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Thesis For The Things They Carried

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The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery. Over all, this story allows us to observe changes within the mentalities of army officers. First, the trauma of living in a war zone can add a significant amount of intangible weight into someone’s life. In “The Things They Carried,” we discover that Cross’s men “carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die (443).” Given that the majority of humans have experienced some form of trauma, we can understand how some men were driven to suicide and others into …show more content…

In the case of Ted Lavender, once he was pronounced dead the men stripped him of his things while waiting for the chopper to pick up his body, and sat “smoking the dead man 's dope (436).” Furthermore, when they drew numbers to determine who scouted out the tunnels, they “always felt the luck of the draw” when they escaped the duty (438). This is because they feared death, but were always embarrassed to admit it. For the soldiers, dishonor was worse than anything else they faced. “They crawled into tunnels and… advanced under fire,” and refused to give up and simply “fall to the ground” all to save their own pride (443). Their drive to live on during battle did not come from courage, but their fear to be known as cowards

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In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the reader receives insight as to what soldiers experienced during the Vietnam War and what thoughts consumed their minds in those times of hardship and heartache. As Americans, we typically picture military men and women as emotionally and physically strong, while in reality, that may not be the case. They deal with more emotional and physical trauma than we come to understand. People who carry physical or emotional burdens tend to seek some kind of release or do something to feel relieved of their burdens. O’Brien uses stories about the men in his platoon to depict how soldiers are bound by their own emotional weights, and each have a different way of trying to release themselves from those tensions.

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The book All Quiet on the Western Front takes place during World War I. The author, Erich Maria Remarque, describes how dehumanizing war can be for soldiers who give their life to serve their country and protect it. Remarque specifically describes the hardships of a German soldier Paul during the war. Through Remarque’s story we learn that war affects relationships, thought processes, natural instincts and many more functions of a soldier. We learn over the course of this book that all soldiers change through war.

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During the Battle of the Bulge, soldiers fought in “grueling physical and psychological conditions” that led to persistent struggles after the war with remembering these conditions (Intro: Battle of the Bulge). Many veterans refer to the immediate effects of returning as the “shock of peace” (Childers). However, despite these widespread mental health problems, there were few psychiatrists to treat these soldiers as well as a “cultural ethos” that discouraged discussing emotions, especially among men (Childers). When soldiers returned home, they often had difficulty with finances.

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War and its affinities have various emotional effects on different individuals, whether facing adversity within the war or when experiencing the psychological aftermath. Some people cave under the pressure when put in a situation where there is minimal hope or optimism. Two characters that experience

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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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“Silent Scream” In war conditions, sometimes soldiers are forced to do what they don’t want to do. This action, sometimes makes them feel guilty even if they weren’t. In the novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the author emphasizes that the things soldiers carry in war, the people they killed, the soldier’s feelings, psychology, and the moral of what they have done cannot be all of the soldier’s responsibilities. Soldiers fear that they would be excluded from the society, and they’d be accused from all the wildness of the war because of what they have done.

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but they were even more afraid to show it" emphasizes the soldiers' vulnerability and

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In November of 1955, the United States entered arguably one of the most horrific and violent wars in history. The Vietnam War is documented as having claimed about 58,000 American lives and more than 3 million Vietnamese lives. Soldiers and innocent civilians alike were brutally slain and tortured. The atrocities of such a war are near incomprehensible to those who didn’t experience it firsthand. For this reason, Tim O’Brien, Vietnam War veteran, tries to bring to light the true horrors of war in his fiction novel The Things They Carried.

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Dangerous and intense situations typically lead to certain devastating consequences to a persons both emotional and physical health. As result of these experiences, there is often not only exterior injuries, but also the non visual psychological damage that is just as hard, if not harder, to resolve. One commonality throughout all wars is this unseen casualty known as PTSD, or post traumatic stress disorder. Tim O’Brien, veteran of the Vietnam war, demonstrates how PTSD affects soldiers in countless ways in his novel The Things They Carried. He uses fictional but lovable characters that readers can easily relate to, intensifying their emotional engagement in the book.

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Throughout the ages, wars have wreaked havoc and caused great destruction that lead to the loss of millions of lives. However, wars also have an immensely destructive effect on the individual soldier. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front written by Erich Maria Remarque, one is able to see exactly to what extent soldiers suffered during World War 1 as well as the effect that war had on them. In this essay I will explain the effect that war has on young soldiers by referring to the loss of innocence of young soldiers, the disillusionment of the soldiers and the debasement of soldiers to animalistic men. Many soldiers entered World War 1 as innocent young boys, but as they experienced the full effect of the war they consequently lost their innocence.

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Psychological Warfare in ​The Things They Carried Unless you have been in war or have read ​The Things They Carried​, you can't fully understand the psychological toll on a person's mind and body, you can't understand the psychological hardship soldiers go through in war. However, ​The Things They Carried​, by Tim O'Brien, is written to where it shows the overall psychological effects of war on soldiers in and out of Vietnam; as shown throughout the story, the recurring themes of trauma, love, and guilt give the clear psychological implications of war.

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In Jane Brody’s alarming article, “War Wounds That Time Alone Can’t Heal” Brody describes the intense and devastating pain some soldiers go through on a daily basis. These soldiers come home from a tragic time during war or, have vivid memories of unimaginable sufferings they began to experience in the battle field. As a result these soldiers suffer from, “emotional agony and self-destructive aftermath of moral injury…” (Brody). Moral injury has caused much emotional and physical pain for men and women from the war.

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Millions of people have gone through life-altering experiences in their time in World War I. In Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Bäumer, a 19-year-old German soldier, narrates his personal memoirs of this war. He describes the mental change and suffering he goes through as he is forced to mature from a young boy to a soldier in order to survive, leaving him permanently scarred from the throes of war. By employing juxtaposition to contrast Paul’s mindset, before and after the war, Remarque demonstrates how the mental health of the World War I soldiers is damaged because of the abrupt loss of their youth, leaving them in a state of survival and mental instability.

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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in The Things They Carried During the turbulent times of the Vietnam War, thousands of young men entered the warzone and came face-to-face with unimaginable scenes of death, destruction, and turmoil. While some perished in the dense Asian jungles, others returned to American soil and were forced to confront their lingering combat trauma. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried provides distinct instances of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and reveals the psychological trauma felt by soldiers in the Vietnam War. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD for short, is the most common mental illness affecting soldiers both on and off the battlefield.

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For example, O’Brien describes the physical weight of the items soldiers carry, such as guns, ammunition, and grenades. However, he also describes the emotional weight of the war, writing, “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing – these were intangible yet had their own mass and specific gravity” (O’Brien 21). This quote illustrates how the soldiers, not only carry physical objects, but also the emotional weight of their experiences in the war. Furthermore, this story depicts “the weight of burdens that press on soldiers in the field and how they handle those burdens” (Farrell).

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