Building up

How do people cope with all the death, fear, and destruction around them? “Ted Lavender had a habit of popping four or five tranquilizers everyday…. It was his way of coping, just dealing with realities and the drugs helped him to ease through the days” (O’Brien 218). This quote shows how desperate people in war are to escape their reality. When someone takes a drug, it will relax them talking them away from the stress, pain, and fear. But what happens if one cannot escape? Will they be alright? Will they be able to carry on or commit suicide? “[Rat Kiley] apparently he lost his cool… he couldn't sleep during the hot daylight hours; he couldn't cope with the nights,” shows that if one cannot escape, will they go crazy or will they be able to handle the pressure that war brings to them? (O’Brien 208-211) Rat Kily was a medic who tended to the sick and injured. He had a lot of responsibility to the people in his group because if he is unable to heal them, their lives would he on his hands. He may not be the person who is doing the killing however, he feels guilt if he is unable to save a person.  The pressure was too much for him to handle so “ late one afternoon as the platoon prepared for another march, he broke down in front of Mitchell Sanders,” shows that if one cannot escape their reality, how long will they stay sane? (O’Brien 211) after a time, someone’s emotional stability is at stake when they are under pressure. Rat Kiley broke down because that was his way of releasing all the built up tension and fear to let some of it off of his shoulders. However, as time went on his personality and habits worsted until “The next morning he shot himself,” in the foot shows that he wanted to be out of the torture so much that he was willing to self-mutilate his foot in order to be let out of the war. (O’Brien 212) In some cases, people would commit suicide, but why didn’t Rat Kily? Was it because even though we wanted a way out of the war, he was still afraid to die with better hopes that he could heal even if he wasn’t actively participating in the action of the fighting? “Nobody blamed him Sanders said,” shows that everyone else understood Kily’s suffering. Rat Kily, until he started to break down seemed to have a stable personality, he risked his life to save people in war and he was a good healer however, one day the pressure got to be too much so he finally snapped. What was it that made him snap? He was doing so well and seemed stable. Perhaps enough was enough and all the baggage built up over time. 

The Lives of the Dead

In the last chapter, The Lives of the Dead, O'Brien's unique writing techniques are again used. The chapter opens with vague information that we do not yet know the story behind, but is explained and repeated throughout the chapter. "But this too is true: stories can save us. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda alive" (O'Brien 255). Linda is introduced later in the chapter. She was his first young love at age nine, "Even then, at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones-- that kind of love" (258). The idea of having a love so strong that you want to become a part of it, or consume it is also used in another chapter of the book. O'Brien tells Linda's heart-tugging story. How she began wearing a red hat to school every day and never took it off, even when she was teased about it particularly by a bully named Nick Veenhof. One day during class Nick managed to pull off her cap and revealed Linda's bare head, "A smooth, pale, translucent white. I could see the bones and veins; I could see the exact structure of her skull. There was a large Band-Aid at the back of her head, a row of black stitches, a piece of gauze taped above her left ear" (264). Linda soon died from a brain tumor, and Timmy took her death hard. But he learned ways to keep her alive through his dreams and stories, which explains his first sentence of the chapter about stories being able to save us. And all his stories from Vietnam that he told in the book, whether some are true or fictional, they keep the characters alive (Linda, Kiowa, Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, the man he killed, etc).

Trauma

In the chapter notes I think it really encompasses the need for life after the war. During a war that wasn't even popular, men were forced back Into regular lives after fighting a war. They had to do common things. They went from shooting at innocent people and face being shot at. They saw things we could never imagine. Seeing someone die right next to you can really change your perspective on life. One begins to wonder what is really meaningful In life. "...bowker described the problem of finding a meaningful use for his life after the war" (o'brien 149).  These notes that are written really describe the trauma war causes. It just goes to show that war isn't something that is natural - it's not natural for the mind to comprehend and experience. 

