Foreshadowing In The Things They Carried
Literary Analysis of “The Things That They Carried” In the short story “The Things That They Carried” Tim O'Brien uses the literary elements of characterization, setting and foreshadowing to support the theme of physical and mental burdens put on soldiers during the Vietnam War.
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was never the military type. He still wonders why he joined. His rank as lieutenant seems unreal. He never truly demonstrates leadership and separates himself from the rest of the Alpha Company as he thinks about Martha. Cross uses his love for Martha as an escape to war, but he fails to realize that the love between them was never real. By the time he realizes what loving Martha has gotten him into, it was already too late. On the morning after Ted Lavender's death, he decided to try to stop his mad love for Martha by burning the pictures and hopefully the memories as well. Lavender is the young, scared soldier in the Alpha Company and is the first to die in the work. In the story Cross mentions that he would …show more content…
The death of Lavender is repeated throughout the story. The repetition is also used in order to show the fear in the men. This scene constantly goes through their head as they fearfully await their fate. The first time this was used Cross was describing the characters, he said that Lavender carried tranquilizers before he was shot in the head outside the town of Than Khe in mid-April and also later on a mission he mentioned that he carried 34 rounds while everyone else carried 25 before he was shot and killed. The final time foreshadowing took place it was from a different perspective, Kiowa expresses the sense of weight that the threat of death has on the men when he describes Lavender’s death: "Boom down, he said. Like cement not like in the movies where the dead would do fancy spins and
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was never the military type. He still wonders why he joined. His rank as lieutenant seems unreal. He never truly demonstrates leadership and separates himself from the rest of the Alpha Company as he thinks about Martha. Cross uses his love for Martha as an escape to war, but he fails to realize that the love between them was never real. By the time he realizes what loving Martha has gotten him into, it was already too late. On the morning after Ted Lavender's death, he decided to try to stop his mad love for Martha by burning the pictures and hopefully the memories as well. Lavender is the young, scared soldier in the Alpha Company and is the first to die in the work. In the story Cross mentions that he would …show more content…
The death of Lavender is repeated throughout the story. The repetition is also used in order to show the fear in the men. This scene constantly goes through their head as they fearfully await their fate. The first time this was used Cross was describing the characters, he said that Lavender carried tranquilizers before he was shot in the head outside the town of Than Khe in mid-April and also later on a mission he mentioned that he carried 34 rounds while everyone else carried 25 before he was shot and killed. The final time foreshadowing took place it was from a different perspective, Kiowa expresses the sense of weight that the threat of death has on the men when he describes Lavender’s death: "Boom down, he said. Like cement not like in the movies where the dead would do fancy spins and