Death In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

The concept of death has always been a blurry topic to discuss but what if the concept of death was wrapped around a war, would that make things better? When people talk about death all they think about is the one person, their life, their life story and what all they have been through. In The Things They Carried the author uses death to help portray certain characters in their own unique way whether it’s from describing the way they died, or just what they had to look forward to, all the way back to how it affects the other people close to them and we get the details on that from the author and narrator. The narrator has quite a few characters that have died but I choose my characters to be Ted Lavender, young vietnamese soldier, Curt Lemon,
These people at the end of the day, it is unfortunate that they had to have their life taken from them but in the state of war, you don’t have time to worry about others because your life is on the line and you don’t want to be the one who gets killed. Many times in the book, scenes have been described showing how these men have died such as, “When he went ahh ooo, right then Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing.” (Pg.12) “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole….” (Pg.118) “Speaking of courage was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of the YMCA in his hometown of in central Iowa” (Pg.149) “He was under the mud and water, folded in with the war, and their only thought was to find him and dig him out and then move on to someplace dry and warm.” (Pg.155) “His face was suddenly brown and shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp grey eyes, lean and narrow-twisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked
This is a concept that will never be understood because of how it affects people as a whole due to emotions and concerns from others about your safety and when you found out that one of your loved ones was killed, your heart sinks into your chest and you don’t know how to handle the situation just dealt to you. “For half a page he talked about how much the book meant to him, how it brought back all kinds of memories, the villes and paddies and rivers, and how he recognized most of the characters, including himself, even though almost all of the names were changed.” (Page 151) The theme of death connects all of the characters back together because of the way that they died and how it all shows the flaws of war as a whole, and some people don’t just instantly understand the concept of war and what comes with it. When it comes to death, people understand the emotional effects of their losses, but then there are deeper explanations and they start to realize what has happened and how no matter who gets killed it shows us at the end of the day they are still human. When you have that sense that these enemies or friends, they are still human and mistakes were going to be made and whether that goes as far as death or not it still