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READ THE QUESTION CAREFULLY. THEN, CLICK ON THE "COMMENTS" LINK (the one with the pencil next to it) AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST.
In this novel, the narrator repeats and returns to the same memories -- sometimes with whole stories, sometimes with just a paragraph or line. Go back to the novel and identify at least three of the memories that the narrator can't seem to stop remembering.READ THE QUESTION CAREFULLY. THEN, CLICK ON THE "COMMENTS" LINK (the one with the pencil next to it) AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POST.
Bear in mind that the author of this novel CREATED a narrator who can't stop remembering (in other words, the memories are a TECHNIQUE that the author uses to help reveal his worldview). Which of the narrator's memories do you think is the most significant in helping us understand the author's view on the effects of war?
Explain your choice by showing us how the particular memory reveals the overall effects of the novel. As you answer, make sure you make reference to other stories or themes in the text.
Deadline: Midnight, 8/10/08.
Make at least three references to the text -- and respond to someone else's ideas -- in this entry.
Make sure you punctuate your thoughtful entries correctly.
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72 comments:
In “Things They Carried” by Jim O’Brien, the narrator remembers and restates the same memories – sometimes with many details, sometimes with just a line. One of the three memories that the narrator remembers and repeats, is when he talks about how his friend, Kiowa died in the war. He says, “I sit at this typewriter and stare through my words and watch Kiowa sinking into the deep muck of a shit field… (32)” Another one of his remembered memories was how Curt Lemon hung in pieces from a tree. He describes the scene, “Curt Lemon steps from the shade into bright sunlight, his face brown and shining, then he soars into a tree. (32)” The third memory that was repeated by the narrator was when he talks about his life. He says, “I’m forty-three years old, true, and I’m a writer now, and a long time ago I walked through Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier. Almost everything else is invented. (179)”
I think the most significant narrator’s memory in helping us understand the author’s view on the effects of war would have to be when he describes himself once being a soldier and how he felt at that moment. I believe so because all of his memories could’ve related to his life in nonfiction or a fiction way and that he wanted us to know that the story doesn’t have to be totally true in order to show a person’s feelings. In this particular memory, he tells us that by saying that he was a soldier but he now is a writer and that’s how he reveals his feelings, through his writing.
I culled this particular memory that reveals the overall effect of the novel because it shows how the narrator is old enough to forget the parts of the events that happened long ago but he still has the feelings from the partially forgotten events. This also is showing how he has been in war and the stories that he tells are either created or partially true. I’m predicting that he is trying to tell the readers that it has been more than two decades since he has been in war and that other than this particular memory, the rest of the details are pretty much fabricated in the book. He creates war stories that are partially false so that he can tell the reader how he feels about the war. For example, on page 179, he talks about a young man dying and how the narrator felt he was guilty for that happening. “…I want to tell you this: twenty years ago I watched a man die on a trail near the village of My Khe.” Then, he explains how that part of the story is just invented so it could be made into a story that could be felt.
In "The Things They Carried" by Jim O'Brien, the narrator often repeats and return to the same memories. Sometimes with a line or a paragraph. One of the memories that the narrator often repeats is when he talks about the people that have died. He saids, "I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, i keep dreaming Linda alive. And Ted Lavender, too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed, and an old man sprawled beside a pigpen, and several others whose bodies I once lifted and dumped into a truck.(225) Another one of his memories was when Curt Lemon Died. He said, "Curt Lemon laughed and said something to Rat Kiley. Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree...(83)The third one is when he talks about Kiowa's death and how they wanted to save Kiowa from sinking into the muck and grabbed him by the boot to pull him out. " These was an arm and a gold wristwatch and part of a boot."
I think that the narrator's memory is trying to explain how he felt about the war once being a solider. He often restates the same memories is because those memories kept re happening to him no and back then. These memories had affected his life and watching his friends and innocent people died are horrible things to suffered. Even now as a forty-three years old writer, the narrator still remember the specific things that have happened during the war. As a new solider, is was a lot for him to suffered while watching his friends died and seeing bloods everywhere. As a writer, he expressed the feeling about him being in the war and the way he described the war was bloody and awful. He also reveals his feeling about now and back then through writing. The memories tend to be unforgettable in his life and every single thing that happened during the war, he still remembered it. All the innocent people and friends that have died in the war.
Great entries so far. Really insightful comment about how surreal O'Brien makes the death of Curt Lemon.
A few reminders: remember to please include your FULL NAME at the top of your entry (as in, "Hi, this is Sarah Levine).
Remember also that for full credit, you'll need to read others' posts and RESPOND to someone else's ideas.
This is Laura Hernandez.
Tim O’ Brien’s “The Things They Carried”, the narrator takes the reader into his past when he was in the Vietnam War. Stating and remembering significant events that happened. The author mostly talks about the death of his comrades and the effects they had on the others. One of the memories was of Kiowa’s death. He says, “I watched my friend Kiowa sink into the muck along the Song Tra Bong. (pg.242)”, just the sight of the sinking body affected him.
The second memory would be the death of Curt Lemon. The narrator writes, “I climbed a tree and threw down what was left of Curt Lemon. (pg.242)” The sight was so disturbing he described it as, “When a guy dies, like Curt Lemon, you look away and then look back for a moment and then look away again. (pg.71)” The event itself was so surreal to even those that were there that when it’s told it doesn’t seem true which makes the story truly true.
This brings me to the third memory. It’s the story of when Curt Lemon went trick-or-treating and how it was told, understood, and meant. To the narrator, “To listen to the story, especially as Rat Kiley told it, you’d never know that Curt Lemon was dead. (pg.240)” Rat gave out that feeling when he told the story for the reason that Lemon was his closes friend during the war.
The narrator explains how their deaths affected them during and after the war. What deaths gave and took from them; for example the death of Kiowa held the most effect. It caused everyone to all blame someone, something, or themselves. It also gave them a fear to remember and took from them pride, control, strength, and courage in those moments. He tries to make us understand that they carried more than weapons and supplies but guilt, suffering and stories. He states that stories were either a legends or a way of keeping the dead alive. It was a way of mixing fiction and non-fiction to show the reader a sense of empathy or the lack of they showed. The way a story was told set a mood and held a purpose, true or made to sound true.
I agree with Sara that both fiction and non-fiction gave purpose, a feeling, to the book. Without them it wouldn’t have held much of a meaning. Also how he repeats about his life and bluntly states something and makes it make sense. For example, “I killed a man.” It sounds like he was traumatized without even saying anything else.
Hi Laura,
It was really interesting that the author uses his creativity to entertain the reader and catch their attentions so that they dont get bored. That was a unique technique used by the author. Thanks for noticing!
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My name is not Sara it is SaNa, Laura!
In Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried," the narrarator takes the reader through events that happened in his past while he was fighting in the Veitnam War. The authors mind seems to circulate around death throughout the novel. The death of his fellow soldiers, the death of rival soldiers, the death of animals. One memory is when the narrarator has killed a man. When Kiowa says, "Tim, it's a war. The guy wasn't Heidi-he had a weapon,right? It's a tough thing, for sure, but you got to cut out that staring."(pg.126)it is clear that the narrarator is stunned at his own actions and that the composure of the body has affected him immensly.
