Preview

Guilt Theme In The Things They Carried

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
155 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Guilt Theme In The Things They Carried
The theme of guilt is prominent in “The Things They Carried” due to the fact that soldiers are shown as if they felt obligated to go to war for fear of embarrassing themselves, their families, and their towns if they decided to not go and run away. This embarrassment is shown as their guilt because they’re not being "masculine" enough. In addition, they are told that if they do not serve in war then they are not being brave, heroic, or patriotic enough. The feelings of shame and guilt follow the soldiers into the war as well, and make them do irrational and crazy things. Shame and guilt follow Bowker with such intensity that he eventually hangs himself. Whilst the soldiers are fighting at war, it's obvious that O'Brien is shaken by a similar

Continue Reading
View Writing Issues

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Analyctial Essay Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried
    • 2108 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Analyctial Essay Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried

    The soldiers in the story are overwhelmed with a feeling of guilt throughout the story. At the start of the novel, O’Brien introduces two characters : Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and Ted Lavender, who both contributed to Cross’ feeling of culpability during the novel. When Lavender died, he had just “popped a tranquilizer” (11). Cross was too busy daydreaming about “Martha playing volleyball in her white gym shorts and yellow T-shirt” (22). Cross’ mind wasn’t where it should’ve been, just as Lavender shouldn’t have taken that tranquilizer and he knew that. After Lavender’s death, Cross wanted to make sure that what happened to him wouldn’t happen to anybody else. He became strict with everybody including himself, “No more fantasies, he told himself” (23). He couldn’t stand by and watch his soldiers die one by one because of his fantasizing and lack of leadership skills. To Cross, Lavenders was his fault he hated that feeling of guilt. He hated it almost as much as the thought of another dead soldier on his watch. Death was one weight he didn’t want to carry anymore. He did not enjoy it and wanted to ensure that he never had to deal with the emotional weight of death again. He, like the other soldiers, was scared of death.…

    • 2108 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried
    • 1684 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    All the characters in “The Things They Carried” carried different things that meant the world to them. All of the soldiers were terrified of death and were even more scared to show it. They joked after each enemy bombing that they almost peed their pants and such. They really almost did each enemy encounter, and they all knew it. They would turn into a young man and fear for their life, and ask god to please take them far away from this horrible place, but when the firing stop they would stand up and turn into soldiers again. All of these young men carried the emotional baggage of men who might die. They all carried thoughts of grief, terror, love, and longing. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardness. These young soldiers killed, and they died, all because they were embarrassed not…

    • 1684 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried: Chapter Analysis
    • 892 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried: Chapter Analysis

    In the chapter “In the Field” Shame and Guilt is an underlining theme. Throughout the chapter O'Brien tells the story of his platoon's mission to find their fallen comrade Kiowa after dieing in a firefight. The chapter is told from several perspectives from different soldiers, and on multiple occasions the soldiers express their guilt with the thought that…

    • 892 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Things They Carried Metaphor Analysis
    • 238 Words
    • 1 Page

    Things They Carried Metaphor Analysis

    Throughout The Things They Carried, there are many different symbols and metaphors. These metaphors are all very powerful and add a certain depth to each short story in the book. Out of all the stories, perhaps the one with the most compelling symbolism is “Speaking of Courage.” For instance, the protagonist (and antagonist), Norman Bowker, drove his car around a lake for most of the story, thinking. He drove around the lake 12 times total, the lake is 7 miles long, and it took 25 minutes to go completely around the lake. These numbers are symbols for 12 months, 7 days a week, and 25 hours a day, indicating that Norman could not stop thinking about his experience in the Vietnam war. This is just one of the many hidden metaphors in this short…

    • 238 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Soldier In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried
    • 417 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The Soldier In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    In the novel The Things They Carried the young soldiers are afraid of seeming weak. O’ Brien didn’t want to go to war. He was even considering fleeing to Canada. O’ Brien eventually decided to go because he was afraid of seeming like a coward to his family and town. He went to war out of fear of appearing weak to his peers. He believed it would be shameful if he didn’t go to the war. The soldiers in the novel were cautious to show any sign of fear. They were in an unpredictable and strange environment for an unknown cause, for most of them. They were young and proud and the last thing the tough, ammunition charged soldiers, wanted is to show how afraid they were.…

    • 417 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Powerful Essays

    Theme Of Metafiction In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried
    • 1209 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Theme Of Metafiction In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    Although O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” is considered fiction in many ways it is Metafiction. "Metafiction is a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality” (Waugh 2.) Once in an interview O’Brien admitted to his conscious blurring of fact and fiction by way of using Metafiction to generate stories that are “more real” (Sawyer 117-126.) O’Brien’s practice of using Metafiction indisputably makes the events and stories conceivable for the reader. The reality of O’Brien’s description of the intangible items each man carried has been noted to have long-term implications for those who have had to lug around the psychological affects of war. According to an article in BMC Psychiatry, “Combat exposure is the factor most consistently associated with mental disorders and symptomatology. Research with Vietnam veterans demonstrated substantial associations between combat exposure and PTSD” (Kewley 1). In another article findings that suggest, “...Vietnam veterans are much more likely to report problems associated with posttraumatic stress disorder including ‘‘nightmares, loss of control of behavior, emotional numbing, withdrawal from the external environment, hyper alertness, anxiety, and depression”(Card 7). The way in which Tim O’Brien represents each character with both the physical and emotional baggage that he carries lends itself to constructing characters that become personal. The characters by way of these items that they carry have become believable. It is because of this believability that the reader can visualize the weight of each character. O’Brien’s ability to blur the lines between fiction and fact with the items carried in war ensures…

