Death In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Jimmy Cross being the immature lieutenant is affected being responsible of his men, and carries much of the war’s burden. Every time one of Cross’s men dies, he experiences deep regrettable feelings that he should have been a better

Lieutenant Cross was in love with a girl back home named Martha. He carried around letters that she wrote to him and pictures that she gave him. His obsession of Martha took his focus away from the war. “He had loved Martha more than his

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, he emphasizes a chapter on “The Man I Killed”, which describes the characteristics of a young Vietnamese man in which O’Brien may or may not have killed with a grenade. The novel is not chronologically sequenced, which leaves more room for the reader to engage in a critical thought process that fully bridges the author’s mind to their own. In O’Brien’s chapter, “The Man I Killed”, he attempts to humanize the enemy in a way that draws little separation between the enemy and himself by relating the enemy’s life prior to the war to his, and illustrates the war through the eyes of the soldiers who fought it.

War is often thought about as something that hardens a soldier. It makes a person stronger emotionally because they are taught not show it and deal with it internally. People say that death in war is easier to handle because it is for the right reasons and a person can distance themselves from the pain of losing someone. However, there is always a point when the pain becomes too real and it is hard to maintain that distance. In doing so, the story disputes the idea that witnessing a traumatic event causes a numbing or blockage of feelings. Rat Kiley’s progression of sentiment began with an initial concern for the buffalo, transforming into an irate killing of the animal, and then ending with an ultimate acceptance of death. These

The text, ‘The Things They Carried', is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried' shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lessening sanity of a medic as the constant death surrounds him; the trauma and guilt of all the soldiers after seeing their friends die, and feeling as if they could have saved them; and the deaths of the soldiers, the most negative impact a war

     How does death affect the behavior of people? Although death affects everyone's behavior differently, knowledge of one's imminent death is a main force behind behavioral changes. This knowledge causes emotions that motivate people to act in ways that they normally would not. In Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried,'; the knowledge of death and its closeness causes the men in the story to alter their behavior by changing they way they display power, modifying emotions to relieve guilt, and by exhibiting different actions to ease anxiety.

In the first chapter in the book, titled The Things They Carried, Jimmy Cross is one of the many examples throughout the novel in where a soldier has a way to escape from the realities of war. Cross, who is a lieutenant in his company, carries two photographs of a girl named Martha whom he truly loves and wishes nothing else but to be with her in the end. Along with the photographs, he carries letters from Martha herself as well as her good-luck pebble in his mouth. Martha’s letters has a huge impact on Cross’s escape on reality because those letters do not mention war at all but for him to stay safe. All of these items comforts Cross and eventually reminisce about the times when he was back home with Martha away from any war. He relives a moment when he was with Martha at the movies, and then remembers that he touched her knee but Martha did not approve and pushed his hands away. Now while he’s in Vietnam, he does nothing but fantasizes taking her to her bed, tying her up, and touching that one knee knee all night long.

Soldiers have their own way of coping with death. Some might try to make a joke out of it and make it humorous while others might think about what they could have done differently to prevent the death from occurring. Soldiers will often put the blame on themselves for the death. As soldiers go into war they know that they have a chance of dying. They also know that the friends they are going to make during this time have a chance of dying. There is no “right way” to cope with death. There are positive and negative outcomes by making the idea of death humorous or by dwelling on it.

Love is a powerful force, and Lieutenant Cross sometimes gets lost in his musings while thinking of Martha. O’Brien writes: “His mind wandered. He had difficulty keeping his attention on the war. On occasion he would yell at his men to spread out the column, to keep their eyes open, but then he would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha, carrying nothing.” Like any sane person in his situation, Lieutenant Cross wants to escape – to anywhere else but the war. The war brings terrible experiences – fear, death, hunger, and pain beyond imagination. The only way that Lieutenant Cross can endure these things is by escaping to an imaginary life with Martha. Although to her, he is little more than a friend, to Lieutenant Cross, Martha represents innocence, perfection, and a world free from war.

Tim O'Brien provides his audience with a very descriptive image of both the physical and mental "things" the characters in the story carried. He gives the reader insight as to how the characters are physically and mentally dealing with the turmoil of the war. However, in the end of the story - Jimmy Cross - a round character, reacts to the death of Ted

One of the main characters in the short story “The Things They Carried”, written by Tim O’Brien, is a twenty-four year old Lieutenant named Jimmy Cross. Jimmy is the assigned leader of his infantry unit in the Vietnam War, but does not assume his role accordingly. Instead, he’s constantly daydreaming, along with obsessing, over his letters and gifts from Martha. Martha is a student at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey, Jimmy’s home state. He believes that he is in love with Martha, although she shows no signs of loving him. This obsession is a fantasy that he uses to escape from reality, as well as, take his mind off of the war that surrounds him, in Vietnam. The rest of the men in his squad have items that they carry too, as a way

Whenever you’re about to leave for vacation, do you often feel like you’re forgetting something? But no matter how many times you go over the packing list, you can’t seem to find what it is that’s missing. So you move on, with that feeling still in the back of your mind. Imagine feeling like that, but knowing exactly what it is that’s missing and not being able to do anything about it. Imagine having that feeling with you at all times, maybe not always your number one thought, but always there. That’s just a gist of what loss is. It’s a broad term, making it hard to define; Everyone thinks of it differently and so it is compiled into several definitions. Loss is defined universally as the absence of something meaningful

pictures of her. He would read the letters at the end of a long day in a foxhole he dug. He would sometimes lick the seal of the envelope because he knew that Martha’s tongue had been there. This obsession distracts Cross from the war and from his platoon.

Character growth is also essential to the story. In the beginning Cross fantasized about a girl named Martha. He fantasizes weather or not she is a virgin and subsequently, fantasizes about different ways to take her virginity. This fantasy consumes him until the day his best friend and army compatriot, Lavender, dies. Cross believes Lavenders death to be his fault and decides to put his fantasies to rest and assume, fully, a position of true leadership. This change in character is also marked by Cross’ destruction of the picture.

Death is final and life is ultimately the greatest thing that anyone can lose. While reading a tragedy that mostly results in death, most of the readers would say that death is the most significant part of the story. Death is the result of the main dangers, which are often physical dangers that do happen to result in death. But the tragedy of death is typically preceded by characters succumbing to other dangers not just physical or main dangers. Just like in the story written by tim O’Brien “The Things They Carried” where a Lieutenant Jimmy Cross has to lead his men through the thick jungles of Vietnam but the Lieutenant himself is unaware that his daydreaming, a danger by the way, which is what he does a lot that will eventually lead to one of his soldiers dead. These dangers that lead to death are known as secondary dangers which happens to be a part of a character’s flaw like pride or paranoia such as in the “The Cask of Amontillado” written by Edgar Allan Poe where this story is all about a man who becomes so obsessed from a grudge no less that drove the main character insane which led to him exact revenge on his friend or “friend” . Emotional burdens can be considered secondary dangers, as Bobbie Ann Mason discusses in her essay “On Tim O’Brien’s ‘The Things They Carried.’”