...of describing the physical and mental baggage serves to paint an accurate picture of the soldiers and their tragic situation. All of the men carry weapons. The weapons are heavy in many ways. They are heavy in a physical manner, putting strain on their arms and backs as they hump it through the wilderness. They are also heavy on the mind, for a soldier’s gun is a part of him. It is the tool of his trade. A rifle possesses an inherent deadliness, and each man knows he has the capability to end the life of another. Sometimes, this mental burden is heavier than the weapon itself. Such is the life of a soldier....
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...Soldiers all have intangible things they carry. There is certain burdens soldiers carry. The power behind the intangible things soldiers carry is that it affects their everyday life. Whether its fear or guilt it effects there sanity at times of war. In “Where Have You Gone Charming Billy”, “Soldiers Home” and The Things we Carry soldiers carry the powerful intangible emotions of fear, guilt and their sanity. Fear is a powerful emotion that all soldiers carry with them while in war. All soldiers carry intangible things with them in war. “...he went down under an exceptional burden, more than 20 pounds of ammunition, plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and tranquilizers and all the rest, plus the unweighted...
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...of the soldier’s (Ted Lavender) death due to his lack of attention and vigilance. The story talks about the experiences and the conditions that these soldiers endured in Vietnam. The setting, language and tone of the story suggest that the impact of war not only causes physical strain, but it also causes an emotional, psychological,...
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...minimum, 14 pounds at maximum” (5). This provides the reader with a general idea of the type of burden that the men are bearing when they are carrying these things. The attention although, is directed to the weight and pressure the soldiers feel from what they're carrying along with the idea of carrying nature. "They...
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...“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a novel about O’Brien and his memories of the Vietnam war. O’Brien’s personal experiences depict shame as one of the most impactful factors in a human’s life. Through the use of storytelling, embarrassment is proven to be a major source of motivation for the troops in before, during, and post-war. In chapter one, “The Things They Carried,” the fear of shame is a burden that every soldier carries with them, a burden that motivates every single one of them to fight, survive, and kill. They carry their own emotional baggage and physical weight, but they all carry the secret of cowardice. “ They carried their reputation. They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which is the fear of blushing… They died so not to die of embarrassment(20).” This quote states right away that holding a respected reputation has more weight in the army than staying alive. The fear of being...
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...some of these things heavy physical loads and some heavy emotional loads composed of grief, terror, love, and guilt. The things each soldier carries depends on the soldier himself including his priorities and his constitutions and also his rank or his specialty for example Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries maps, compasses, and the heavy burden of the responsibility of his men’s lives. A nervous soldier named Ted Lavender carries marijuana and tranquilizers to calm himself down and the religious soldier Kiowa carries an illustrated New Testament and every single one of these men carry the figurative weight of memory, fear, and hope and the literal weight of one another. In this short story the author uses the title symbolically for both the seen and unseen things that men at war carry and to represent the traumas and hardships they have suffered that they will carry for the rest of their lives. These soldiers know they can die at any moment and so when the inevitable happens and a soldier is actually killed in action extra tension stems from the fact that Lt. Cross knows he is responsible. When Ted Lavender is killed in action one of the soldier’s, Kiowa, cannot stop marveling at how fast and hard Lavender hit the ground. “Boom-Down” (277) he repeats to himself and his fellow soldiers. He marvels how he can be pissing one second and dead the next and he tries to make sense of it all. He is bothered with the lack of drama surrounding the death and is mad at the lack of emotion he...
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...stress. PTSD must have been common in the group of soldiers in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” due to the amount of burdens each soldier carried. Throughout the story, O’Brien demonstrates theme of psychological, physical and mental burdens carried by every soldier. He emphasizes these burdens by discussing the weight that the soldiers carry; their psychological and mental stress they have to undertake as each of them experience the brutality of the Vietnam War. The physical burden that each soldier carried was a necessity for them due to their emotional burdens that they carried. O'Brien depicted of all the things the men carried in order to create illustrations for the reader. One important use of description the author uses is weight. He uses weight to describe the burden of items that are carried by the soldiers in this story. “The weapon weighed 7.5 pounds unloaded, 8.2 pounds with its full 20-round magazine.” He continues later saying “Among the grunts, some carried the M-79 grenade launcher, 5.9 pounds unloaded, a reasonably light weapon except for the ammunition, which was heavy. A single round weighted 10 ounces. The typical load was twenty-five pounds.” This gives the reader a sense of the struggle that the men endure in carrying these things. When fighting during the war, the physical baggage added up, creating a burden on each soldier’s back. Carrying at least fifty pounds of equipment on their backs, the soldiers were obviously physically burdened. The soldiers...