The second memory appears in the chapter "Ambush" when the narrarator recalls his nine year old daughter asking him if he had ever killed a man. She says, "You keep writing these war stories, so I guess you must've killed somebody."(pg.131) The fact that he was continuously writing stories about the war and the men who had died meant that incidents like this were embedded in his mind because of the seriousness of the situations he had been in and because the narrarator replies, "Of course not,"(pg.131) to his nine year old daughter it is clear that the memory of incidents as graphic as these continued to keep some part of him even after the rest of him had moved on.
This leads me into the third memory after the Vietnam war has ended and the narrarator describes Norman Bowker's feelings toward the night Kiowa died. He says,"The night Kiowa got wasted, I sort of sank down into the sewage with him...Feels like I'm still in deep shit." showing the reader that the things that happened to the soldiers still lived on with them even when it seemed as if the had moved on. Norman Bowker sinking into the shit field with Kiowa clarifies how close the men were as comrades and as friends.
The narrarator shows the reader what the men endured mentally throughtout the war. The things they carried weren't just ammunition belts and M-16's. They had to deal with the overall effects of what they had to do to survive. They carried guilt, pain, anguish, suffering, survival and the stories that were true and untrue show how no one really moved on after Veitnam.
I agree with Laura. The way the story was told set the mood and had an overall purpose. I think that by going back and forth between memories and by being vague during the beginnings and then graphic as the memory went on made it easier to fall into what the author said about stories being true and untrue but overall truly true.
Ashley Hart
Hello I'm Dominika Niemiec.
In "The Things They Carried" the author Tim O'Brian is repeating his memories of his Vietnam War experiances. Three significant memories he repeats are his time with Elroy Berdahl in the Tip Top Lodge: "Even after two decades I can close my eyes and return to that porch at the Tip Top Lodge. I can see the old guy staring at me."(pg. 48) Kiowa's death,: "The corpse was angled steeply into the muck upside down, like a diver who had plunged headfirst off a high tower" (pg.175) and his anger towards Bobby Jorgenson:"But it made me hate Bobby Jorgenson the way some guys hated the VC, gut hate, the kind of hate that stays with you even in your dreams."(191)
The memory that is most significant is his time spent with Elroy Berdahl, before the war. It shows another effect of the war not within the soldiers fighting but within the the soldiers to be. It carfully illustrates the fear the narrator, and probably many more drafted men, had even before they arrived in Vietnam. There fear of the unknown soon to come, the thought of defending their country that sent them to fight a war they had no part of starting, and to what desperate measure this fear will cause them to do. The narrator really grows up during his time spent with Elroy. He accepts the that he cannot change what can't be changed. And I think that might have helped with all the thinga he had to deal with prior, during, and after the war, Like the deaths of some of his loved ones if not his fellow soilders then his chidhood love.
I agree with ashley and laura about the story having a overall purpose, but i don't think it was about the "stories being true and untrue but overall truly true." I think the main purpose was to show the readers this man's, this soilders experiences while in a war, to make it as real and present as possible, so people can see, feel, and maybe evern live the way he did during a war he fought.
This is Desiree Portalatin.
Tim O’Brien’s "The Things They Carried," is a book that recalls many of Tim’s memories. One memory is when Tim killed the young soldier. “He was a short, slender young man of about twenty. I was afraid of him -- afraid of something -- and as he passed me on the trail I threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him,” (p. 131). He was reminded of this every time Kathleen would ask if he had killed anyone. Tim couldn’t believe he went along and threw the grenade. He was in shock for a while that his war buddies had to “snap him out of it”. They claim the young soldier had it coming and there was nothing they can do about it; it was a war.
Another memory is Kiowa’s death. “Like murder, the boy thought. The flashlight made it happen. Dumb and dangerous. And as a result his friend Kiowa was dead,” (p. 170). Many of the soldiers had died, but Kiowa was one of his closest buddy.
Tim wanted to revenge form Bobby Jorgenson by spooking him. “I wanted to hurt Bobby Jorgenson the way he’d hurt me… Number one: the guy had almost killed me. Number two: there had to be consequences,” (p. 200-201).
These memories contribute to the story because it shows typical actions of someone in war: killing, death, and revenge, things someone will always remember.
-Desiree Portalatin
One memory that I thought was significant, but wasn’t mentioned often, was the dancing girl. I thought this was important because it was ironic that the girl was dancing despite the fact that her village was practically burnt down and her family died, too. “There was no music. Most of the hamlet had burned down, including her house, which was now smoke, and the girl danced with her eyes half closed, her feet bare,” (p. 135-136). No one knew for sure why she was dancing and thought it might have been a ritual of some sort. I think the girl was just trying to cope with the pain of her losses by dancing away.
I agree with Dominika Niemiec. I think the chapter with Elroy Berdahl was important. It showed how Tim wanted to "escape from his past" because he didn't want to face reality. But the only reason he didn't, was because he thought he will loose the respect of those he loved.
-Desiree Portalatin
I think that everyone is right, and I want to agree with everyone. I think that the most important memory that the author is having is the memory of the man he killed at war. I think this is the most important, not only because he continues to mention it throughout the story, but also because it shows how the narrator felt about the situation. The narrator felt horrible after he killed that young man, and you can tell by the way the narrator continues to describe the way the man looked after he was bombed(p.122-130). In this whole chapter, the narrator was pretty graphic with how the man look after the incident, and it is clear that he did it by accident when he, not only says that he didn't want to kill him (p.133), but when he makes up a life story for the man he killed. If someone didn't care about killing someone they wouldn't care to actually take the time to think about this persons life.However, when on page 179, the narrator confesses that he didn't kill the man and for someone to feel such guilt for the death of a man they didn't kill tell you about the trauma done to soldiers. Is was like he felt as though he actually did kill the man.
I think the second most important memory is him reminiscing on his life and the stories he heard or told. He continues to play between what actually happened and what seemed to have happened(71) whether it's his own stories, which was explicitly stated on 179, or through Rat Kiley's stories when he says that he doesn't know whether to believe him or not (p.86-117):"he wanted to heat up the truth"(86) "Almost everything is invented"(179). This helps the reader to answer the question of how good war stories are told.
