The Things They Carried Essay
In The Things They Carried, assigning blame is a quick, effective, and an efficient way of coping with the burdens of war. As soldiers go into war they are faced with many overwhelming situations.The problem is sometimes it’s hard to keep moving forward when they’re constantly holding the weight of death and others with them. These soldiers assign blame on themselves and others to help them cope with the horrific warfare environment. Assigning blame on oneself seems like the quickest way to give somewhat relief on the situation at hand. Jimmy Cross seems to find this as the best method in moving on with the war. "When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war… A moment of carelessness or bad judgment or plain stupidity carried consequences that lasted forever" (115). Jimmy questioned himself in …show more content…
I felt sort of guilty almost, like if I'd kept my mouth shut none of it would've ever happened. Like it was my fault." […] "Nobody's fault," [Bowker] said. "Everybody's " (105). When Bowkers says, that it's, “ Nobody’s fault,Everybody's,” he explains that everyone has guilt and blame going on because of this death. It seems that everyone thinks that they had a part on Kiowas death. The soldiers need to focus on war and assigning blame to all of them helps them cope quickly and effectively. Then need to focus on war so no one else gets hurt and causes a bigger burden. Tim begins to believe that he is guilty, but doesn't think that he is the problem “Like Jimmy Cross, the boy was explaining things to an absent judge. It wasn't to defend himself. The boy recognized his own guilt and wanted only to lay out the full causes,”(47). Tim wanted to lay out the causes, he understood his own guilt, but want to make himself feel better. He goes over every reason that he thinks he is guilty to help him better understand the