Death Of The Ball Turret Gunner Theme

“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a short story set during the Vietnam War. In the story, O’Brien lists many different items soldiers in the Alpha Company carried with them as they humped across the rugged terrain. Many carried necessities such as rations, matches, ammunition and things of that nature; however, many soldiers also carried quite peculiar objects such as condoms, pantyhose, and M&Ms. Readers can grasp a closer insight of the characters’ lives after further examination of the symbolism and meaning of the things they carried. Three characters in this story that carried interesting belongings are Kiowa, Ted Lavender, and Jimmy Cross.

The things I carry to school are to ease my job everyday. I carry my backpack so it could hold all my other materials which I need to carry. I carry extra pencils in case of loss of my actual pencil. One day in January, my mechanical pencil ran out of lead during a math test, and I had to waste five minutes to get another pencil. Other needs I carry include a graphing calculator and iPad. I need both to ease my job, but if I forget to carry, I will get punished by some teachers. The thing I carry and use every single day is paper. I write my notes and homework on paper. I bought hundreds of pieces of papers, so I would carry extra everyday for others who forget to carry because other students also need paper to function in

Tim O'Brien short story "The Things They Carried" is about a unit in the Vietnam War. One of the soldiers “Ted Lavender, a "Grunt" gets shot by a sniper when in route to the restroom. Meanwhile, his superior by the name of, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross points the finger at himself for the catastrophe. One of O'Brien's themes is that emotional problems on soldiers can be heavier than physical problems. Symbolically, the things the soldiers carry represented who they were. Lieutenant Cross' “Jimmy Cross” name is a symbol of sacrifices for others.

Gratitude, happiness, and fulfillment are just a few things of the enduring list that most commonly defines love. However, love can also show the worst in people through destruction, agony, and desperation. Love does not always bring eternal happiness the way most people want it to, and often times love only lasts a short period of time. Through Lieutenant Cross, Rat Kiley, Mark Fossie, and his own personal experiences, Tim O’Brien uses The Things They Carried to show that love can lead to hopelessness.

Death is something that occurs often in a war due to the violence and dangerous areas. Everyone takes on the thought of someone dying in different ways, whether they maintained a close relationship with the person or not guilt could become an instant reaction of the persons' death because of a feeling of maybe being responsible for the death that occurred. The thought of maybe being responsible for one of the soldiers that you have spent day night serving with could leave an enormous amount of guilt in one person. When witnessing a death or anything traumatic it is easy to blame someone else or even yourself for the tragic accident. Multiple characters in the book The Things They Carried demonstrated the guilt and responsibility of another

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a collection of short stories about the Vietnam war. The title's significance refers to both the emotional and physical baggage that the characters in the stories carry. Although the soldiers carry heavy physical baggage, they also carry the heavy emotional loads of the war, such as shame, guilt and escapism.

This elegy is ultimately written for all soldiers of war and sends the ironic message that the soilders who have fought against each other and could have killed each other are now all floating on the same coastline receiving equal treatment and being buried with their enemy. The theme of anonymity is extensively portrayed throughout this piece as Slessor constantly refers to ‘unknown’ soldiers or ‘someone’. Slessor uses personification and dehumanization to depict the loss of identity within each of the soldiers and the obscured effects of war to show the continuous movement forward of the world despite losses and victories. Personification is shown in the second stanza, 'Between the sob and clubbing of the gunfire '; the use of this technique ironically emphasises that the guns seem to mourn the loss more than humanity does. This leaves the audience feeling distraught and pity for the soldiers as it gives them a sense of the emotions linked to war. Personification of the rain in the fourth stanza, ‘The breath of the wet season has washed their inscriptions’ indicates that the world will continue advancing, regardless of the scale of their sacrifices. Slessor also dehumanizes these sailors by the use of language such as ‘dead seamen’, to exemplify his statement about the number of losses that the enemy

In "If I die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home", Tim O’Brien gives the readers a unique insight into the Vietnam War from a soldier’s perspective. He uses dark humor to describe his firsthand experience of combat and the feelings of fear, bravery, and loss. Drafted into the war, O’Brien begins his journey in a training camp in Washington, making a close comrade who shares similar views with him. During his time at the camp, he considers the senselessness of the war and thinks of fleeing the country with his comrade, Erik. O’Brien was surrounded by the era of protest and arguments on the war. Faced with the moral decision of fight or flight, he opts for the former and chooses to stay and fight for his country. Shipped off to the battlefront in Vietnam, his life in combat is drowned in constant fear and anxiety. In fear of death, O’Brien and his fellow soldiers practice courage and bravery every day. They do this while watching American soldiers die in combat from bombs and landmines. Fighting for the Alpha Company, O’Brien witnesses violence and inhumanities of war. He lives in a revolving door of valor and danger as young men fought and died for the country on both sides. Even after O’Brien leaves the frontlines to