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...I would use the current unit METL and the commander's intent to develop a physical training program. Toughening would be the first focus. I would start with ruck marching with increasing distances every week. Once the distance goal is made, I would then increase the ruck load and start at the original distance. A large focus would be placed on upper and lower body MSE incorporated with cardio-respiratory activities. I believe that doing interval runs and sprints for the same amount of time that you would do a distance run places a higher demand on a Soldier's cardiovascular and respiratory systems. This is a much better approach to preparing a unit for sustained combat operations. At this point, the training plan transitions into a conditioning phase where battle focus is key. Soldiers would wear their PPE while conducting physical training to introduce them to the additional strain and burden that their equipment provides. Finally, the sustainment phase is reached, where the overall focus will be on maintaining the fitness level achieved. I have also encountered the "muscular" Soldier program. Some Soldiers begin a heavy weight lifting routine during deployments and continue to do so once redeployed. It is important to ensure Soldiers understand the Total Soldier Concept as it applies to physical fitness. I notice that Soldiers who focus a lot on muscular strength are very competitive. I believe you could use this to your advantage with exercises that require both cardio endurance...
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...In the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien presents the truth of war by using the recurring image of the physical objects each soldier carries to and from the war. While they all carry heavy baggage, they also carry emotional baggage, made up of grief, love and guilt. O’Brien emphasizes on the tangible and intangible objects each soldier brings to the war. Each soldier's physical burden draws attention to their emotional burden. Even after the war, many of the soldiers can still hear the choppers in the background along with the unremovable baggage. O’Briens tells the stories of many of the honorable soldiers such as Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, and his own firsthand experiences during the war; his poetic realism and comic fantasy illuminate the raw and gruesome reality of war. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross exemplifies the role of a leader; he comes across grief, love, and guilt throughout the novel. “As a first lieutenant and platoon leader, Jimmy Cross carries a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, and a .45-caliber pistol that...
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...sign in secrecy. Furthermore, the soldiers embody the idea of war, but Banksy purposely designed one soldier to be holding a paintbrush and another a gun. The soldiers, even with their weapons and gear, display a sense of fear for getting caught. The soldiers are illustrated in "CND" to be fighting for peace, which serves to suggest the ways in which soldiers are dehumanized. The assumption that the red from the paintbrush and peace sign conveys bloodshed further compliments the uncertain role of soldiers fighting in a war to acquire peace (CND Soldiers). Banksy uses satire to address the representation of free speech when at war. Although the soldiers are attempting to express their beliefs or ultimate goal of fighting in the war, the soldier's' body language demonstrates their fear. This painting is ironic, considering most justifications of...
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...The passage from ‘The Things They Carried’ is primarily focused on a dream regarding escape from the war. The passage is comprised of two solid blocks of prose including one enormous sentence with unconventional punctuation. Symbolism is used to great effect in the prose with special emphasis on falling and birds. O’Brien employs various literary techniques to create a giddy, dreamlike tone in the passage. Powerful themes are presented includingthe desire of release and the inability to rid oneself of blame.The passage gives insight into the pure and innocent psyches of the soldiers which are normally hidden through gruff exteriors. The structure of the passage is set as two almost solid paragraphs with very little form and shape. This physical density allows the reader to appreciate the immensity of the prose and becomeengrossed in the flowing movement of it.The initial paragraph is broken in the centre by an italicised sentence which deviates from the informal flowing style used previously to a coarse colloquial one. This serves to give the piece a sense of balance and symmetry while also reminding the reader that even in this ethereal vision the soldiers are still very much human. Partway through the initial paragraph one unusually large sentence begins making up the bulk of the passage. This creates a graceful, fluid tone that contributes to the dreamlike feel of the prose. This is enhanced by frequent use of dashes and commas which give the reader respite while not...
