The Holy Trinity; Fear, Shame, and Courage
The Things They Carried Essay

Fear; the controller. Shame; the feeling of guilt. Courage; the sound of a lion's roar. All feelings align together like a perfect puzzle piece. Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried does an impeccable job conveying the cause and effect relationship between fear and courage, shame and courage, and fear and shame. In The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien continuously shows the reader how fear drives courage and sometimes leads to an unthinkable, but act in a courageous manner. The chapter Enemies portrays how if one feels enough shame, this shame will lead to a courageous act. “Because late that same night he borrowed a pistol, gripped it by the barrel, and used it …show more content…
In The Dentist, Curt Lemon's shame leads him to a courageous act. “The embarrassment must’ve turned a screw in his head. Late that night he crept down to the dental tent...and yanked out a perfectly good tooth” (84). Curt Lemon keeps his shame from fainting in front of the dentist and allows it to fuel his need to execute a courageous act. Although this act could be viewed as a dumb man's act, when Curt Lemon gets his tooth pulled out he portrays shames relationship with courage. Another character in The Things They Carried that seems to have their shame drive them to a courageous acts is Tim O'Brien himself. “I couldn’t make myself be brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that’s all it was...I would go to the war” (57) Tim O'Brien's fear of the shame he would have to carry by not going to war ends up making him to go to war. Out of shame Tim is now putting his life out on the line and leaves with the thought of if he will even come back alive. “ I would kill- and maybe die, because I was afraid not to”(57). Above all, although the cause and effect relationship between shame and courage along with fear and courage have been shown through many chapters, O'Brien also doesn’t forget to put on a show for how fear leads to