war comes new relationships with the soldiers.

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How Did Lieutenant Jimmy Cross Get Responsible For The Loss In The Things They Carried

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During times of war, soldiers would encounter death left and right, either if it were their friends or enemies. As a result, many people, including the characters in The Things They Carried, had been scared physically and emotionally due to the death of allies or enemies. Many people deal with their emotions in different ways, some in positive ways and some in negative ways. Characters such as Tim O’Brien, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, and Norman Bowker were haunted by the deaths of the people around them, and dealt with their grief by internalizing their feelings, getting rid of distractions, and talking to imaginary people. Tim O’Brien is haunted and is reminded by his past actions because he killed what he thought was an innocent young man.

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Things They Carried By Sherman Alexie And Tim O Brien

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Jimmy Cross is blaming Martha to hide his own guilt, when in reality ted's death was nobody's fault but the enemy. This proves how people change under conflict. In the things they carried by Tim O’brien, there is a story of how two enemies become friends to survive in the Vietnam War. The story starts with Dave Jensen beating a man by the name of Strunk, but as the war drags on they become friends.

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War Altar People: The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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War Altar People People are strongly affected by what they carry through life, because sometimes you don’t know how to go back to your old self. Some soldiers that had served in the war have a hard time adjust to life outside the war; for example when soldiers go to sleep they are afraid of getting bombed or killed and when they return home to their family some still have that feeling of getting attacked and would wake up in the middle of the night terrified. In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien show characters change during the time of war and what they carried. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried his love for Martha and Mary Anne carried Vietnam, both of them were affected by the thing they carried and the people around

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Jimmy Cross In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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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.

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State Of Mind In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, who also narrates through the perspective of Lt’ Cross’s state of mind, describes what it is like to endure the trials of the Vietnam War. Tim receives his draft notice in June of 1968, and contemplates crossing the Canadian border to escape fighting in a war he does not believe in. Guilt and fear took over Tim and he decided he has no choice but to go back to Minnesota and then later to Vietnam. He is but one of many different characters with many different thoughts, motives, and feelings, but also have one thing in common; they all carried with them something that held value to them. For some it was a physical object that the can hold or see, and for others it might have been a mental state of mind, a belief or even a superstition;

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Comparing Schindler's List 'And The Things They Carried'

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Lt. Cross whose loyalty was always to the men of his platoon. However, he became emotionally troubled with the fact that one of his men had died. He felt it was his fault, for not limiting the items that they carried. Guilt ridden he was ever more determined to display courage on a grander scale by becoming a better leader. Although this was not his only task at hand, he had to do this while letting go of someone, he had enormous feelings for, because she proved to be a distraction.

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Emotional Burdens In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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The author was writing the story “The Things They Carried” expressed so many thoughts and feelings about what the soldiers had faced, they showed their feelings and duties, life or death, and overall fear and dedication. This story shows the theme of the physical and emotional burdens that everyone is going through in the war. By showing his readers what the soldier’s daily thoughts are and how they handle what is going on around them. Tim O’Brien expresses this theme by using characterization, symbolism, and tone continuously. In the story, physical and emotional burdens plagued several characters as they all had baggage weighing them down.

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Stereotypes In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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In modern society, we’ve associated a number of characteristics to define what a man should be; macho, chivalrous, courageous and so tough as to never show any form of emotions. In our story we read about a troop of soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War who witness death on a daily basis, being both men and soldiers with a mission to carry out they hide their fear and other emotions behind superstitions and trinkets. The most important component to a soldier is his psyche, or his ability to think strategically through any situation. With your mind preoccupied your skill declines, which can lead to a number of things going wrong. The theme presented in “The Things They Carried” supports this stereotype while also exposing the negative impacts.

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Things They Carried Shame Quotes

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In The Things They Carried, O'Brien explores how shame can be shown in different ways for soldiers, including shame over their own actions, shame over their weaknesses, and shame over their inability to connect with or help others. One of the most notable examples of shame in the novel is the character of Jimmy Cross, who feels intense shame and guilt over the death of one of his men, Ted Lavender. Cross blames himself for Lavender's death, feeling that he was too distracted by his own thoughts of Martha to properly lead his army. This shame continues to trouble Cross long after the incident, even after he has left Vietnam.

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Why The Challenges At War In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

757 Words | 4 Pages

Challenges at War Robert E. Lee once said, “What a cruel thing war is… to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors”. The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien takes place in Vietnam. He and a handful of other men experience things only one can image and hope they will never have to experience again. They learn how death among them can greatly affect them, and many others. War is not an easy task to get through and these men all had different coping methods.

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The Things They Carried Intangible Analysis

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In The Things They Carried Lieutenant Jimmy Cross would daydream about his love Martha, Keeping her letters and reading them repeatedly, and Staring at her picture everyday. He carried his love and passion for Martha with him everyday even thought he was positive that the feelings were not returned Jimmy cross showed true examples of tangible and intangible

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1505 Words | 7 Pages

The Disconnected Soldiers In “The Things They Carried,” written by Tim O’Brien, he creates images in the audience 's mind about what veterans truly experience before, during, and after the Vietnam war. Soldiers always have the strange feeling of disconnection but O’Brien brings this to the attention of people throughout his book. On the surface, the book appears to be a simple war novel, but beneath the surface it opens up into all of the struggles that war veterans face such as the disconnection from society. Disconnection occurs as a main theme in the novel and he presents this through multiple stories from different characters.

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Objects In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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Such as a quilt, pictures, and a family regalia. In each story, the characters bulwark and hold these objects close to their hearts. They are important objects that mean more than the world to them in the situation they are in. The objects are recollections that they do not want to relinquish and are meant to recollect. In “The Things They Carried”, Lieutenant Cross most consequential thing was his love for a woman designated Martha, who didn’t dote him back.

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