Lastly, I think just like everyone else's death the narrator remembers Curt Lemon's death. I think he remembers his death so clearly because it ended in him being blown to pieces and normally it is the extremely gross images people tend to remember.(70)"Twenty years later, I can still see the sunlight on Lemon's face...."(84)"one after noon I climbed a tree and threw down what was left of Curt Lemon"(242)
Gina Sewell
Three memories that reoccur in the novel are the death of Ted Lavender, the death of the Vietnamese soldier, and the death of Kiowa. These memories are there to show that one of the effects of war is the immense guilt that will last a lifetime. In the first chapter Ted Lavender’s death is brought up over and over again. On page 3 it says “until he was shot…”, then it goes into something else but then it’s brought up again “when Ted Lavender was shot”. It comes up back up in the chapter even though the story being told is not about Ted Lavender’s death. We learn that many years after that war has ended that Jimmy Cross hadn’t forgiven himself for what happened to Lavender. Another reoccurring memory is the death of Kiowa. It comes up a lot how he died in the field. Norman Bowker felt it was his fault for what happened to Kiowa. On pg. 153 he reveals how he was responsible for Kiowa’s death ““The truth,” Norman Bowker would’ve said, “is I let the guy go.” Bowker and Cross blamed themselves for those deaths. The war was already over but they still couldn’t let go of what happened, they felt this guilt that they could not let go. As the readers we feel like we can’t forget what happened to Kiowa and Ted because it keeps happening. I agree that the most important memory is the death of the soldier that the narrator felt he killed. The gruesome image of the young boy is brought up a lot “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shape hole…” pg. 124. The narrator tells a made up story of the soldier’s life and that really shows how he feels it was his fault for his death. If he would have acted like it was just another enemy soldier it we wouldn’t have felt so bad about his death, but the narrator creates a life for the Vietnamese soldier. So the fact he does that makes his death just as sad as Kiowa’s and Ted’s death. I think that Good Form pg. 179-180 is a really important chapter. The chapter talks about how some of the stories are made up so we can feel what the characters in the story felt at the time. The narrator talks about how the story of the Vietnamese soldier is made up because he never really saw his face but he creates this disturbing image of the soldier’s face so we could understand and feel what the narrator goes through. “I want you to feel what I felt.” Pg. 179. The point I’m trying to make is that changing the actual story is one of the techniques used so we could have the same emotions that the characters had. The reoccurring memories of those 3 deaths are another technique. We are being constantly reminded of those deaths just like the narrator, Cross and Bowker are. In a way we feel the guilt that they carry.
I agree with Joanna, chung tai, sana they said some of the same things I said. Dominika I don’t think that the memory of the lodge is one the memories that repeats or the narrator comes back to. He talks about it and that is, it not mentioned again afterward.
Hi, this is Jasmin Ali.
In Tim O’ Brien’s “The Things They Carried”, one memory that the author can’t seem to stop remembering, is the death of Ted Lavender. On page 12, Tim O’Brien states “Lee Strunk made a funny ghost sound, a kind of moaning, yet very happy, and right then, when Strunk made that high happy moaning sound, when he went Ahhooooo, right then Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing.” After this happened Kiowa kept telling the soldiers how sudden it was. He was just walking back and was shot. Ted Lavender just fell down “like cement”, as Kiowa said. This helps us understand the author’s views on the effects of war, because Ted’s death made him realize just how fast you can lose somebody, and that you have to be prepared to lose one of your men. Another view the author has is that there are people at war that shouldn’t be there. Ted Lavender was constantly described as “always scared”, and someone like that doesn’t belong at war. Another memory that the author had, was Kiowa’s death. “Kiowa was gone. He was under the mud and water, folded in with the war, and their only thought was to find him and dig him out and then movie on to someplace dry and warm. (pg. 162)” This shows us that the author’s view on the war, is that it can’t take the lives of good people. Kiowa was the most religious of the soldiers and had a good aspect on life. Another memory the author had, was the death of the man he killed. “He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay in the center of a red clay trail near the village of My Khe. His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut, the other eye was a star-shaped hole. I killed him.(pg. 180)” This shows us that a view the author has on war, is that the war will make good people do bad things. He explains how he didn’t mean to kill him, how his body just triggered itself to do it, without even thinking about it first. The death of the young man is something that the author will remember for the rest of his life.
I think that this memory is the most significant in helping us understand the author’s view on the effects of war, because when he killed the young man, he couldn’t forget about it. It was something that he carried with him even after the war was over, which I think also leads back to the title of the book. I agree with Gina on how the author tries to make us feel the way he does, unable to forget about how Ted Lavender died, by reminding us of him throughout the story. I agree with Sara and Laura, using both fiction and non- fiction in the book, the author gave us a better sense of how he was feeling, just as he intended to do. I also think that the story wouldn’t have the overall effect on us as readers than if the author only mentioned people like Ted Lavender and Kiowa once in the story, rather than repeating it.
[[hi this is Cristina Torres]]
In "The Things They Carried" by Jim O'Brien there are several memories that keep returning to the narrator even years after the Vietnam War is over. One of these memories is, of course, the death of Curt Lemmon. He states, " He said, "Curt Lemon laughed and said something to Rat Kiley. Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree..."(pg.83). Even after many years, the narrator can vividly remember the exact movements of Curt Lemmon, and can describe exactly what happened and how it all went wrong.
Another memory is of Kiowa's death, again he remembers exactly what happened even after so many years, "The left hand was curled open; the fingernails were filthy; the wristwatch gave off a green phosphorescent shine as it slipped beneath the thick waters...and how he grebbed Kiowa by the boot and tried to pull him out...there were flares and mortar rounds, and the stink was everywhere-it was inside him, in his lungs- and he could no longer tolerate it..." (pg. 149). the memory of all this is so vivid it's as if he relives that night over and over again, and eventually he ends up taking his daughter to that very field and even then he remembered exactly where Kiowa went under.
In addition to these memories, the narrator is constantly reminding himself of the man he killed. "“He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay in the center of a red clay trail near the village of My Khe. His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut, the other eye was a star-shaped hole. I killed him" (pg. 180). and again even years after he still remembers this poor man, "I keep dreaming Linda alive. and Ted Lavender, too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemmon, and a slim young man i killed, and an old man sprawled beside a pigpen..." (pg. 225).
i believe that all three of these memories are equally important, but to make it simpler, i believe that the fact that he himself killed somebody and that he lost friends due to the war are major parts to our understanding the effects of the war. it obviously traumatized the narrator that he had to kill somebody, and although you can lose your friends many ways through death, even in society, having known that you are the cause of someone's death must really be haunting and a huge weight on your shoulders.
i completely agree with Lyric when he says that
"The things they carried weren't just ammunition belts and M-16's. They had to deal with the overall effects of what they had to do to survive. They carried guilt, pain, anguish, suffering, survival and the stories that were true and untrue show how no one really moved on after Veitnam." i agree that they had to deal with more than just carrying their weapons but also had to carry the guilt of knwoing that they may have possibly put an end to someones life...
Hi, this is Candace Exson
In Tim O’ Brien’s “The Things They Carried” the narrator has a number of memories that he can’t stop remembering. Three of these unforgettable memories are when Rat Kiley wrote to Curt Lemon’s sister, the death of Kiowa, and Ted Lavender’s method of relaxation.
The first memory is when Rat Kiley wrote to Curt Lemon’s sister. Rat wanted to inform her of his death and tell her how much of a good person he was. Rat Kiley says, “The dumb cooze never writes back (pg 69)”. Curt Lemon was his best friend and he put his heart and soul into that letter, for his sister not to respond was like adding insult to injury. This memory reveals the effects of war because while in war something so little as a response can get someone extremely upset. Ultimately the memories show war affects you mentally and emotionally. As seen later in the story, Rat had a breakdown. Isn’t it possible that the loss of a friend and no response from his sister could have helped lead to a breakdown?