The Man That Never Was

The Lives of the Dead – Annie Kominek

When he was nine, Tim O’Brien fell in love with a little girl in his class. He fell deeply in love, not just puppy love that some children experience, but a true love that he still feels. A love that lives with you, making a home in your heart and never leaving; always paying rent, always dusting, always present. As a child, O’Brien probably never imagined marrying this young girl, making a family, a home or a life with her.

On his first date with Linda, he goes to see The Man That Never Was, a war story where the British dropped a dead body with fake papers into the sea, hoping the Nazi Germans would find it and believe the papers. Afterwards, Tim and Linda end up at the Dairy Queen, share some short yet profound words on Linda’s porch steps, then Tim knew he was in love.

It is interesting, the movie that he went to see. In a sense, I think O’Brien was foreshadowing that no, he would not end up with Linda, he would not marry her and the version of him that would have been with Linda died when she did. The man that never was: Tim O’Brien, husband of Linda, with a picket fence and a dog and three children. That man, the man Tim could have become, never came truly to life. Instead, he grew into a different Tim O’Brien, the man that is, father of Kathleen and a Vietnam War veteran.

Linda's death changed him. It would harden him; make him aware of the mortality of himself earlier than most children learn. Instead of living a blissful, happy life with Linda, he learns that people go away. People leave and never come back, and people are cruel and the world can be cruel. In the end, O'Brien becomes the man that is, and the man that never was lived and died with Linda.

Repetition working for the novel -Dimitri Stevens

The book's element of repetition proved to be strong throughout.  The memories of the dead, no matter how many times it has been restated still comes off as interesting, almost as if we, the readers, have to deal with the guilt of seeing a man die.  O'Brien use of repetition gave us the burden of being a witness.  He also mentioned the importance of how helps mold memories.  The reference to the importance of telling a story became a repetitive element, and it was sometimes unexpected, just as soon as i thought he was done talking about the importance of telling a story, he talks about it again.  One of the main passages connected to story telling was on page 218, when he said "The thing about a story is that you dream when you tell it, hoping others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head."  I read this as the speaker getting the listeners involved, almost making them experience it, like i believe O'Brien did through the use of repeating the death of some of his comrades.  The telling of the same story never really got boring, because he approached it in a different way just about every time, and through the use of meta fiction, he kind of informed you of what inspired his direction, so there is a lot of truth along with these stories.  Overall good book, it kind of reminds me of "Catch 22" by Joseph Heller.

Something I Find Interesting

Something that I find interesting about this book is how O’Brien presents himself in the novel.  O'Brien switches back and forth between narrative voices, making the question about what's real and what isn't even more confusing. You start the book with "The Things They Carried," and you think it's a book told in the third person about a bunch of guys. Simple enough. Then suddenly, in "Love," it switches to a first-person central narrator; Tim is talking to one of the characters from "The Things They Carried," and it becomes clear that Tim was there the whole time during that first story, unnamed.

Mostly, the book is in the first person with the use of a peripheral narrator – there are only a few stories in which Tim is an active participant, as discussed in his character analysis.

But there's still one more time where Tim switches to the all-knowing third person narrative voice, and that's in "In the Field," when he's admitting his responsibility for the death of Kiowa. In this case, the third person increases the feelings of pain and guilt. By forcing distance in between himself and his actions in the field with Kiowa, we can see just how much it hurts him.

Guilty Love

Lieutenant Cross is in love and its with this girl Martha who is sending him things from the states and gives him hope that he has something to live for through this war. He felt guilty for loving her because he would think about her when he was suppose to be thinking about his team while doing these dangerous acts. The quote "but his love  was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breath her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a virgin and not a virgin , all at once. He wanted to know her. Intimate secrets: Why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes? Why so alone? Not lonely, just alone-riding her bike across campus or sitting off by herself in the cafeteria-even dancing, she danced alone-and it was the aloneness that filled him with love." Just from that quote it solidifies the thought that he mightn't really love her but the idea of her, because he knows deep down that she really doesn't really love him. that she is seeing other boys and spending time with other people. But "men" boys during the war needed and still need something to live for in order to get through the gruesomeness of war.

