The Red Convertible 'And The Things They Carried By Tim O' Brien

Throughout history, the United States have only drafted soldiers in two wars, World War II and Vietnam. Thousands of teenagers who had just turned 18 were selected to go fight overseas in Vietnam. Soldiers only had eight weeks to prepare before getting deployed in enemy territory. The young soldiers that were drafted were assigned to infantry positions. The horrifying eyewitness accounts the soldiers witnessed led to psychological changes in their behavior for the rest of their lives. In “The Red Convertible” and “The Things They Carried,” soldiers experience life changing tragedies they cannot forget about. In “The Red Convertible,” Henry returns home from war a completely changed brother who is mentally unstable. The whole platoon in “The

The platoon witnessed Tim Lavender, a fellow soldier; get a bullet to his head from a Vietnamese soldier. Jimmy Cross says to himself, “You couldn’t burn the blame” (529). The death of Lavender is taking an emotional and psychological toll on Jimmy. He is blaming Martha when she is across the world. We see this by Jimmy’s battle with his inner thoughts through an outside spectator. He is struggling to take blame for the death. He knows it is his fault, but he does not want to take the blame. Instead, he blames Martha and tries to swallow the burden by eliminating his distraction. Third person omniscient point of view shows us by how the other soldiers are viewing Jimmy after the death. We get to see how other soldier’s view Jimmy’s reaction towards the death. From their perspectives we learn that Jimmy could burn his mementos from Martha, but he “could not burn the blame” for not being more alert before Lavender’s death. All of the soldier’s notice him crying the night it happened, but they notice how he accepts responsibility for the death the next morning and how he promises to take better care of the platoon from there on out. In Piedmont-Marton’s critical essay she discusses how Jimmy is reacting to the loss, “His alienation from the group now derives from his understanding that “you could die of carelessness and gross stupidity,” and that he is responsible for the others. He experiences this choice between Martha and his duty as a loss: “It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do” (Para 4). Piedmont-Marton shows this as a wakeup call to Jimmy. Marton shows this by how Lavender’s death makes Jimmy aware how easy it is to die from being distracted. Lavender’s death snaps him into