The second memory that helps us understand the authors view on the effects of war was the death of the narrator’s friend Kiowa. “Later, when he came up again, there were no more screams. There was an arm and a wristwatch and part of a boot. There were bubbles were Kiowa’s head should’ve been” (pg 171). Later in the story he really shows the effect of Kiowa’s death. He said “I returned with my daughter to Vietnam, where we visited the site of Kiowa’s death….or personal grace or whatever else the land might have to offer” (pg 181). This explains the effects because after all the time that has passed since Kiowa’s death, the narrator still felt responsible for his death and still needed and wanted to be forgiven. Basically, the author is trying to say that once something happens in war, it could live with you forever.
The last memory that helps us understand the author’s view on the effects of the war was Ted Lavender’s method of relaxation. “In Vietnam for instance, Ted Lavender had a habit of popping four of five tranquilizers every morning…the drugs helped ease him through the days” (pg 230). This shows the effects of war because it helps people understand that whatever happens in war can also make you do dangerous things to yourself and others. In this case it can cause you to hurt yourself by taking drugs just to help get through the day. The most significant memory was the visit to the site of Kiowa’s death because it was a excellent example of how one thing could stay in your mind for a long time.
I have to disagree with Jasmin. I feel that the story greatly affected us as readers. It wasn’t just that he told us and explained to us their deaths but he also told us how those deaths affected the people around them at the particular moment and once the war was over. Well, I know it affected me, it made me think, if I’m going to be messed up that much to the point that I’m going to write a letter to a dead friend’s sister, take drugs, or have to deal with the fact the someone died because of me then I never want to go to war.
In “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the narrator has certain memories that he restates throughout the novel, and can’t seem to forget. One of those memories is when Ted Lavender died. He first mentions Ted Lavender’s death on page 2. “ Ted Lavender, who was scared carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April.” In war, or even in everyday life, when you lose someone that was close to you, you always find a way to make it your fault that they’re dead. In this case, Lt. Jimmy Cross made it seem that he was responsible for Ted Lavender’s death. “ Ted Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and could not stop thinking about her.”(p.7)
Another memory is Kiowa dying. When Kiowa died, there were people who could have been held accountable for it. Whose fault was it? Was it Lt. Jimmy Cross for settling in an unsafe place, Norman Bowker for not sticking through the smell and letting him sink in the muck, or the boy who turned on his flashlight and might have been the cause of the ambush? This memory clearly shows the author’s view on the effects of war. As stated earlier, when someone dies, it is expected for it to be someone’s fault, when sometimes there is no one whom we could hold accountable. I completely agree with Cristina that being the cause of someone’s death is a big weight on your shoulders. In some cases it could get so bad, that the guilt of possibly being responsible for someone’s death could drive someone to suicide. In this case, war drove Norman Bowker to kill himself. “ He’d been playing basketball at the Y; after two hours, he went off for a drink of water; he used a jump rope; his friends found him hanging from a water pipe.”(p.160). This was an excerpt from a note that Norman’s mother sent to the narrator after he committed suicide. Although this memory is significant in showing the view of the narrator’s effects of war, I don’t think it’s the most significant.
The most significant memory the narrator has, is the memory of the man he killed. The narrator starts to reveal this memory on p. 124. “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole…he kept hoping and hoping, always, even when he was asleep.” He reveals this memory again in Ambush. I believe this memory is the most important, because the narrator is showing the effects the war had on him. “ it was a difficult moment, but I did what seemed right which was to say, “ Of course not,” and then to take her onto my lap and hold her for a while.” Here’s the narrator’s daughter asked him if he had ever killed anyone, and he told her that he hadn’t, when in fact he had. This shows that still after all these years that the war ended, it was still hard for him to admit the fact that he killed someone, and move on. After all this time, he still felt the guilt of the boy he killed in My Khe. It is true what Cristina said,” They had to deal with more than just carrying their weapons but also had to carry the guilt of knowing that they may have possibly put an end to someone’s life.”
Hi, this is Nancy Matias.
One of the memories that the author keeps mentioning throughout the novel is Curt Lemon's death. The author remembers "the sunlight on Lemon's face." He remembers "Curt taking that curious half step from shade into sunlight, his face suddenly brown and shining, and when his foot touched down in that instant, he must've thought it was the sunlight killing him."(84)
Another one of the memories that the author keeps remembering throughout the novel is Kiowa's death. He remembers how "Kiowa made a strange gargling noise." He remembers "Kiowa's wide eyes settling down into the scum." He remembers "Kiowa's boot sliding down." (149)
Another memory that the author keeps remembering is teh dead body of the Vietnamese soldier that he killed. He keeps remembering how he threw the grenade "without telling himself to throw it."(133) Afterwards he remembers seeing the "man's jaw in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole..."(124)
I would say that the most important memory out of all of these is the memory that deals with Kiowa's death. I would say this because of the fact that Kiowa's death had a strong impact on the narrator. Throughout the novel the narrator is always saying that the field in which Kiowa sank "swallowed his best friend, his pride, his belief in himself as a man of some small dignity and courage."(184)He says that "all the illusions are gone, all the old ambitions, and hopes for myself sucked away into the mud."(185)This memory is most significant because of the fact that it shows us that the author believes that the war in a way was a disaster for him. The war had caused him to live a horrible life. It has prevented him from moving on with his life for many years. This is true, since in the novel the war has caused him to have a lot of memories which he cannot forget. I believe this memory also helps reveal a lot of the themes that are present throughout the novel. In the novel the author seems to make the war something that has only caused him to experience grudges and to lose confidence in himself. Through this novel we see the presence of themes such as death, guilt, sense of loss, revenge, etc. These are themes the author has come across with and this helps inforce this idea since the field can be compared to war therefore making it seem as if though the war has been a bad thing for the narrator. It has robbed him of himself and has left him with memories of what used to be and can no longer be.
I agree with desiree. I definetely believe that the memory about the little girl is significant. I think it was really weird that he chose to mention this memory. I think it was vey significant yet it's not mentioned many times. I also agree with chung tai when she says that the war memories for the narrator are unforgetful for him.
Hey, it's Nancy again.
The memory that deals with Kiowa's death is very important because of the fact that Kiowa's death robbed the narrator of many things. Like I mentioned the field in which Kiowa sank can be compared to the whole war. This is true since the narrator was dragged into this war. He didn't want to be a part of it and yet he was dragged into it. He had to join it without wanting to and it ended up causing him a lot of pain. It almost caused him his life. It caused him to lose his identity and be forced to write stories about it in order to try to find himself. Not only did it cause him to lose himself but it also caused the death of Norman Bowker, Curt Lemon, the insanity of Rat Kiley, etc. Now the author has to keep living with those memories that are tormenting him. I believe this memory really shows the effects of war that the author is trying to portray in this novel to try to get us to understand his view on war and how it is in a way a bad thing.
Sorry I just thought I should explain myself better.
