The Soldiers In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

Emotionally dragging people down one by one, war brings sweat, tears, and blood. Although soldiers do carry many physical items, each individual also carries responsibilities which are not visible, but tend to weigh one down immensely, such as the lives of men. In the novel The Things They Carried, written by Tim O’Brien, he describes the items which the soldiers carried such as “taking up what others could no longer bear. Often, they carried each other, the wounded or weak. They carried infections. They carried chess sets, basketballs, and Vietnamese-English dictionaries” (14). O’Brien discusses both the physical items and the mental responsibilities the soldiers must bear during a war. Although chess sets or basketballs may be more of physical struggles for the

In addition, the deaths of soldiers will forever be with the ones who remained alive. In “Hope, Despair and Memory” written by Elie Wiesel, the author describes how “for the first time in history, [soldiers] could not bury [the] dead, [they] bear their graves within [themselves]” (2). Throughout the time of a war, each and every soldier will experience a variety of different deaths, each playing a unique emotional role in their lives. War, as challenging as it already may be, is created to be made even more difficult with the immense loss of life every soldier must suffer through. There is absolutely no time to grieve or mourn toward a dear soldier that was lost. This does not mean soldiers do not carry emotions and feelings deep down inside themselves, rather the fact they do not have time to express how they feel about the death of a beloved soldier. Not being able to talk about somebody dying during the harsh time of war makes it an even more painful time for the soldiers to suffer