Silent Scream In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

“Silent Scream”

In war conditions, sometimes soldiers are forced to do what they don’t want to do. This action, sometimes makes them feel guilty even if they weren’t. In the novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, the author emphasizes that the things soldiers carry in war, the people they killed, the soldier’s feelings, psychology, and the moral of what they have done cannot be all of the soldier’s responsibilities. Soldiers fear that they would be excluded from the society, and they’d be accused from all the wildness of the war because of what they have done. In the chapters, “On the Rainy River” and “Ambush,” the author adumbrate us the emotions that soldiers had been through by using the techniques direct address, the point of view

O’Brien portrays this story as, “...cause embarrassment for all of us” (O’Brien 37). When he went down the river, he had to make a choice. Whether he was going to stay and fight for his country bravely, or he was going to run away to Canada, as society describes, like a “pu***”. “It was a choice in the river. Twenty yards. I could've done it. I could've jumped and started swimming for my life. Inside me, in my chest, I felt a terrible squeezing pressure” (54). By directly addressing himself, he created sympathy for the main character which ultimately leads the reader to feel like O’Brien was someone they had known, and by doing so the reader could emphasize with the psychology of O’Brien. O’Brien was depressed because of the position society put him under; he was going to make a choice which would be his identity in the society for the rest of his life. A “runaway” or a “war hero?” The psychology of a confused and depressed young man was shown and repeated. Throughout the book, “psychology of the soldier” was a topic O’Brien examined deeply by telling his memories, so this brought up the question “whether war is moral or

The answer is simple. No. But why would we ask a question like that? In the novel, the author shows us what happened in the war was not the soldier’s fault. They are human beings just as we are, and we need to hear them. In the chapter “Ambush,” O’Brien especially digs into the psychology of a veteran. By addressing himself as a veteran, who was ambushed by his little daughter with the question, “Did you kill someone?” This might be the scariest question that any veteran could get asked. When we look at what happened in Vietnam, we know that O’Brien’s intention was not to kill, but it was just a classic soldier instinct. On the other hand, after O’Brien killed the slim young soldier, he was in complete regret. He was questioning what he had done, why he was there. The scene is put in the novel to show that even though he did not kill the man, the intense mess of feelings O'Brien had felt when he saw that man die in front of him. For him, watching someone die is included in the definition of being "guilty". “I did not kill him. But I was present, you see, and my presence was guilt enough” (171). But there was this significant detail, only Kiowa came to talk with O’Brien. It was a little scene that O’Brien wanted to happen in real life. He wants us to communicate with veterans and soldiers, instead of leaving them in isolation. By changing the third point of view to the first point of view, he addressed that the stories he told were more dramatic.