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The Soldier's Fears In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

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The Soldier’s Fears First, in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” the tangible items carried by the soldiers reveal their fears of losing a connection to home, fear of the unknown, fear of reality. Holding onto their precious items from home helped them hold onto reality. Second, “the soldiers all had fears of the war and they all carried with them certain items that gave them the comforts of home.” (366). “First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha” (366) he loved her and this was a way of keeping her close, “Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriend’s pantyhose and wrapped them around his neck as a comforter” (372) he must have felt wearing his girlfriend’s pantyhose connected her to him, “Kiowa carried an illustrated New Testament and an old hunting hatchet from his grandfather” (367) his grandfather must …show more content…

The soldiers all carried different things that were either special to them or comforted them. Consequently, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross had the fear of the unknown with the love he carried for Martha, she would send letters and photographs and she would sign them love (368), he knew she didn’t love him in the same way he loved her and he would daydream about her. “She sent a pebble to him from her time at the Jersey shoreline and he would carry this pebble and she said it was a token of her truest feelings for him” (371). He had the fear of the unknown not knowing how she felt for him. Furthermore, the soldiers all had the fear of the unknown of what could or would happen to them. They all carried the emotional baggage of men who might die. “Grief, terror, love, longing – these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight” (381). The fear of the unknown was also lingering and they did not know what could happen to any of them at any

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The Things They Carried written by Tim O'Brien uses physical objects to describe how the soldiers felt on the inside. The war that was going on the outside was also going on in the inside. The author began the story describing items the soldiers carried in the field. No two soldiers carried the articles. Life is no different.

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In Tim O’Brien’s short story, “The Things They Carried”, in which he speaks of a man referred to as “Lieutenant Jimmy Cross”, who is struggling in balancing his obsession with a woman named Martha back in New Jersey and handling his duties within his platoon in Vietnam. His love for her intrudes on the love he has for his men, after he is daydreaming about Martha he loses his awareness of his surroundings and one of his men, who is named Lavender, gets killed. In coping with this death it is explained that the reason soldiers deal with these “intangibles” such as death, love, and fear is all due the idea that, “they were too frightened to be cowards.” (O’Brien, 1990, p. 24). For it is not by courage that these men are being pushed but, by the sheer fact that they do not want to be seen as cowardice amongst the men they stand by.

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Grief…..”(O’Brien) The soldiers could not really show grief, “…. It required perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried their greatest fear…… fear of blushing.”(O’Brien)

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