"The Man I Killed" - Rob

In “The Man I Killed”, O’ Brian tells of his first experience of taking a life in the war. He and the soldiers around him all share different reactions to the killing. Azar is ecstatic about the action. To him, the disproportioned state the victim was left in after the grenade ended his day is like a trophy. Kiowa is level headed about the matter and insists on convincing O’ Brien that the kill was justified and nothing to fret over. O’ Brien on the other hand is in shock. He silently stares at the dead man, frozen on the outside while exploding like his victim within. He creates a back-story for the man he killed. Kiowa generalizes the man just claiming he had a gun, this is war, and he was dead no matter what. But Tim cannot let it slide. He gives the man characteristics that mirror his own in the fact that he claims the man is not a soldier. He decides the man is a scholar, a weaker man, and not a follower of the war, yet felt the need to live up to the standards set on him as a man and fight in the war out of embarrassment not to. O’ Brien probably feels the need to justify what he has done by giving this man a story. He tortures himself by dwelling on the life he took but fills the void of wondering who he was by creating the life he had. O’ Brien placed himself into the story of this man. That part he placed into that man died with him in the jungle. 

Chris Blackall- Speaking of Courage

At the end of the section, "Speaking of Courage", O'Brien finally addresses the nature of his novel. He acknowledges the odd structure of metafiction, the intermingling of fact with fiction. O'Brien writes, "By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others."Thank you Tim. Now this whole jumping off point for writing makes much more sense-- because for me the problem lay in how was I, as the reader, intended to come away from this book with an enriched understanding of the trauma of the Vietnam War if I was unsure of what was fact and what was fiction. The purpose is that this piece of literature was not for me. It was for the author and those traumatized.
I find it interesting and perhaps a motive of the author's use of metafiction that the Vietnam War was something akin to metafiction. Is this real, or is it unreal? What did people perceive the war as and what was it actually?  Perhaps, this is just the nature of war which is why fact and fiction had to be meshed by O'Brien.

"Notes" Analysis

This section of Tim O'Briens book titled "Notes," is a very striking and conflicting section.  The reader is allowed to feel for the character Norman Bowker, reading his letters about how he feels about the war, and Tim's writings about it and how it affects him, because before and after reading it, it is mentioned that he commits suicide.  Bowker seemed unsatisfied with life after the war, and statements like " So why not come down for a visit sometime and we'll chase pussy and shoot the breeze and tell each other old war lies? A good long bull session, you know?" and ""there's no place to go. Not just in this lousy 

little town. In general. My life, I mean. It's almost like I got killed over in Nam . . . " These statements make it seem like his life is like a facade.  A conclusion could be drawn that his feelings towards the war may have driven him to commit suicide, that lack of realness.  He even felt uncomfortable when people were being nice to him, he saw their kindness as caution, to not slip up and say the wrong thing.  He reveals himself to not be crazy, but his mood switches abruptly even in his writings.  I would compare his interpretation of O'Brien's war stories to the girl in Margaret

Atwood 's short story "There was once."  I am sure he would have, made many suggestions, like he did in his letters, but in a different way, rather than making it up, he would want it to be more truthful.  This passage was strong and meaningful and it gave me the feels.  I could reference the structure of “Maus II ” when O’Brien writes about the story that Bowker is suggesting that he writes about.   

(Artavius Veasey Post #4) Brison's Aftermath: Speaking about Rape

After reading Susan Brison's "Aftermath" It kind of made me a little weak and worried. Speaking on sexual abuse such as rape is a very private topic in today's society. It's one of those topics that rarely comes up within conversations, it's very private. The reason I believe its such a personal topic is because when the victims have to relive those moments to express their feelings can get very emotional and could cause the person to go back in that stake of trauma they were in when the incident happened. So it'll be best to just not talk about it or bring it up. Like other people, I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought about this. Talking about a situation and venting out how you felt and getting it all off your chest and out you'll feel feel better by the time the conversation is over. Everybody is different however, I have a best friend whose experienced rape and I try to talk to her just to help her clear her head and vent. Just as most of the rape victims they close their hearts and shutoff their feelings to protect themselves from more pain and heartache. I cant say I'll act someway if it happen to me (god forbid) but knowing me I'll probably use my horrible experience as a testimony and help other people who don't feel like no one understands. So that's how I feel when it comes to rape, it's just one of those topics that are just too personal and is off limits from any type of conversation.