The soldier himself is frightened on why he could not save him which haunts him in his dreams as he says “In all my dreams/ before my helpless sight” is how every time he dreams he sees the soldier and he cannot control it causing him to think of it every night frightening him everyday. Soon he will feel that the dead person wants revenge for his death as the soldier states “he plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning”, The dead soldier always comes into the narrator's dream wanting revenge as he chokes him as how he was being choked by the gas clouds and then drowning as how the dead soldier drowned in the green sea of chlorine gas. The horrors of war is what scares the soldier even after the war. At first soldiers imagine themselves as heroes creating them eager and excited they are until they finally get to the front and see no man's land. No man's land is usually bumpy with shell holes and dead trees that are either broken or burnt. They see the Ground stained with blood and the carcasses left behind, Some are even burnt that nothing is left but their skeleton and some cloth that is stained on their rib cage and their cranium. Nothing left as the soldiers look onto no man's land but the horrific sight of what battle their was there and what battle their will be for their

The author was writing the story “The Things They Carried” expressed so many thoughts and feelings about what the soldiers had faced, they showed their feelings and duties, life or death, and overall fear and dedication. This story shows the theme of the physical and emotional burdens that everyone is going through in the war. By showing his readers what the soldier’s daily thoughts are and how they handle what is going on around them. Tim O’Brien expresses this theme by using characterization, symbolism, and tone continuously. In the story, physical and emotional burdens plagued several characters as they all had baggage weighing them down.

Flustering and Blushing often come about in moments of awkwardness or self-consciousness. Strong emotions such as shame and embarrassment can influence actions. Altering not only insignificant details, but life-changing decisions. Throughout the novel, The Things They Carried, the theme of the power of shame and embarrassment is illustrated through the characters of Tim O’Brien, Norman Bowker, and Lt. Jimmy Cross.

Near the end of Mary Downing Hahn’s December Stillness, a novel about a teenage girl named Kelly who tries to get to know and understand a homeless Vietnam veteran named Mr. Weems, there is a tragic event. Mr. Weems is killed in what seems like a tragic accident. However, even though his death was tragic, it was not an accident. He, like many other war veterans, was severely haunted by the acts which he and others had committed in Vietnam. Due to the trauma of the war and losses he suffers in the course of the book, it is clear that Mr. Weems’ death was not an accident. Like many war veterans who return suffering from severe depression and mental illness he reached a point where he couldn’t go on and decided to end his life. Even though it may have appeared like an accident, he killed himself using a car. He intentionally walked out in front of the car which struck and killed him.

“Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected,” Paul Fussell wrote in “The Great War and Modern Memory,” his classic study of the English literature of the First World War. “But the Great War was more ironic than any before or since.” The ancient verities of honor and glory were still standing in 1914 when England’s soldier-poets marched off to fight in France. Those young men became modern through the experience of trench warfare, if not in the forms they used to describe it. It was Yeats, Pound, Eliot, Joyce, and Lawrence who invented literary modernism while sitting out the war. Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred Owen—who all fought in the trenches and, in the last two cases, died

By 1975 the Vietnam war had claimed over 5 million lives, many of which were civilians. This has made it a war that Americans have been ashamed of and tried to forget. W. S. Merwin was outspoken on how he felt about war, which he shows in “The Asians Dying.” He makes a statement on the inhumane way the Vietnam war took human lives. ”The Asians Dying” will shock readers with its gruesome imagery and force them to look at what war does. Merwin uses the archetype of death to show the reader what the Vietnam war did to people, and how inhumane the Vietnam war was.

He then contrasts between the bomber’s view to the civilians’ view from the ground. The bombers view is recognized from a plane filled with ammunition. This suggests the bombers are carefree of their acts committed, but the civilians are petrified for the safety of their lives due to the uncertainty of the attack which is to occur. The effect on readers is that while reading the poem they begin to notice the different views of the bombers and civilians while experiencing war. Also, the readers tend to realize the savagery conveyed by the