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...Timothy O’Brien’s The Things They Carried deals with Death as a complicated subject of interpretation of the American soldiers and the public. Although this theme is dealt with throughout the book, He explicitly symbolizes the notion of mortality with the search for Kiowa’s body that presents a line of demarcation of mortality. The perspectives of Jimmy Cross, Azar, and O’Brien symbolize feelings of the American soldiers and public. While Jimmy Cross represents the soldiers whom are greatly affected by a comrade’s death, Azar’s unempathetic view of death represents the American public who saw soldier’s deaths as a number indicating the current winner of the war. In the search for Kiowa’s body, O’Brien utilizes...
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... O’Brien’s choice to describe the things each individual soldier carries and their weights allows the reader to see the accumulation of weights and items and also the burdens on a solider. Therefore, as the reader, we see the physical, mental and emotional barriers the soldiers have to take on. This is important because it shows there’s more sides to being a solider than solely physical. Additionally, he shows us how these burdens affect the soldiers. He tells a story of how the soldiers decide to shoot off parts of their bodies so they can leave the war and go to a hospital. Other soldiers made fun of people who did this by calling them “pussies” or “candyasses,” although, the author explains that they did so out of jealousy. He says, “They imagined the muzzle against flesh. They imagined the quick, sweet pain, then the evacuation to Japan, then a hospital with warm beds and cute geisha nurses.” I found this statement ironic because shooting your own fingers or toes off sounds painful. Yet, the war caused them more pain and so to get release they shot themselves to leave the war. These statements have a large impact on the reader, because we see how impacting war can be on a soldier’s mentality. The protagonist and Lieutenant, Jimmy Cross, is an important figure because he also felt shame and carried burdens just like the other soldiers. When we see that he relates with the soldiers, we can make the conclusion that war is even more impacting. He is infatuated with the idea...
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...accuracy and brutal reality of Tim O’Brien’s works. Tim O’Brien’s short story “The Things They Carried” explores the hardships of the Vietnam War during combat, and his short stories “Speaking of Courage” and “Field Trip” show the after effects of the Vietnam War and how it changed people forever. Tim O’Brien is considered one of the only authors who portrays the Vietnam War exactly how it was. Through the use of tone and characterization, Tim O’Brien demonstrates a soldier’s constant fear of impending death, and the emotional toll of war. Tim O’Brien uses tone throughout is stories to show what the Vietnam War was like, and how it affected people. The tone in O’Brien’s short story, “Field Trip”, emphasizes the meaning of the trip and why the field is important. The whole purpose of the narrator’s trip to Vietnam is to get closure about Kiowa’s death. The narrator said, “I’d gone under with Kiowa, and now after two decades I’d finally worked my way out” (Field Trip 736). By visiting the site where Kiowa died, some of the burden of his death is taken off the narrator’s conscience. The tone of the passage is shown when the narrator’s daughter, Kathleen, does not understand what is going through her father’s mind as he is gazing out into the field (Bookstove 1). The last time the narrator saw this field he witnessed the death of his friend, and ever since then the field has been on his mind. The tone is how the field is completely different then the last time he saw it. It shows how things...
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...Tim O Brien’s mental thinking in “The Things They Carried,” and “In the Lake Of The Woods.” Tim Obrien’s “The Things They Carried,” and “In the Lake Of the Woods,” shows how the Vietnam War affected his writing style. Tim Obrien was a Vietnam War Veteran. This mental state is brought out through his style of writing through Characterization, Setting, and Theme. These things show how the Vietnam War affected his writing in a psychological way. I believe these stories and many others are ways he coped with the memories of Vietnam. First the characterization Obrien uses in “The things they carried,” and “In the lake of the woods,” shows how Obrien coped with his War past. Both of these stories have two men that portray Obrien. In “the things...
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