    • 1209 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    How To Kill A Soldier In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried
    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages

    How To Kill A Soldier In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    The Things They Carried is a book written by Tim O’ Brien about the destruction of war and the effect on the soldiers. His decision to kill someone was one of the hardest decisions he has ever had to make in his life. To make a decision like this is not as simple as most people think it can be. Many factors play into this, to be able to kill someone is going against morality people face today especially by society. I honestly could not make the decision to kill a man unless my life is at stake. “I’d come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person, a college grad, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, all the credentials, but after seven months in the bush I realized that those high, civilized trappings had somehow been crushed under the weight…

    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    How Does Guilt Affect Men
    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages

    How Does Guilt Affect Men

    In the book The Things They Carried guilt plays a huge role in how the men react and carry themselves. How does the guilt affect the men and how they carry themselves? In the book, the men in Alpha Company felt guilt for many things. Some felt guilty from killing while others from letting people get killed. In a way everyone feels guilty from something different, but yet they are feeling the same. Some of the men take the guilt in different ways some write while other burn pictures of the ones they loved. It can be said the guilt has changed the way they will carry themselves for the rest of their lives. I guess you could say that all soldiers in these situations would do the same that the men of Alpha did.…

    • 1079 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Guilt In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried
    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Guilt In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

    At some point in each person’s life, they will feel guilt. Guilt is a valuable emotion, as it helps to maintain ties to the people around you. In the novel, “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, every soldier felt guilt when a unit member got killed or something tragic happened. This guilt felt by the soldiers was exemplified by Dave Jensen and Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. Decisions that both individuals made created the feeling of guilt, which resulted in a change of emotion in them. Jensen’s guilt was temporary, while Cross’s guilt was more long-lasting.…

    • 679 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Things They Carried: Chapter Analysis
    • 480 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The Things They Carried: Chapter Analysis

    Most people don’t know what surrealism is. Surrealism is when things are real but exaggerated. For example when you watch a sci-fi movie not all of it can be true. Surrealism pertains to these chapters in” The Things They Carried” because it talks about war stories that might be true or have some facts that are stretched out.…

    • 480 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Things They Carried Rhetorical Analysis
    • 1045 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Things They Carried Rhetorical Analysis

    The symbols in The Things They Carried help to make the text more meaningful and further communicate the theme the novel displays. One of the symbols, the dead Vietnamese soldier, represents the horrors of war and what soldiers have to experience on the battlefield. Although it was never completely clarified whether O’Brien did or did not kill the man, the guilt he relays through the text shows that he does not want to be in war, but it is expected of him to kill others since he is involved. He does so to prevent scorn from society upon his return. The author copes with the death of the Vietnamese soldier as he does with others throughout the novel; he fantasizes about what kind of person the soldier was, what he did before the war, and what he will do after. He creates the soldier’s life in his mind, saying that “After his years at the university, the man I killed returned with his new wife to the village of My Khe, where he enlisted as a common rifleman with the 48th Vietcong Battalion” (O’Brien, 130). The man is a symbol of who the author hoped to be instead of who he was at war.…

    • 1045 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Essay On O Brien's The Things They Carried
    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Essay On O Brien's The Things They Carried

    Throughout the novel, The Things They Carried, O’Brien illustrates the tragic impact of war on a soldier. In this novel O’Brien recounts numerous stories of innocent soldiers getting their minds corrupted by the horrors of war. He tries to convey the burden the soldiers had to carry throughout the war. The title, The Things They Carried, is symbolic of the emotional load the soldiers carry during the Vietnam War. O’brien tries to tell us that the mental burden carried by the soldiers far outweigh the physical load, and he authenticated that through his war stories about Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Jimmy Cross, Kiowa, Curt Lemon, and many more. He successfully paints the image that the physical load each man carried just underscores their emotional…

    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    Fear And Shame In The Things They Carried
    • 192 Words
    • 1 Page

    Fear And Shame In The Things They Carried

    In Tim O’Brien’s novel, “The Things They Carried”, fear and shame in the characters lead to several actions. For example, both fear and shame were motivating factors in the war. Some of the characters had a fear of being shamed by others, so they joined the war. O’Brien describes a personal experience he had involving fear and shame. After receiving his draft notice, O’Brien debates running away to Canada or staying to fight in the war. He ends up deciding to fight in the war because he fears being thought of as a coward by everyone else and the shame he would feel if he ran away. Additionally, fear and shame affected the relationships that the men had with one another. None of them wanted to look bad in front of each other so they engaged…

    • 192 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Good Essays

    The Things They Carried Symbolism Analysis
    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Things They Carried Symbolism Analysis

    In “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, the author uses symbolism in order to show the soldiers emotional and physical burdens they carry. For example, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from this woman he loved named Martha, everywhere he went in his backpack. Also, another example of the symbolism, Kiowa, another soldier from the story, carried around a New Testament that his father gave to him. And the final example of symbolism is when soldier Ted Lavender died, Jimmy Cross was emotionally and physically beat up. The story shows the symbolism in an indirect way, which is what makes the story unique. O’Brien really shows the physical, but mainly, the emotion burdens/ baggage all of the soldiers have.…

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
    Read More
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Storytelling In The Things They Carried
    • 384 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Storytelling In The Things They Carried

    What's the best way to spread the knowledge of one to another?? The art of storytelling! Storytelling has been around for thousands of years. Beginning with the word of mouth then to writing and now people put out blockbuster movies just from telling a story. In The Things They Carried storytelling appears plenty of times. It's a reoccurring theme that displays itself throughout multiple chapters.…

    • 384 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
    Read More

Related Topics