Violence In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Moreover, both O’Brien and Coppola use the annihilation of animals and humans as a symbolic representation of characters’ loss of morality. In The Things They Carried, Rat Kiley mourns the death of his friend, and fellow soldier, Curt Lemon by torturing a baby water buffalo: “He stepped back and shot it through the right front knee. […] It went down hard, then got up again, and Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear. […] It wasn’t to kill; it was to hurt” (O’Brien 75). Rat Kiley’s grief for Curt Lemon drives him to direct his emotions onto the water buffalo.

I just wish he wasn’t there” (Salinger 172). From this quote, it obviously that Holden misses his brother Allie. He always recalls this memory and suffers the stress of his brother’s death. The kid James Castle’s suicide reaction also makes Holden suffer which can show by the following quote, “He was dead, and his teeth, and blood, were all over the place, and nobody would even go near him” (188). This blood scene stimulate Holden which has negative effect on Holden’s psyche.

In both works, the soldiers set aside their morals to overcome the horrors of war such as killing a man. This challenges their emotional endurance and has negative consequences on their mental disposition. Paul Bäumer, the protagonist in All Quiet on the Western Front, is put in a situation where he must suspend his ethics otherwise his supposed enemy, Gérard Duval, will murder him. This is the first time Paul has killed with his own hands, and “every gasp [of the enemy] lays [Paul’s] heart bare” (Remarque 221). He feels instant regret for his actions, and he “would give much if [Duval] would but stay alive” (Remarque 221).

For instance, after the Mariners crew was taken from him because of his decision to kill the albatross he was forced to “look upon the rotting deck,” where all of his “dead men lay” (Coleridge 7). The Mariner is tortured by his isolation whenever he looks back at his mistakes. His choice to kill the albatross forced him into isolation which slowly eroded his will to live. Similar to the way the Mariner was tortured by his mistake, Victor is led to his demise after he “swears...to pursue the demon who caused this misery” (Frankenstein 193). Victors isolation corrupted his mind into thinking that the only path left to take was to hunt down his creation until it ended in his own or the creature’s death.

John Bristow, and Cormoran Strike are two major characters throughout this book. John B., a very awkward, weird, pansy , and a jealous kind of a man. John’s going through a lot in life as of right now, he lost both his brother and father, his mother is on her death bed, and now lost his sister. John also asks lots of questions and has a very opinionated out spoken voice. John even questions the law enforcers such as Cormoran Strike also known as Strike.

In this song he talks about the horrors of war and the meaninglessness of everyone's deaths. He elaborates on lives lost and the ruined lives of generations to come because of the meaningless violence. Edwin Starr experienced war first hand. He was sent to have two years in service during World War II. He felt the effects of as he watched his his friends get killed one by one similar to the way Paul Balmer watched his friends died in the the novel All Quiet on The Western Front.

louder! louder! louder!” (85) He had killed an old man that lives in the same building as him and he killed him because he hates his eagle eye. This quote proves plot because he has great anger toward the old man and after he killed his guiltiness set in and he confessed to the cops so most likely he will be put to death or in jail the rest of his life which has consumed his life. Edgar uses plot throughout the entire book he writes, “No doubt I grew very pale; -but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice.” (84) He is becoming very scared and guilty and he is trying to urge the cops to leave because of fear of being caught.

How could soup taste good after watching someone die? The prisoners had seen and experienced so much brutality, endured repeated beatings, and humiliated beyond imagination, so one more death did not affect them. Their emotions hardened to the point of being non-existent… or so they thought. Although the prisoners seemed hardened and unaffected by death, a different hanging did deeply affect them. In this hanging, three individuals are condemned to die, one of them was a young child with “the face of a sad angel,” for sabotaging an electric power station (Wiesel 60).

In John Knowles’s A Separate Peace, the students of Devon’s perception of reality changes from peacetime to wartime. Phineas’s perception changes as he refuses to accept any part of reality that he does not agree with, but events force him to accept it anyway. Gene views Phineas as a jealous competitor, but he comes to a realization about Phineas’s real nature. Leper and Brinker both view the war as a sort of opportunity. However, they both resent the war when they face it.

In the background, Montag starts to adjust to Beatty’s cruel personality as Montag becomes more jittery, violent, and anxious. This demonstrates his personality shift from “average” fireman to a rebellious man. Finally, at the turning point of the novel, Montag faces his conflict and kills Beatty. After Beatty dies, Montag runs away from the police and hears, "War has been declared” (119). The war starting just after Beatty's death exaggerates how problematic Beatty was by correlating a war reference with his death.

Knowledge of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can 't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can 't make them undead” (38-39). Because O’Brien had witnessed so much death and destruction he knew how important it was to have all the facts first. He fought a war in Vietnam that he knew nothing about, all he knew was that, “Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons” (38).