True War Stories

In “How to Tell a War Story,” Tim O’Brien writes on end, sharing war story examples, ultimately proving that true war stories have no moral, no happy ending, and many times, no real conclusion whatsoever. True war stories are difficult to tell simply because of the absence of an easily understandable storyline. It becomes increasingly difficult when ideas of life and death, right and wrong, run so closely together that they are indistinguishable. Specifically speaking, O’Brien mentions the paradox between peace and war from a soldiers perspective. “To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace. Almost everything is true. Almost nothing is true. At its core, perhaps, war is just another name for death, and yet any soldier will tell you, if he tells the truth, that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life” (O’Brien 78). The soldier living at all times so close to death, finds that he is ultimately experiencing life more directly. These contradictions are essential to a “true” war story by O’Brien’s definition.

truth behind O'Brian's stories

A little before half way through the chapter titled how to tell a true war story, At the bottom of page 67 in my book, is where Tim O’Brian explains the difference between fact and perception during traumatic events from war.  He states “its difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.  What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way.  The angles of vision are skewed.  When a booby trap explodes, you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself.  When a guy dies, like Curt Lemon, you look away and then look back for a moment and then look away again.  The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot” (O’Brian 67-68).  Last class we got on the subject of weather or not the stories told in The Things They Carried were fictional, and I feel like this paragraph explains my opinion very well.  Although Tim titles this book as a fictional novel, it can be debated that a large amount number of events and facts stated in this book are still true.  So why put novel?  I feel as though O’Brian did this because he realizes that his perception and memories of these war events may not be an exact match with the factual truths.  This being said, I still find his stories and memories to be true, for they are exactly as he recalls and retells of them.  He finishes this passage with “And then afterwards, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed (O’Brian 68).  

The Things They Carried

   On page 21 of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brian, there are two lines that stood out to me : "it was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards." I found this concept fascinating, because in the face of death, with a good potential of dying every second, social restraints were still too strong. As strong as the fear was, shame was worse. The thoughts of peace were nice, but returning home with the sign of shame would be worse : "They died so as not to die of embarrassment" (O'Brian 20). Somehow, they brought social expectations with them where there were completely different social expectations. They carried them, and wore them as a mask; the new social expectations hidden underneath. They talk harshly of those who have forgotten the old social expectations, but imagine and want what those who have forgotten have. "It was fierce mocking talk, with only a trace of envy or awe, but even so the image played itself out behind their eyes." They mock not just out of envy, but to shame the person that so easily gave put the mask of the old social expectations. To them, this war is a temporary experience and either you make it back or you don't. The old social restraints will return when you do, and life will return to what it was before.

The Things They Carried

In the chapter, How to Tell a True War Story, O'Brien's writing style is unconventional and complex in the way he tells a story little by little, while changing the subject within the telling to discuss what a true war story really is. The second section of the chapter begins with, "A true war story is never moral, it does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done" (O'Brien 76). He continues to list characteristics of what a true war story should and shouldn't do or evoke. One story that he tells is the death of Curt Lemon, and each section it is discussed the story gets more specific. I wasn't sure what had exactly caused Curt's death at first, because it is told vaguely and abstractly: "... when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms" (78). It's a beautiful image, and not gruesome or crude as war stories typically are. Towards the end of the chapter, a section written with similarities to this one gives more explanation. That Curt had stepped on a bomb. Comparisons are made between the sunlight and the "fatal whiteness" of the bomb explosion. It is also revealed in the chapter that Curt's body was blown into the trees and his body parts scattered, explaining the words about sunlight lifting him up and sucking him into a tree. I really enjoy O'Brien's writing techniques in this novel, how stories are told bit by bit and sporadically, and it seems that it continues throughout the whole novel and not only within each chapter.

