In this section of reading, just the title of the first
chapter struck me. Titled “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien writes about the death of
My Khe. My Khe was a man that O’Brien had accidentally killed. He continuously
describes My Khe for multiple pages and discussing what he was like before the
war, what type of person he thought My Khe was, and what his future would be
like had he not been killed. He questions every detail about My Khe’s life. One
of the main reasons he inserted this specific story into the book was to prove
to the reader how guilty he felt about the death of My Khe. My Khe died because
of O’Brien, and O’Brien tells the story “The Man I Killed” to prove that he
still has not forgotten about killing another man and showing the guilt he
continuously feels.
The soldiers continuously feel remorse towards the
happenings of the war. Even though they have years and years to put the bloody
and stomach-churning memories in the past, they still do not have the ability
to do it. A proof of this theme is on page 134, where Tim O’Brien writes, “Even
now I haven’t finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, other times
I don’t. In the ordinary life I try not to dwell on it, but now and then when
I’m reading a newspaper or just sitting alone in a room, I’ll look up and see
the young man coming out of the morning fog.” O’Brien is continuing to describe
how difficult it is to return to your original person after going through war.
A good quotation about the war is “You’re already dead before you even go into
war.” This statement fits perfectly with the book and one of the main themes.
Being in the war basically kills whoever a person used to be and transforms
them into a whole new human being, never being capable of returning to who they
were before the war.
The chapter titled “Notes” was another slice of the book
that relates to this topic. Norman Bowker was a soldier who had committed
suicide after war, and he wrote letters before he passed away in which he
complained about the war and what he had to deal with. On page 156, a
polysyndeton is used in Bowker’s letter. The selection reads, “Guys sniveling
about how they didn’t get any parades. Such absolute crap. I mean, who in his
right mind wants a parade? Or getting his back clapped by a bunch of patriotic
idiots who don’t know jack about what it feels like to kill people or get shot
at or sleep in the rain or watch your buddy go down underneath the mud?” Nobody
truly understands what war is like until they actually have to go to war. None
of us have the ability to understand how much pain they endure, and that is one
of the main purposes of “The Things They Carried.” One last part in this
section of reading that seemed to stand out to me and correlate perfectly with
this specific theme occurred on page 177, where the book reads, “When a man
died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the
war. You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for
going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could
blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the enemy..….. In the
field, though, the causes were immediate. A moment of carelessness or bad judgement
or plain stupidity carried consequences that lasted forever.” Even though you
could blame a death of somebody on any other factor of the war, everyone still
feels the guilt whether it truly was their fault or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment