The Things They Carried Mortality And Death Analysis

During the Vietnam War there was a total of 58,220 deaths. Most of those deaths were deaths from South Vietnam (archives.gov). In the book The Things They Carried written by Tim O’Brien, the protagonist that he developed throughout the book was himself and his platoon. The antagonist that he developed throughout the book was Vietnam and how it affected everybody that was involved in the war. The book was about their journey in Vietnam. How they dealt with all of the death that they saw, and the stories that they were told. O’Brien’s intended audience for the The Things They Carried was future generations, and he discussed the themes of Mortality and Death and Social Obligation. In the “Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong” the theme of Social Obligation
The chapter is about Tim reflecting on the war and his childhood friend Linda, and how she was dying at a young age. “... the only confirmed kill was an old man who lay face-up near a pig pen…” (O’Brien 214). The quote describes when they were sweeping a village that was hit by an air strike. The only dead body that they found was this old man. They sat him up next to a pig pen and the men in the platoon started to talk to the dead man and they shook his hand, just messing around. This is a way that the men dealt with all of the death that they saw during the war.
O’Brien included the two themes of mortality and death and social obligation in the book The Things They Carried, and his intended audience was future generations. The themes of mortality and death and social obligation relate to each other. They relate in the way that everybody in the war saw so much death, that they felt obligated to kill in a way. It was all that they saw, it was all there was. That's how they were after the war affected them. The reader felt that the novel was decent because it is a good thing to learn about the truth behind the war and what it does to people, but it was a little