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Charles Darwin 's The Things They Carried Some Of The Soldiers

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The central idea around Charles Darwin’s theory is that species must evolve to be more effective while those that do not are left behind.One such human evolution is that of making certain tasks easier. While either from a physical standpoint such as lifting a heavy weight with one’s legs or back as oppose to just using their less powerful arms, or from a mental standpoint like making a smaller deal out of something that should mean more. While the first example is a generally healthy one, the latter is a dangerous way of coping with hard truths. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried some of the soldiers constantly try to quantify items brought from war to make the brutality of it less heinous in their minds. O’Brien illustrates this image to make readers aware of their own “taking the easy way out” of situations that sometimes would be better faced head on in reality. To protect against the literal destruction of war, Lieutenant Cross uses numbers to disassociate himself from the barbarities he is committing and witnessing. O’Brien exhibits the image of Lieutenant Cross counting the literal weights of items in the first short story, “The Things They Carried”. Cross says, “The weapon weighed 7.5 pounds unloaded, 8.2 pounds with its full 20-round magazine. Depending on numerous factors, such as topography and psychology, the riflemen carried anywhere from 12 to 20 magazines, usually in cloth bandoliers, adding on another 8.4 pounds at minimum, 14 pounds at maximum”

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