Guilty Feelings In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien
Guilty Feelings
At the beginning of the book The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien says, “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing - these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight” (Tim O’Brien). Soldiers in the Vietnam war carried home with them memories of ghosts, ghosts of people they killed, villages burned, and their own brethren dying in horrifying ways. Tim O’Brien tells about some of the people he killed and the friends he lost in combat, in his novel. In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, guilt and depression can be seen as a cause-and-effect relationship told through war stories about members of the platoon dealing with the things they did and saw in Vietnam.
In the chapter “Speaking of Courage” guilt is shown in the soldier’s strong feelings of responsibility and regret for the deaths of comrades such as Ted Lavender, Lee Strunk, and Kiowa. Norman Bowker tells the story of sleeping in a field of crap and having to let Kiowa keep sinking into it after he got shot because Norman couldn’t handle the smell. He blames not getting the silver star on not being brave or strong enough to help out Kiowa. Years later, …show more content…
In the chapter “Notes” Norman Bowker expresses his feelings of depression through letters he sent to O’Brien. Three years after O’Brien received the letters does he find out Norman killed himself. In one of the letters Norman says, “There’s no place to go. Not just this lousy little town. In General. My life, I mean” (O’Brien 150). In a few of his other letters Norman talks about his guilt for what Kiowa’s death and how he also feels like he can’t relate to anoyone and no one understands what he went through. This unending feeling of being stuck leads Norman into a depression, until eventually he kills
At the beginning of the book The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien says, “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing - these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight” (Tim O’Brien). Soldiers in the Vietnam war carried home with them memories of ghosts, ghosts of people they killed, villages burned, and their own brethren dying in horrifying ways. Tim O’Brien tells about some of the people he killed and the friends he lost in combat, in his novel. In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, guilt and depression can be seen as a cause-and-effect relationship told through war stories about members of the platoon dealing with the things they did and saw in Vietnam.
In the chapter “Speaking of Courage” guilt is shown in the soldier’s strong feelings of responsibility and regret for the deaths of comrades such as Ted Lavender, Lee Strunk, and Kiowa. Norman Bowker tells the story of sleeping in a field of crap and having to let Kiowa keep sinking into it after he got shot because Norman couldn’t handle the smell. He blames not getting the silver star on not being brave or strong enough to help out Kiowa. Years later, …show more content…
In the chapter “Notes” Norman Bowker expresses his feelings of depression through letters he sent to O’Brien. Three years after O’Brien received the letters does he find out Norman killed himself. In one of the letters Norman says, “There’s no place to go. Not just this lousy little town. In General. My life, I mean” (O’Brien 150). In a few of his other letters Norman talks about his guilt for what Kiowa’s death and how he also feels like he can’t relate to anoyone and no one understands what he went through. This unending feeling of being stuck leads Norman into a depression, until eventually he kills