In the book “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien there are many memories that the narrator repeats about Jimmy Cross’s experience in the Vietnam War. In the book it is clear to see that Jimmy can’t seem to forget about the soldiers that were killed. For the most part he is blaming himself for the murders that take place during the war. The first memory that the narrator repeats is the death of Ted Lavender in the first chapter. “Ted Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and he could not stop thinking about her.”(p7) He also goes on to say “He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war.”(p16) A second memory that is continues to occur is about the man that Jimmy killed during the war. He first recall the memory my describing how the dead soldier looked after his death. “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was a star-shaped hole…” (p126). A third memory that the narrator keeps returning to is the death of Kiowa. Kiowa was a soldier that was a part of Jimmy’s platoon. This is unforgettable because he explains “A few months after completing “In the Field,” I returned with my daughter to Vietnam, where we visited the site of Kiowa’s death.” I can tell that he can’t forget this because he said “Where I looked for signs of forgiveness or personal grace or whatever else the land might offer,” (p181)
The memory that I think is the most significant to help people understand the author’s view on the effects of the war was his second memory. This been the death of the man that he killed. As he goes on about how the soldier died. The narrator goes on to describe the life of the man he killed. As you read through the entire book the author overall view of the effects of the war was that all the individuals that were involved and killed had lives before they were send to this bloody war. I agree with Chung Tai because many of the memories that he looks back on involves a lot of innocent people being killed.
Brian Johnson Jr.
In the novel "The Things They Carried", written by Tim O'Brien the narrator tends to repeat memories. Sometimes an entire memory other times just a fraction of that memory. This technique personally to me adds a sort of traumatic tone, or maybe it's allof the coffee I've been drinking. The first memory on my list is the moments after the narrator kills an enemy soldier. The narrator graphically gives a description of his dead body. "His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone...One lay beside him, the other a few meters up the trail" (124). The second memory is the death of Curt Lemon. "I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight...and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms"(70).
I believe the most significant memory of them all is the memory of Curt Lemon's death. It reflects the entire novel's view on war. In the book war is perceived as the obvious, a useless concept that destroys simplicityand replaces it with despair. Curt Lemon's death follows this thesis. Right beforehe dies he's playing a silly game with his buddy because of his youthful inexperience. He's being simple. A simple game turns into a horrible moment. As Curt steps on the land mine he's still smiling then explodes all over the forest due to the product of war. The reality of war destroyed the simpleness of that game. It killed Curt Lemon and replaced the simpleness with despair.
Hello, my name’s Miriam Meza
In “The Things They Carried” the author Tim O’Brien repeats and returns to the same memories. The three repeated memories include: working at the pig plant, Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen, and the most important the death of Curt Lemon. Firstly O’Brien remembers how it felt working with the pigs and how it was a laborious job that it’s salary was not worth it. O’Brien remembered the stinky and annoying smell that the pigs left penetrated into his clothing. “Slowly then, without intending any long sermon, I told him about my days at the pig plant. It began as a straight recitation of the facts, but before I could stop myself I was talking about the blood clots and the water gun and how the smell had soaked into my skin and how I couldn’t was away. I went on for a long time. I told him about wild hogs swiveling in my dreams, the sounds of butchery, slaughterhouse sounds, and how I’d sometimes wake up with that greasy pig-stink in my throat.”(pg.53) O’Brien shows here how he remembers picture perfect how the stink of pig would sicken him, the sounds of the butchery and overall the entire scenery. The fact that he remembers everything perfectly is revealed by O’Brien even stating that he went on and on about it.
The second memorable moment is the events occurred with Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen. O’Brien remembers how Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen got into a fight over a missing jack knife. In which Jensen broke Strunk’s nose. “For a while it went back and forth, but Dave Jensen was much bigger and much stronger, and eventually he wrapped an arm around Strunk’s neck and pinned him down and kept hitting him on the nose. H e hit him hard. And he didn’t stop. Strunk’s nose made a sharp snapping sound, like a firecracker, but even then Jensen kept hitting him, over and over, quick stiff punches that did not miss. It took three of us to pull him off. When it was over, Strunk had to be choppered back to the rear, where he had his nose looked after, and two days later he rejoined us wearing a metal splint and lots gauze.” (pg.62) Here, O’Brien shows how he remembers exactly how Jensen and Strunk fought. Also, how Strunk’s nose was fractured and how it sounded like. O’Brien also remembers how after the severe fight between Strunk and Jensen, they became good friends and eventually Strunk died.
The third and most significant memory was the death of Curt Lemon. “His jaw in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman’s, his nose was undamaged, there was a slight tear at the lobe of one ear, his clean black hair was swept upward into a cowlick at the rear of the skull, his forehead was lightly freckled, his fingernails were clean, the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless……..One lay beside him, the other a few meters up the trail.” (pg.124-125) In these lines, O’Brien reveals how he remembers every little detail in how Lemon was placed when he died. O’Brien’s conscience was guilty since he was the cause for his death, the image remained in his memory forever. I believe this memory was the most significant because it reveals the author’s views on the effects on war. These lines reveal how the author views the war as a negative event in which not only deaths occur but also people withhold a memory which might be carried on their conscience for life.
I agree with Blanca Hernandez with her believe that killing another person during the war is one of the worst things a soldier can experience and how O’Brien takes the time to think of the man’s life and family. I also agree with her interpretation of the title of the chapter “ The Man I killed.” The title chosen for this chapter not only shows from the start that it shows guilt but also a dramatic impact in how O’Brien feels and a unforgettable memory.
Hello I’m Blanca Hernandez,
In “The Things They Carried” the author Tim O’Brien tells how he keeps remembering the things that he saw during the Vietnam War. Three memories that stood out to me was the one where Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk get into a fight: “One morning in late July, while we were out on patrol near LZ Gator, Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen got into a fistfight. It was about something stupid – a missing jackknife – but even so the fight was viscious.” (Pg. 62) Mitchell Sanders’ story about a troop that went into the mountains for a listening post operation: “Sanders made a sound in his throat, like a sigh, as if to say he didn’t care if I believed him or not. But he did care. He wanted me to feel the truth, to believe by the raw force of feeling. He seemed sad, in a way.” (Pg. 74) and finally the memory of the man he killed: “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was star-shaped hole… and the blood there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that killed him.” (Pg. 124)
The most significant memory that Tim O’Brien recalls is the memory of him killing a man during the war. I believe having to kill another person during war (even if it’s the enemy) is one of the worst things a soldier can experience. The narrator feels guilty about the young man’s death; this is especially seen with the title of the chapter: “The Man I Killed.” The whole chapter sort of puts O’Brien in the background and focuses on how O’Brien imagines the life of the boy. This also shows the narrator’s guilt because he takes the time to think of the man’s life and family. Even though he killed the young man in self-defense he can’t help but to keep remembering the life that he took. That is a memory that’ll never go away.
I agree with Dominika that the time O’Brien spent with Elroy Berdahl is significant in the narrators view of the war, but I think that the memory of him having to kill another man is more significant because it leaves a man with a huge deal of guilt and there is nothing he can do to bring back the life of the man he killed. One of the main goals of war is to kill and sure maybe O’Brien’s meeting with Berdahl changed him and his view of the war, but what can change a person’s view about war better than experiencing war itself?
