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Things They Carried Patriotism Analysis

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Patriotism - The Cause Behind Slaughtering Dreams and Lives?
Ambition is the primary motive behind a meaningful life. Aspiration is the light to a brighter future and the purpose behind living. Everyone has some desire and ideas about their forthcoming. In the novel, “Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the protagonist had a different life planned, but Patriotism stood in the way to his destiny. Nationalism ravaged the future, core values, and memories of O’Brien.
To begin with, zealotry is a superstition, which takes away the dreams of people. Patriotism is a great cost and a parasite towards a man’s future. The young men of the 1960s did not have a choice but to be a part of the Vietnam War. “… I was drafted to fight a war I hated. I was twenty-one years old…I was too good for this war. Too smart, too compassionate, too everything” (O’Brien, 44-45). Clearly, the protagonist of this story had a whole different life ahead. His dreams were high, but it was crushed to the ground. A war should always contain reasonable cause in the justice. But the Vietnam War was a national liberation and a simple aggression. In this case, extreme patriotism caused a war to begin. This led the brave soldiers to sacrifice their …show more content…

O’Brien had to grapple with the effects of war and his memories of killing people. Transition into a civilian life was hard for O’Brien; he often had to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder and nightmares relating to his evocative bygone. Tim sacrificed a great amount of his time re-confronting the traumatic incidents of the war to bring in the truth and horror of a war. His greatest nightmare was killing an innocent boy with a grenade. Finally, his sacrifice of going over the memories was a resolution and a confession to the life he has taken in the war. The theme of guilt and blame are tied to his sacrifice because O’Brien punished himself for joining the bloody

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The main point is how he has to deal with death from a young age to the combat zones. In a way he blames himself for the deaths of his friends or failing to save them, but he failed to understand that it is not his fault. He just needs to find a way to understand since he is forty three years old and has to find closure, O’Brien at the conclusion of his book said “I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story.” (233) He realized through his writing that he was carrying things with him that needed to be explained to him or it was going to hurt him mentally and physically.

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Things They Carried By Tim O Brien: A Literary Analysis

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In the short story, “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien focuses on this to show that everyone fighting in a war has a story. He spends the story describing the man he killed and searching for justification of his actions. He carries around guilt with him because of it, and his fellow soldiers try to help him justify and come to terms with his action by saying things like, “You want to trade places with him? Turn it all upside down= you want that? I mean, be honest,” (126) and “Tim, it’s a war.

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Stress Disorder In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

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There are several instances in which he sheds light on part of himself, and when those are all strung together, it is revealed that Tim O’Brien has post traumatic stress disorder. The Black Hole of Trauma outlines the symptoms of an individual with PTSD quite well, and it can be used to show how Tim is affected by it. It states that “the past interferes with the ability to pay attention to both new and familiar situations”. This applies to O’Brien in the fact that he does not accept new things, he is fixated on the war.

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This quote epitomizes the trauma caused by war. O’Brien is trying to cope, mostly through writing these war stories but has yet to put it behind him. He feels guilt, grief, and responsibility, even making up possible scenarios about the life of the man he killed and the type of person he was. This

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Tim knew that he was not a killer and that the war was going to be a stressful time for him. One of his biggest moments of feeling bad about what he did was when he killed his first soldier. O’Brien feels instant regret once he throws the grenade and kills the man. All other thoughts leave his mind, and his full focus and shock is on what he had just done. “I was terrified” he explains, “there were no thoughts about killing.

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PTSD is an underlying topic in the book. There are many people in the novel who have problems dealing with the things they have done or seen during their time in the war. One man shot himself in the toe to get sent home, another killed himself after the war was over. Tim O’Brien himself said “I’ll never die. I’m skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dar and come down thirty years later, I realize it as Tim trying to save Timmy

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Many soldiers that served in the Vietnam war suffered dramatically pertaining to mental and physical health. O’Brien and many other soldiers also had the same views on the Vietnam War, such as that it was pointless for the United States. Most soldiers were frustrated with the fact that they were fighting for their country with no purpose or benefit for the American people. In the book O’Brian said, “I can’t stop crying. I can’t stop thinking of what a waste it all was” (O’Brian 7).

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The presented motifs of cowardice, shame, and guilt all stem from O’Brien’s disoriented belief in pleasing society and abandoning his identity.

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