Thing They Carried Essay

Alexandra Berliner Eshoo English 12 11/28/11 Something A Soldier Ignores Death Fatalities be part of e rattling persons life. To a normal citizen, destruction is often followed by sadness and grief. As envisioned in The Things They Carried by Tim OBrien, a spend has to diffuse with the concomitant much differently. Death is portrayed in a detrimental light due to the incident that soldiers atomic number 18 greatly fearful of it and that they are hale to be unaffected by death. In order to do it with all the deaths he witnessed, OBrien uses the retelling of fight stories to heal from these traumatic events.throughout the novel, death is definitely portrayed as macrocosm a very prohibit part of contend. Because it is such a nix thing, death tends to instil fear in soldiers. From the beginning of the novel, death is truly portrayed as being a very negative risk that anyone at struggle lucks with Beyond all this, or at the very center, was the raw fact of terror. I did non want to die. Not ever (44). It is kn consume that death could be the outcome of liberation to war, and many of these young soldiers do not want to die. rase though many soldiers end up going to war anyway, they are cool off fearful of death being a possible outcome for them. All of this fear and anxiety associated with war finally leads nigh volume to view death in a negative light. It is definitely something that soldiers want to avoid, and even if they are not killed, death still has negative affects on them. In addition to death being portrayed in a negative light from the beginning of the novel, the soldiers are forced to be unaffected by death. As a result, it is attendn how war changes people in a negative way.Once the war is all over, the negative affects are still present, and OBrien deals with them through retelling the past. It is seen that anyone that becomes involved in war eventually learns to be unaffected by death when one of the soldiers girlfriends comes to visit. She never leaves because she becomes fully invested in the war She was dangerous. She was ready for the kill (116). When the girlfriend start came to the war site, she was innocent. Now, she has become part of the war and is ready to kill.One of the about obvious ways that she has changed is that now she burn kill people easy and is unaffected by it. The fact that such an innocent woman can be changed so drastically by war shows the negative affects of being unaffected by death. It has become part of life for these soldiers, while most people would see death as a scary thing. Additionally, we see another(prenominal) soldier forced to conform to the guidelines of war in the witnessing of Kiowas death The young soldier was trying hard not to holler out (170).This shows that, when first exposed to war, the soldiers are actually upset when they see another person die. This is a normal reaction that most people would progress to yet, the others soldiers look down upon th is person. When the young soldier is about to cry, they know that he is new to the experiences, and they just ignore him. The experienced soldiers do this because they know that both(prenominal) soldier just has to ignore death. It is just an unavoidable part of war. In war, death is dehumanized, and every soldier is forced to ignore it yet, it still has last negative affects on the soldiers.OBrien reveals that he deals with the situation through the retelling of war stories. By revealing these stories, it allows OBrien, as well as the listener, to view how exactly war works By telling stories, you objectify your own experienceYou start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and develop (160).This shows that all the bad experiences, including the thousands of deaths observed, are clarified through telling stories. Even if th e stories are not totally accurate, bringing any part of the situation to light gives OBrien the closure he needs. It allows him to actualise what went on in the war and be able to heal from it. Even though the soldiers are forced not react to death as a civilise human would, it still affects them internally, and the best way for OBrien to deal with the negativeness of death is through talking about it.Death is something that every soldier has to deal with on a regular basis. Thousands of people are killed every day at war, and so, the soldiers are forced to ignore the emotions associated with death. They do not have the time to be upset in the midst of defend our country. As a result, all of the witnessed death affect them internally and freeze with them for many years after the war is over. In order to deal with the negative affects, it is seen that OBrien uses war stories as a way of healing. It allows him to understand what he experienced and move past it.