In Tim O' Brien's The Things They Carried, certain memories seem to haunt and remain in the narrator's thoughts. One of those memories is of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross infatuation with "A girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College (pg.1)". In the beginning chapter, over all the things his fellow comrades carried, he frequently brought up how Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha and how with in time he felt hate towards him self because "He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war (pg. 16)". Another memory that impacted the narrator's life was his journey and visit to Tip Top Lodge. He states how "A month after graduating from Macalester College, I was drafted to fight a war I hated (pg.40)". Tim stresses how the narrator was ashamed that to avoid being drafted, he was fleeing to Canada. On his journey to Canada he decided he would go to the war-kill and maybe die-because he was embarrassed not to. On his visit to Tip Top Lodge, he claims that "The man who opened the door that day is the hero of my life (pg.48)". Finally marked in his memory was the death of the man he killed. The narrator felt guilt for killing this man and was mentally scared with the image of his corpse. As he states "He was slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole (pg.130)".
I feel that all together these three memories help us see the authors view on the effects of the war because they are in some way similar. The memory of the Tip Top Lodge might be the strongest because of the fact that it had such a strong impact on the narrator's future. O' Brien seems to show how every soldier was in some way self conscious and extremely hard on themselves. For example Lieutenant Jimmy Cross blamed Lavenders death on his love for Martha. He felt as though if he'd just focused and gave more attention to his men instead of his love life, he could have avoided Lavenders death. O' Brien allows us to see how soldiers are emotionally and mentally scared with images from the war and events such as murders. The narrator has the homicide he committed imprinted in his mind. This shows how soldiers were remorseful and that even days, months, and years later they remembered their gruesome actions clearly as if they had just occurred.
I completely agree with Dominika's comment. O' Brien wrote this book in hope that the readers would feel some sort of similarity with the issues surrounding the narrator. He was facing many obstacles including guilt and introspection which everyone faces in one point of their life. Showing the reader the narrator's experiences allows them in some way to connect with him and share similar emotions form past experiences.
-Rocio Robles
Hello I’m Erica Castillo,
In "Things They Carried" by Jim O'Brien, the narrator recalls his memories of the Vietnam War. He starts the book off by talking about Jimmy Cross. He brings in a love story about how Jimmy and his love for Martha. To show how much Jimmy loved Martha, "He pictured Martha's smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than his men, and now Ted Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and could not stop thinking about her."(Pg6-7) Men in the platoon try to take there minds off the war but sometimes this might of cause a death in the platoon. O’Brien brings Cross and Martha in the first few pages about there love, well O’Brien’s love for her.
The Narrator is recalling everyone in the platoon. He recalls his friend, Kiowa "I sit at this typewrite and stare through my words and watch Kiowa sinking into the deep muck of a field..."(pg32).This is something he will always remember because that was his good friend. Sad news was that Kiowa does not make it for the whole story. "Like murder, the boy thought. The flashlight made it happen. Dumb and dangerous. And as a result his friend Kiowa was dead." (pg170) These affects of the war shows us as the readers how you can have a friend die right before your eyes.
O'Brien talked about Norman Bowker and to me this was important because what Bowker said is true most fathers during the Vietnam War would love to see there sons with medals. Bowker said "I'll tell you something O'Brien. If I could have one wish, anything, I'd wish for my dad to write me a letter and say it's okay if I don't win any medals. That's all my old man talks about, nothing else." (pg36) Some fathers should have not kept asking for medals because this could put a lot of pressure on the soldiers and if they did not get medals they may feel that they should not be able to live past the war because the people at home might think they are not heroes. The war made an effect on men because if they did not go home with medals they felt like they were not heroes.
O'Brien had to face the sad truth that he killed someone and every time his nine year old daughter Kathleen asked did he kill anyone he faced the truth that he did. "He was a short, slender young man of about twenty. I was afraid of him-afraid of something-and as he passed me on the trail I threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him." (pg131) This had to have a huge impact in his life and he always had to think about this when some one would ask “Did you kill some one?” This makes us understand the effect of the war because he said he can’t see himself kill anyone and in the war he killed some one.
We can tell that O'Brien feels very bad for a lot of things that happen in the war and he can never forget about the things he saw in the war like when he said “For instance, I want to tell you this: twenty years ago I watched a man die on a trail near the village of My Khe. I did not kill him. But I was present, you see, and my presence was guilt enough. (pg179) This was another effect of the war because no matter what he felt bad for the damage that was happen all over him.
I agree Dominika Niemiec. The story On the Rainy River is a very important story in “The Things They Carried” Because O’Brien was thinking about going away and never coming back and not going to the war. He was in the middle he could have gone to Canada or just go back to Minnesota. It was a point where his life could of change. But O’Brien saw his future wife and kids on the shore of Minnesota so he felt the need to go back and fight the war.
This is Alicia Garcia:
The book "Things They Carried”, Tim O'Brien uses the technique of memories to help reveal his world view. A major concept in this novel is death. The narrator reveals a characters death way before the character is developed in the story. For example in the section of "Spin", the narrator says "Much of it is hard to remember. I sit at this typewriter and stare through my words and watch Kiowa sinking into the deep muck of a shit field, or Curt Lemon hanging in pieces from a tree..."(32). The re-occurrence of death in this book shows how important it is for the narrator, Tim. As agreed with most of the students, three significant memories are the death of Kiowa, Curt Lemons, and the man the narrator killed. I don't have a preference of which is more significant. I think that all three are equally significant being that they all involve the concept of life and death, which is being contrasted by all of the memories.
The death of Curt Lemons occurs first in "Spin" when the narrator remembers the death of his friends. The description of the image the narrator is " Curt Lemon steps into bright sunlight, his face brown and shining, and then he soars into a tree" (32). The first imagery of this memory makes death seem beautiful which confuses the reader at first of what to think about death in war. The memory is repeated, but only this he described it the way it actually happened: "Curt Lemon laughed and said something to Rat Kiley. Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree..."(83). The narrator didn't have much affection in Lemon's life but the tone of the narrator is gloomy and sad. The author plays around with the way he describes the memories. I never shook hands-not that- but one afternoon I climbed a tree and threw down what was left of Curt Lemon" (242). That image is very gruesome. Laura Hernandez, you made a good point when you said that an event like this can be so surreal that you would think is untrue which makes it true. Just like O'Brien's theory on true war stories.
"In the Field" shows Kiowa's death. His death was very sickening and senseless. "Like murder, the boy thought. The flashlight made it happen. Dumb and dangerous. And as a result his friend Kiowa was dead" (p. 170). This another very important and crucial death. It reveals a lot about the narrators view on war and that's why I strongly agree with munkey_luver91 when she says that the typical actions of war are killing, death, and revenge. Those memories always stick in a persons head as already shown in this novel. The narrator killed, watched death and wanted revenge.
The memory of the narrator killing someone else contributes a lot on his view of war too and how that he can't take that image off his head. "The Man I Killed" (124-130) described the narrators view on this person he killed. He feels guilty of killing a man; so guilty that he made up a background story for this man he didn't know and is suppose to be his "enemy". He says he didn't want to kill the guy, meaning he did it in accident. He feels terrible and full of guilt. He describes this man as an innocent person. Why is a man that does not want to kill in a war? Later, in page 179, the narrator admits on not killing this man. The reader believed at first the guilt he had. This confession only tells the reader how a soldier can be so traumatized by a death that he is able to feel the guilt. The memory of death can't be erased.