The Things They Carried Part 2

Anna Lacy

Trauma

March 24, 2014

The Things They Carried Part 2

In Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried, O’Brian talks about a letter that his friend, Bob 

“Rat” Kiley, sent to a fallen comrade’s sister. In the letter Kiley goes on and on about how great the 

girls brother was and how he seemed more of a brother to him because of how close the war forced 

them to become. After Kiley doesn't receive a reply to the letter he begins to call the girl a ‘cooze’ 

which is slang referring to either woman’s genitalia or a woman who is seen as sexually attractive and 

promiscuous. O’Brien then goes on to state, “Cooze, he says. He does not say bitch. He certainly does 

not say woman, or girl. He says cooze. Then he spits and stares. He’s nineteen years old - it’s too

much for him - so he looks at you with those big sad gentle killer eyes and says cooze, because his 

friend is dead, and because it’s so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back” (O’Brien 66). While 

upon first read it seems that O’Brien is implying that the fallen comrade’s sister should be referred to as 

a bitch or girl instead of an obscure slur word. In reality, O’Brien is commending Kiley for not 

referring to the girl as a bitch, which at the time was considered much more of an insult than it is taken 

as today. Kiley instead chose a slang word from the 1950’s, who's meaning may have been lost the 

youth of the platoon.

Morality of war?

O’Brien suggests that “A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior…,” shows that a war story can be sugar coated. I believe that is true in society because as Americans, we have a glorification for the war hero. We fully support our patriots for protecting our country however we forget about the prices of war.(O’Brien 65).We make out the soldiers as being our heroes but people do not realize that they must kill numerous people regardless of what they think is right or wrong. If they act out of orders to save an enemy’s live because it is the moral thing to do, people would criticize them. In war, the soldiers must face hardships that test his moral putting him/her in a place where the need for survival is more important than what is right. War is a terrible thing and the people of America make it out to be a blessing for those who get a change to serve our nation. The people who do not have family or loved ones overseas constantly worry about their loved ones life, survival, and welfare because they know that there is a chance that they could not come home. We praise our soldiers but once the war is over, there is no place for them to go, they are unable to find jobs, and need aid yet we treat our honorable soldiers so bad when they come home. If people did not find a way to sugarcoat battles and war as being a moral, virtuous thing, then nobody would want to join. Or perhaps the morality encourages the soldiers and gives them hope that they are fighting for a cause, that they are saving lives. Or the fanaticized war stories could be geared to the public so that they do not have to worry about their son is becoming an animal. The fanaticized stories are to detour the public from discouraging a war that the government wants. If anyone listens to a war story told by a survivor, and hear about the death and suffering that happens, one can clearly see that the picturesque Hollywood movie warrior is not real. It is wrong to let our soldiers believe in false fantasies of war because they are risking their life and they should not have to if they do not know what is really in store for them. Then there are other people who refuse to listen to war stories or they tell the soldiers that they did a good thing even though they killed dozens of men who were fighting for their own cause for their own land. The media and the public as a whole have destroyed the reality of war.

The Things They Carried Part 1

Anna Lacy

Trauma

March 24, 2014

The Things They Carried Part 1

Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried, takes a psychological look at the things carried, both 

physically and mentally, by the people in his platoon during the Vietnam war. For the first three 

chapters O’Brien tells small stories of events that occurred between him and his platoon, while 

mentioning the items they were carrying. He mentioned items such as flak jackets and lead helmets to

 candy and supplies that different ranks carried. The way that O’Brien describes the different supplies 

allows the reader to learn a little each character. For instance, when talking about the medic Rat Kiley,

 O’Brien states, “[he] carried a canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and 

surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic myst carry, including M&M’s for especially 

bad wounds, for a total weight of nearly 18 pounds” (O’Brien 5). The small details about Kiley such as 

that he carried comic books and M&M allow Kiley to become more than simply a made up character 

but a person who really lived and sympathized with people who suffered injuries by giving them 

chocolate to comfort them. The fact that Kiley carried comic books with him shows that he is still a kid 

at heart, these are not grown men tromping through the forest but young boys who have barley 

graduated high school and still have interest in youthful things such as comic books.

