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Grieving Process In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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From what I read, the overall theme of the grieving process in the short story “The Things They Carried,” written by Tim O’Brien, is that death is more of a joke, yet all the characters are scared about it; they seem to not view the process in a uniform way. One part of the story had someone kick a dead body, and then cut off the person’s thumb (O’Brien 308). It states specifically in the store, "They kicked corpses. They cut off thumbs. They talked grunt lingo" (O'Brien 308). This shows that they did not care for the death of that man. Also, everyone had mixed feelings about the death of one of their own, Ted Lavender. Kiowa really did not know what to feel when he discovered about Lavender’s death. For example, the story mentions, “He wished he could find some great sadness, or even anger, but the emotion wasn’t there and he couldn’t make it happen” (O’Brien 306). …show more content…

Does this mean that they want to die? And it mentioned about when someone would die, they were like actors because they knew exactly what they were going to say and do, and that’s how death seemed more of a joke to them. To support that, it states in the story, “When someone died, it wasn’t quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their lines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy…” (O’Brien 308). It also was said later in the story that they were afraid of dying, and I personally wouldn't image someone who wasn't when they are in a war. When the other characters talked about Lavender's death, Sanders said the remark, “The moral’s pretty obvious, Sanders said, and winked. Stay away from

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