The Things They Carried Shame Analysis

In Erich Remarque’s tragic novel, All Quiet On The Western Front, he depicts the hardships war has on an individual, especially the younger generation. From these hardships, the audience understands why the individual is not able to find a way to reconnect with his past life. Paul’s war experience destroys his empathy, as well as his connection to others and the society that he once was a part of. The impact of the war stripped Paul of his humane connections between him and his society, and in the end a naive teen had to endure bloodshed. Paul and his comrades had no idea what the war would do to them and sadly learned that the war was more a misfortune than an honor.

The young soldiers no longer feel young because the hell of combat has aged them beyond their years. Baumer states, "Our early life is cut off from the moment we came here, and that without lifting a hand. " Baumer emphasizes that although the boys are young, their youth has left them. Baumer and his friends feel that people in authority betrayed their trust and sent them to die for empty and futile ideas. They especially blame Kantorek for pushing them into the army and exposing them to the horrors of war, even though he knows how traumatizing it is.

“When a man has seen so many dead he cannot understand any longer why there should be so much anguish over a single individual.” (Remarque, 181) During the war, many soldiers may often become desensitized and not feel the emotions they would usually feel when a friend or comrade dies. The war causes them to have a feeling of loss; they lose their emotions and friends; they lose a part of themselves during the war. If the soldiers were to think about every single death that occurred they would go mad. There are so many deaths everyday that it makes them have to move on pretty quickly.

Findley, displays change within the characters, specifically Robert Ross and Mrs. Ross. Through the experiences which they go through, they find themselves perceiving everything in a different manner. Although, both characters are found coping with change differently, they both find themselves hurt because of it. Findley shows the change within a character and the negative effects of being unable to accept it. Even though change happens often, there are times where one cannot deal or move one, which has negative outcomes for

Lieutenant Cross is the best example of how responsibility is another emotional burden that the soldiers have to deal with. Cross is responsible for all the soldiers as stated above. Cross’s thoughts of Martha cause an unfortunate problem which is the death of Lavender and Cross must suffer and carry guilt with him because he allowed one of his men to die because he was thinking of Martha at the time. This makes Cross realize that he cares more about this faraway girl than he does his own men which is another example of the guilt that Cross has to carry with him. Since Cross let Lavender die on his watch and he felt responsible for his death Cross burns all the pictures and letters that Martha sent him.

Being betrayed by someone can cause very severe pain in our daily lives, it can change the person as a whole after being betrayed. The betrayer might be alright with this, but there will be suffering. There will be always consequences within these tragic events. This can also cause the betrayed to rise again and be better than before, but sometime they just fall. Just like the act in “Julius Caesar” Act 2 Scene 1 by William Shakespeare “Brutus ‘Caesar has to bleed if we’re going to stop him...let us kill him boldly’”

While Perry makes his verbal confession to Alvin Dewey he admits his own confusion as to why he carried out the attack, “I didn't have anything against them, and they never did anything wrong to me--the way other people have all my life. Maybe they're just the ones who had to pay for it."(302). . Capote deepens the divide between Dick Hickock and Perry Smith best in Perry’s verbal confession and the retelling of the night of November 14th 1959. It's almost as if Bonnie’s discussion with Perry is a perfect catalyst for how Capote thought of the two. Bonnie expresses how she knew Dick was the one who had the truly sinister intentions,

Instead, he knew what he had done and he did not brag. This shows modesty in one of its highest forms. Brave people can be inspiring. A loyal friend can be comforting.

They see soldiers and civilians dying, and are made kill others. Prisoners of war are often mistreated, and conditions for those who aren’t captured are still not given good living conditions. Many soldiers who live are injured and have near-death experiences. Billy Pilgrim, the main character from Slaughterhouse-Five, was emotionally scarred from the war, and therefore believed he was time-travelling. Little things would upset him or bring back memories of the war because of the ordeal through which he went.

In the end we can conclude that, Discrimination within the novel has a negative impact on many of the characters mental stability, wellbeing and the feeling of being safe , it is unfair and makes the characters question themselves and their surroundings, and it also results in war, death and being an outcast. Therefore discrimination is not only a dangerous thing in the old society but in today’s society

To me O’brien uses this quote to explain that Vietnam was a pointless war that our country entered and because of that they must live with the deaths of every soldier there, the only goal of the Vietnam war was to survive. The fear of death got so intense that men ultimately thought death was the only way to escape. Death wasn’t only feared in a scared way, sometimes it was in a way that made men evil, Mitchell Sanders tells Alpha Company a story of a man who fled from his platoon to go and sleep with a Red Cross nurse only to return days later, excited more than ever about being back in combat because everything else was to peaceful and he wanted to hurt people again. Nightmares are feared by many people in society today but we have a way to escape and still live our lives. What happens when you live in your nightmare like every man in Vietnam did, not knowing when or how death was going to come for you, and knowing the only way of escaping that hell was to kill whatever stood in your way, to be wounded severely, or to give up life

No matter who you where in the war, everybody walked away with guilt. Jimmy Cross will never forgive himself over the death of Ted Lavender. “He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead” (pg 7) Cross has to live with the fact that his distraction over Martha caused Lavender to die and as commanding officer he had responsibility over him. O’Brien feels the blame over the death of “a short, slender young man of about twenty” (pg 129) With the pain of killing this young man keeps O’Brien “writing war stories” (pg 129).

One saying that has been passed down from generation to generation is that war is always unjust and cruel. The story, My Brother Sam is Dead, by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier, shows how one family was dragged into the war and split apart by it. The Meeker family experienced the unfairness of war by losing friends and family and their business suffering. War is unfair for a number of reasons. One of them is how it drags people into it.

Creon begins to see how his pride lead him to this and sees how it could affect even more and starts to wonder what else his actions will do to him. The decision to punish Antigone he sees was not worth the death of his family. To conclude, Creon 's pride was his hamartia in many ways. It causes him to make decisions he wishes he didn 't. It leads him to do things that he does not actually want to do.

The True Weight of War “The Things They Carried,” by Tim O’Brien, brings to light the psychological impact of what soldiers go through during times of war. We learn that the effects of traumatic events weigh heavier on the minds of men than all of the provisions and equipment they shouldered. Wartime truly tests the human body and and mind, to the point where some men return home completely destroyed. Some soldiers have been driven to the point of mentally altering reality in order to survive day to day. An indefinite number of men became numb to the deaths of their comrades, and yet secretly desired to die and bring a conclusion to their misery.