The Things They Carried - Rob McElhaney

The soldiers are carrying two separate lives with them, the one they lived back home, as well as the one the government has issued them. Each man carries different items that he finds suitable to get him through the war. Some bring along items that remind them of the comfort of home or carry an excessive amount of the weapons and ammo issued to help them feel safe. Lavender keeps medicinal items to keep him from feeling all together. The items they carry and the weight they keep on their backs symbolize the baggage they carry from being soldiers of war. The guilt they feel for the villages they burn or the men they bury builds and builds into a weight they carry in their minds that rivals what they carry on their backs. The weight just goes unmentioned as no one wants to talk about the pain they feel. They’ll experience a death or a mortar shower and brush it off cracking nervous one-liners on the outside while their crying within. Jimmy Cross had to dig himself a hole to hide in to feel able to let out any emotions he could not manage to keep inside. The civilian within these men yearns for a simple life and it shows in what they carry.  A pebble and pictures, comic books, candy, even pantyhose display a desire for something simple. Instead they carry heavy guns, sidearms, ammunitions, fragmentation grenades, claymores, helmets, shovels, MREs, and on and on. They want to carry on with their simple lives, but are forced to carry their country’s pointless war.

I hope I'm not spoiling this

I really hope I'm not spoiling this novel for anyone, but Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is not coming back from the war. I'm not sure if it's obvious for anyone else but he is telegraphing all of the signs/tropes of a soldier who is about to die. He carries around keepsakes from a girl who doesn't like him. He has nothing of real import to go back to, nothing to fight to stay alive for. A lot of college students who are living away from home for the first time will understand, when you have a home to go back to you will remember all of the memories of it. The good memories will seem better, the bad memories will seem not as bad, but Lieutenant Cross only remembers these gray, ambiguous, memories without lesson or conclusion. It is definitely not helped that the movie Jimmy and Martha see is Bonnie and Clyde, where there is a looong scene where the two are shot to death by the authorities.

What the title refers to is all of the things that the soldiers carry that mean something to them; what they feel in the time of uncertainty is most important, or will help them to survive. Jimmy's things is a letter from a girl who doesn't love him. Then he burns it. He's got an expiration date stamped on his forehead. The burning of the past and ambiguity of his relationship is going to keep him alive a little longer, living in the present often does, but the damage is done.

things they carried

When I first started to read the book i wasn't sure if i was going to like it. I am not really interested in books about war however after getting through the first chapter i really started to enjoy the book. I learned so many new things that i didn't know before about people who are in the army as well as the things they have to go through. I don't have anyone close to me that has gone into that field of life so i didn't know much about it. The first chapter i really didn't expect it to actually talk about all of the things each soldier carried nor did i expect the almost crude language that was being used in the writing.

Dimitri Stevens Interesting Things

In the book "The things they carried, by Tim O'Brien, the narrator describes what these soldiers carried and why.  Aside from weapons, food and personal necessities, the things that each person reflected what they were conscious about in life, like the ones more afraid running out of ammo would carry extra ammo, or how jimmy cross carried photos because he was in love.  Aside from the things they carried like dope, bandages, guns, souvenirs, books etc... something that they carried, discussed on page 19 of the online book i am referencing, they were said to carry "the land itself—Vietnam, the place, the soil
—a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and
faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the
humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they
carried gravity." These things, along with diseases, and infections, stood out from material things that they carry.
They introduced people, and they died shortly after the introduction, not allowing the reader to form a deep connection with that certain character, for example, Lavender.  O'Brien did a strange thing in the text, he kept mentioning lavender, things he carried before he was killed, or the phrase "smoking the dead mans dope," showing that the narrator hasn't quite killed these characters off, almost like providing back story.  In a way it could be read as grief, and failure to forget about the deceased.  A positive outlook on death in the passage was on page 21, after one of the guys said "We all got problems," another one replied "Not Lavender."  This is a brief moment in the passage but it ties into philosophy of death not harming people, and it frees them from future harm.