Death in war is senseless. Most deaths described in the book are made by minor mistakes. Death is such a strong memory that you can't help but remember no matter how tragic it is. "The bad stuff never stops happening: it lives in its own dimension, replaying itself over and over" (32).
Hi, this is Charlene Poindexter.
In the book, "The Things They Carried", the author and narrator, Tim O' Brien takes us into his past and describes the his life as a soldier during the Vietnam war. He recreates parts of the war so we can grasp the significance of his experience in the war.
There are parts of his life that haunt him, both the factual part and the nightmares that he’s created. An immense part of his memories deal with death, whether they are loved ones, soldiers, enemies, or people he has no connection with. In the chapters, "The Man I Killed" and "Ambush", he recalls events that lead up to him killing an innocent man. He has never forgiven himself for this fictionalized incident . Kiowa reassures by saying, "I'm serious. Nothing anybody could do. Come on, stop staring". "All right, let me ask you a question. You want to trade places with him? Turn it all upside down-you want that?"(pg.126). You could tell Tim had never been through anything like that and it put him in a state of shock.
Another one of his memories involved his fellow soldiers talking to deceased victims. It is only his fourth day at war describes his traumatic memory entering the war was the way the other soldiers treated the deceased. They talked to them as if they were still alive. O’ Brien called it, "greeting the dead",(pg.226). Some examples include when Dave Jensen said, "How-dee-doo",Rat Kiley said, "Gimmie five", and Henry Dobbins said, "Pleased as punch",(pg.226). At the time it made him sick. Later, however, he understood why they "greeted" the dead. He realized that their way of coping with a horrific situation to interact with them as though they were still living and breathing individuals. It helped to ease the mind, his mind.
The third and most important memory is the death of O’Brien’s close friend, Kiowa. The day his friend sank in the muck field still haunts him. He is left with guilt and sorrow. He constantly tells himself that he could have saved him, and he would have if it hadn’t for the unbearable smell. He admits that he was never the same. He says, “over the years, that coldness had never entirely disappeared”(pg.185). A piece of him died that day. Twenty years later, Tim went back with his daughter to visit the site where Kiowa died. He says, “I looked for signs of forgiveness or personal grace or whatever else the land might offer. As he looks over the field, his repressed feelings and guilt start to rise up again and he says, “This little field had swallowed so much. My best friend. My pride. My belief in myself as a man of some small dignity and courage.”(pg.184)
I agree with Nancy when she says, “through this novel we see the presence of themes such as death, guilt, sense of revenge, etc. This is true. Throughout the book, all these themes are shown. When O’ Brien mentions death, he talks about his friends that died in the war, deceased victims, and the little girl he was in love with at the age of nine. Kiowa and the man he killed are associated with his guilt, and he sought revenge after Bobby Jorgenson because he never forgave him for letting him go into shock after being shot and almost letting him die. I also agree with Candace. The story did have an impact on us in some way. O’ Brien made you think about things you probably haven’t before. He made you see things, like life, or death, in a new way. I like this about the author.
ello, this is Erik Zuniga
One thing that everyone can agree upon and has pointed out is that the common and major influence geared by Tim O'Brien in "The Things They Carried" was memories; which served as the plot device throughout most of the chapters. Most of these chapters such as Spin, Love, How to Tell a True War Story, etc etc mainly consisted of memories retelling the deaths of comrades such as Kiowa, Curt Lemon, and Lavender. In my opinion the deaths of these three soldiers seemed the most influential in providing the surreal yet terrifying reality of the Vietnam War.
The memory telling of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, which tells of his unrequited and infatuation over a girl named Martha back in his hometown where he also attended college. Jimmy often carried letters from that girl; because of his self-centered selfishness, he felt that his lack of commitment and duty to his fellow comrades led to the death of Lavender upon his platoon. Jimmy blamed himself for this and believed “he had loved Martha more than his men”, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead. Jimmy felt his guilt like a kidney stone inside his stomach throughout the rest of the war. The extreme guilt of selfishness led him to these terrors and shrouded him with self-hate.
The death/memory of Curt Lemon is another important memory which served in implanting surreal yet disturbing memories of the effects of war. The narrator tells how he climbed up a tree and threw off the remains of Curt Lemon; as the narrator described, the scene was pretty grotesque and disturbing that it make the person look back for a moment and then look away again. This effect surely and greatly gets to the reader by showing them a possibly surreal yet realistic event of war. Another memory of Curt Lemon is how Rat Kiley told his trick-or-treating story – the way he tells the story makes the reader believe that Curt would most likely survive yet traumatized, which actually led the misbelieve and death of Curt Lemon
Kiowa’s memory or death is another core memory in which the narrator describes and tells how he had died. He tells how he had watched him sink into a muck along the trenches of Song Tra Bong; seeing his corpse of his sinking body greatly affected his morality during the war. A lot of the other soldiers such as Bowker and Cross blamed themselves for the death of Kiowa, which his death was brought up a number of times. One thing for certain is that most of the memories involved deaths and that the deaths of their fallen comrades greatly affected how everyone else acted and felt during the war. People began blaming themselves and pointing fingers upon others for the deaths of Kiowa and Lavender.
As Sara has pointed out, what makes a major difference in how a story is written is the wording? If someone simple wrote “I killed him”, that sure as hell doesn’t have a great impact on the reader. Now if someone wrote “As I slowly gritted and twisted the bayonet into his guts, I took pleasure in seeing the crimson red flow out of his body, albeit I was impatient in watching him die to his demise…”, then that definitely makes the reader feel all sorts of emotions, albeit it may seem surreal and fictional. The telling of the book mixed with non-fictional and fictional elements gave the reading a detailed and negative image of what war is. It’s established what negative effects would come out of war; death.
Hi, this is Tiffany Tsang.
In "Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, I would have to agree with almost everyone that have made the entry so far. But the most that I have realized is the one where he always make a reference to Linda. Someone that he cherishes the most in the book. Another that he remembers is the death of his comrades. The dreams he had made so far has been so detailed of how much he has been with them. The details of their death etc. Finally, the last memory that made a big impact was the Vietnamese man he killed during war with a grenade he threw. He believe that that man did not have to die and was completely innocent.
All of these memories that he always had in mind ties back to war. This shows how war was definitely not the war it seems to be when you're not there. Basically, the things he see and things he wanted to do for his love ones are completely what we do not think it is. This also shows how war is a very disturbing place to be but sort of makes you realize more about life and how it is a precious thing and should not be thrown away. Overall, this novel has gave the readers a negative picture about war and leads to nothing but death.
Hi this is Robert Slay.
In the novel,"Things They Carried", I have to agree with almost everyone that the narrator repeats certain important memories, they memories seemed to affect his life in some sort of way. When the narrator repeats these stories they often are repeated each time with different details revealed in each new account of the event.
