Spin In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

The story that I had chosen was The Things They Carried, which is a collection of short stories by Tim O’Brien. O’Brien wrote it similarly to the way that Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote Chronicles of a Death Foretold, since they both are fictionalize true events. While some of the events that happened might not be true, the emotional and physical aspects of his story are. WAR IS HELL, and the physical weight carried throughout any battlefield is just simply the tip of the iceberg for what a soldier really goes through. The emotional aspects far exceed the physical ones, and for the soldiers in the story, the death of Ted Lavender had had a lasting impression on them. Although not a major character

“It was a typical of being in the war. Things changed rapidly in a matter of seconds and no one had any control over anything, We had yet to learn these things and implement survival tactics, which was what it came down to.” Beah pg.29

The emotional weight that each man endured is also described, but in a more profound amount of mind compelling detail. In the description of what Ted Lavendar was carrying at the time of his death, the author describes the usual flack jacket and helmet, but also his “unweighed fear”. Truly, this unweighed fear is captured in the quote “They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried”. The meaning of this is that the men could hide their feelings in their equipment, but were actually at

Among these leaders was Bravo Company’s 1st platoon’s SFC Robert Gallagher. The platoon endured terrible living conditions including no running water and filthy living space. These inadequate living conditions must be met with some relaxation on the standards they were expected to follow. Company leadership viewed this as a bribe to keep the soldiers in high spirits. In reality, they set the stage for the erosion of the morals the enlisted soldiers are supposed to possess. While the morals were being chipped away, so was the original plan the battalion had hoped to follow. Fragmentation orders became a pseudo-standard for the boys of Bravo Company. What had originally started as short-term overnight patrol bases turned into fortified traffic control points with the exception of any form of fortification other than in notion only. Despite the fact that platoon-level leadership requested for supplies they were repeatedly turned down. A major breakdown in the communication between the leadership created a loss in faith in the higher leadership for the lower-enlisted soldiers on the ground. Very soon into deployment, Bravo Company began to experience contact with unseen enemy forces. The enemy was able to engage and plant IED’s and cause casualties while remaining elusive. After the first few casualties within the company, the mission to start set up traffic control points was to begin. While conducting patrols down the road time and time

When men go off to fight a war, they often carry more emotional baggage than actual, physical baggage. “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing - these were the intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” (page 20) The war messes with their heads, causes them to become paranoid, scared, and anxious all hours of the day and night. Ted Lavender, who was terrified of his own shadow in Vietnam,

Jimmy Cross being the immature lieutenant is affected being responsible of his men, and carries much of the war’s burden. Every time one of Cross’s men dies, he experiences deep regrettable feelings that he should have been a better

Imagine one day you receive a mail from the government that you been draft to go a war at a different country. How would you feel if you know that purpose of this war is unreasonable in any senses? Angry, anxious or even confused. Vietnam War was “a personal failure on a national scale” (Hochgesang). There are many videos, documents and movies about the Vietnam War that show different angles of the Vietnam veterans’ experience and how the war really changes their life. In “The Things They Carried” written by Tim O’Brien, he argues about how the Vietnam War affect the soldiers in many ways, not only physically, but more important is the psychological effects before, during and after the war.

In the story Lieutenant Cross makes both of the changes after the death of Lavender. He changes his values by acknowledging that Martha was not in love with him and now he would not be in love with her and he also burnt the pictures and letters so he was not looking at them anymore. The guilt that they all felt altered how they acted. Some of the men made jokes about tense situations that were not funny because joking made them feel better. The situation grew lighter by laughter, even though the men knew nothing was funny about their situation, and this knowledge made them feel guilty about their insensitive acts because it violated their values. The way the men dealt with their guilt was by passing the blame or trying not to think about how wrong it was, even though they knew. These kinds of strange reactions to normally tense or tragic situations are a way to ease the fear of death.

These landmark events then become all the more shocking because the reader is not expecting them. In a way, this dehumanizes the death of Ted Lavender and transforms it into just another item to be carried. This works on a larger scale as well. When the reader gets through the lists and finally gets into the narrative, that story becomes more engaging because of the mundane things that came before it. This style of narrative is also a good way to have your narrative come across as true and real. The reader is much more easily transported to the battlefields of Vietnam when they feel like they are sharing a cigarette with Lt. Jimmy Cross, talking about all the shit they have to carry. The secondary structural function that these lists serve is to make the reader just as weighed down as the men in the story. While reading, one must create a mental image for each item that is listed. This makes the reader just as weighed down as the characters because they share the experience of carrying all of these items.

In this short story by Tim O’Brien, Lieutenant Jimmy cross leads a platoon of men in the Vietnam War. Unable to keep his thoughts from his unrequited love interested, Martha, Cross allowed his platoon to become lax in their duties and mentally removed from the war. The conflict arises when one of his men, Ted Lavender, is killed on a mission. The conflict is resolved when Lieutenant Cross abandons his youthful fantasy world for the reality of the war he is living in. Cross finds new purpose in the vigilant leadership of his men.

The next part of the book detailed a very sharp decline in the morale and unit cohesion of Bravo Company, but primarily first platoon. The death of Nelson and Casica was the first. Nelson and Casica died when a shooter opened fire on a TCP with a 9mm at

Jimmy Cross, they met at a college in New Jersey but nothing sparked between them besides a friendship. There isn't any hope of them ever being together but Jimmy Cross still thinks about her constantly everyday. In one particular letter she sends him a good-luck-pebble. "Martha wrote that she had found the pebble on the Jersey shoreline and carried it in her breast pocket for several days" (8). Jimmy Cross reads the letter spends hours wondering who she was at the beach with, if she was with a man, if they were a couple. When the women sent letters home, it really helped keep the morale of the soldier's. Although Martha continues to kind of mislead Jimmy when she signs the letters "love." "Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing. He lay with his mouth open" (12).

In the movie Platoon there are three principal characters are Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen), the young college dropout, who's the film's hesitant mouthpiece, and the two sergeants who have effectively split the platoon between them. They are Barnes (Tom Berenger), a seriously out-of-control, life-sized, clay-footed version of the ''fighting machine'' Sylvester Stallone glorifies in ''Rambo,'' and Elias (Willem Dafoe), a man no less tough than Barnes, but whose tours of duty have transformed him into a soft-spoken, almost embarrassed prophet of doom.

The first story O’Brien decides to tell us is the story of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. Cross represents a young and inexperienced soldier who went to war for all of the wrong reasons. He deals with the savagery of the Vietnam War through letters and pictures sent from the woman he loves back home, Martha. Cross carries physical objects, pictures, letters, as well as memories from his time spent back home with Martha before signing up for war. At one point in the story after describing a date between him and Martha, he mentions how “he should’ve carried her up the stairs to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left knee all night long.” (5) His thoughts of Martha are enough to help distract him from the brutal realities taking place in the war. However, his distraction becomes too much, and it ends up resulting in the death of one of his fellow squad members, Ted Lavender. He carries regret for the death of Lavender, and years later confesses his guilt to O’Brien, and that he has never forgiven himself for his death. Despite his long-lived regret, Cross finds comfort in his thoughts of Martha, and hopes one day she will return his love.

With various backgrounds, and personal experience they all brought an interesting perspective to the company. Ray Nance was one of the officers in the company, he was a soft-spoken man, but with I high intelligence he was proud to be an officer in the National Guard. At 28 years old he Remembers minutes before the boys getting on the landing craft. He went by and softly touched all of the 34 on the shoulder, as he puts it " a good bye to my men". He knew just as the captain knew, most of the boys wouldn 't make it off the beach. He wasn 't as scared for himself as he was for his men, as most leaders should be.