CHRIS BLACKALL- tttc1

It's hard to know where to begin with this. I didn't really consider the title before I began reading. I mean it's only 4 words anyway, but after reading a few paragraphs this nonchalant opinion of the title changed. I have heard that soldiers carry heavy packs, but this book has already begun to put that into a new perspective. What one carries into war is partially a choice and partially a result of war experience. This book very quickly reminds the reader that what every person carries something into life with them, beyond physical possessions and experience. Perhaps what they carry is memory. The weight and the anchor- memory. This burden of memory is most clearly illustrated by Lieutenant Cross, a man burdened by both the deaths in his unit and the woman whom he "loves" back home. It is ironic, though, how it takes the death of Lavender to bring Cross back to his sense of duty. In other words, it takes death to bring Cross back to life. "Lieutenant Jimmy Cross reminded himself that his duty was not to be loved but to lead."A rather Machiavellian insinuation, but nonetheless, a good one.

Melanie Morrison The Things They Carried Response

     Starting with the title of the book, "The Things They Carried," I already got the notion of those "things" being more than physical possessions. The soldiers of the story each had their own emotional burdens throughout their time serving in the war. For example, Jimmy Cross' attachment to Martha, though she was far away, made him feel as though his unending thoughts of her indirectly caused the death of one of his comrades. Cross thinks to himself how, "It was very sad, the things men carried inside." (23) Of course those physical items they carried weighed them down during the trek throughout the war, but those emotional tie ins could have been just as, or even more so, crippling than the physical side of it. Continuing to see your comrades taken down in front of you added along with the emotional baggage brought from home must be a heavy burden on all of the soldiers. Another thing I found interesting was the fact how most men carried items that would have no use in saving their lives if it came down to it. Some men carried comics, the pantyhose of his girlfriend, and m&ms. That also shows how a token from their past lives could also make the horrors of war more bearable. When Jimmy Cross carried the rock from Martha, and even put it in his mouth, it showed the longing to be close to something that's no longer there. Those mementos brought them to a save place when they came into contact with it, helping them to remember better days.

One psychological struggle dealing with sexual assault that was consistently mentioned throughout Brison’s essay that stood out to me was that of shame of the victims after those traumatic events.  The author states from her own case of sexual assault that “Still, I didn’t want people to know that I had been sexually assaulted.  I don’t know whether this was because I could hardly believe it myself, because keeping this information confidential was one of the few ways I could feel in control of my life, or because, in spite of my conviction that I had done nothing wrong, I felt ashamed”(Brison, 3).  It is hard for me to imagine the thoughts and emotions going through one’s head after suffering such a demeaning event, in comparison to loosing a loved one other means of trauma.  In most cases of trauma, it seems as though talking about the events, to help clarify and vent one’s thoughts would be helpful, but when being abused in such a manner is the case, I start to grasp the ideas of shame and helplessness.  Brison does a great job in explaining and expressing these emotions after sexual assault.

            Brison also mentions in her essay, agreeing with many other essays dealing with trauma, that society has a huge influence on how one can deal with traumatic events such as rape.  Brison goes on to explain that society had made it so that rape victims are accused of often being antagonizing the attackers. 

I also was interested in the ideas behind Brison’s comments on page, when rape is compared to normal sexual activities besides the consent of the woman.  She states “in the case of both theft and murder, the notion of violation seems built into our conceptions of the physical acts constituting the crimes, so it is inconceivable that one could consent to the act in question.”    “distinguishes theft from normal gift-giving  murder as “assisted suicide minus consent.”