For example, in the beginning of novel, the reader is introduced to the Character "Ted Lavender", the memory the narrator keeps being up is Ted's untimely death. On page 3, and page 8, Ted Lavender is brought up in the text following by the phrase "until he was shot", now what is interesting is that we don't actually know if he is dead until the narrator explains to us how he was shot, and explicitly states to us that he is dead (pg.12-13). This is further evident that the narrator is in the process of remembrance, he only remembers certain details of a event, when his remembrance is triggered further along throughout the story.
Another memory that was evidently explained more than once was on page 68, when Rat's friend painted his body for the Halloween celebration, this story is told again on page 86, only the narrator explains more of the actual ordeal than on page 68, the narrator does something more interesting, he explains the effects of Halloween trick, which i found interesting.
The third and most repeated memory i noticed was the "death of Curt Lemon" on page 69, it seems as though the narrator explains the cause of the explosion, it seems as though the narrator was "setting the scene" for Curt Lemon's Death, he doesn't explicitly state that Curt Lemon is dead, we (the reader) are lead to believe that something happened to him since he is sucked into light and trees, it remains confusing to us but as we continue to read on page 78, the narrator tells us what exactly happen to Curt Lemon, he even goes on so far as to say that he steps on a grenade, so we know he is dead. On page 81, the narrator explains to us the after effects of the explosion and in graphic detail in he reveals details about Curt Lemon's, telling us about his various body parts, and skin laying all around the ground, in a very vicious manner.
Jamie Chan
In The Things That They Carried by Tim O’ Brien mostly what I see occurring is that deaths of innocent lives are constantly repeated. Such as the young man that gotten blown up in the field s because they thought he could have harmed them. As soldiers they had had to be fully aware of what they were doing. To Be on top of their game is shown to be heartless. Since they are soldiers they had the responsibilities to keep everyone that’s on their side safe. Although that was their main focus it came with consequences.
The feeling off guilt keeps on occurring because these men were still young and some were forced so in reality they had little or not pride at all in what they were doing. It may not be their fault but what also occurs is that the little stupid things that they do always seems to lead to someone loosing someone or someone dying. They are still very naive to the point that they can't over come or acknowledge that they can't stop everyone from dying.
The thing that worries the narrator is that he wouldn't know how to explain to his daughter or his father about the war showing their built pride after the war.
JULiE MEi :)
In "The Things They Carred" by Tim O'Brien, the narrator seems to restate and relive the memories that happened during the war. He sometimes write it in sentences about what happened afterwards, and then writing it in paragraphs explaining what happens before. One of the three memories he kept repeating is about the man he killed. "Then later he said, "Tim, it's a war. The guy wasn't Heidi--he had a weapon, right? It's a tough thing, for sure, but you got to cut that staring."(pg.126)" He then continues telling us the story of what happened before he killed the man when his nine year old daughter, Kathleen, asked if he ever killed anyone. "He was a short, slender young man of about twenty. I was afraid of him--afraid of something--and as he passed me on the trail I threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him."(pg. 131) Another repetitive memory was how Curt Lemon died. "There was a noise, I suppose, which must've been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight. His face was suddenly brown and shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms." (page 70) and "The parts were just hanging there, so Dave Jensen and I were ordered to shinny up and peel him off. I remember the the white bone of an arm. I remember pieces of skin and something wet and yellow that must've been the intestines. The gore was horrible, and stays with me." (page 83). Another one of the three memories Tim O'Brien recalls is how his friend Kiowa died. He also mentions a few time how he's a forty year old man, a writer, still writing about war stories. "I sit at this typewriter and stare through my words and watch Kiowa sinking deep into the deep muck of a shit field..." (page 32) and "A few months after completing "In the Field," I returned with my daughter to Vietnam, where we visited the site of Kiowa's Death, and where I looked for signs of forgiveness or personal grace or whatever else the land might offer." (page 181)
The most significant memory that helps us understand the effects and view of the war is the way he describes the people in the war. He mentions the things they carried--both tangible and intangible--the friends he made, and how he was one of the soldiers that lived through the war. He tells the story of what was going through his mind when he was drafted to go to war; whether he liked it or not. He tells us what happened to the people around him during the war, and what things he had to do to live through the war. Tim O'Brien's technique in writing "The Things They Carried" brings us to view and feel the way he felt during the war. The way he tells the story of Ted Lavender, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, Bob (also known as Rat) Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Mark Fossie, and many others he wrote in great details help us understand how he felt during and after the war. He describes it in such detail that it takes us through the adventures and events that he went through. He talked about pride, sanity, and morals. He sometimes talk about how somebody dies and then goes back to tell us the real story of how that person died. I think what's most important is that he was actually in the war writing down his feelings and memories he sometimes remember.
I agree with Dominika. The purpose of the story is to make it as realistic as possible, whether the stories he told are true or untrue. Tim O'Brien also writes, "A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done" (page 68) and "In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen become its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed...The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed."
JULiE MEi :)
In "The Things They Carred" by Tim O'Brien, the narrator seems to restate and relive the memories that happened during the war. He sometimes write it in sentences about what happened afterwards, and then writing it in paragraphs explaining what happens before. One of the three memories he kept repeating is about the man he killed. "Then later he said, "Tim, it's a war. The guy wasn't Heidi--he had a weapon, right? It's a tough thing, for sure, but you got to cut that staring."(pg.126)" He then continues telling us the story of what happened before he killed the man when his nine year old daughter, Kathleen, asked if he ever killed anyone. "He was a short, slender young man of about twenty. I was afraid of him--afraid of something--and as he passed me on the trail I threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him."(pg. 131) Another repetitive memory was how Curt Lemon died. "There was a noise, I suppose, which must've been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight. His face was suddenly brown and shining. A handsome kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms." (page 70) and "The parts were just hanging there, so Dave Jensen and I were ordered to shinny up and peel him off. I remember the the white bone of an arm. I remember pieces of skin and something wet and yellow that must've been the intestines. The gore was horrible, and stays with me." (page 83). Another one of the three memories Tim O'Brien recalls is how his friend Kiowa died. He also mentions a few time how he's a forty year old man, a writer, still writing about war stories. "I sit at this typewriter and stare through my words and watch Kiowa sinking deep into the deep muck of a shit field..." (page 32) and "A few months after completing "In the Field," I returned with my daughter to Vietnam, where we visited the site of Kiowa's Death, and where I looked for signs of forgiveness or personal grace or whatever else the land might offer." (page 181)
The most significant memory that helps us understand the effects and view of the war is the way he describes the people in the war. He mentions the things they carried--both tangible and intangible--the friends he made, and how he was one of the soldiers that lived through the war. He tells the story of what was going through his mind when he was drafted to go to war; whether he liked it or not. He tells us what happened to the people around him during the war, and what things he had to do to live through the war. Tim O'Brien's technique in writing "The Things They Carried" brings us to view and feel the way he felt during the war. The way he tells the story of Ted Lavender, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, Bob (also known as Rat) Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Mark Fossie, and many others he wrote in great details help us understand how he felt during and after the war. He describes it in such detail that it takes us through the adventures and events that he went through. He talked about pride, sanity, and morals. He sometimes talk about how somebody dies and then goes back to tell us the real story of how that person died. I think what's most important is that he was actually in the war writing down his feelings and memories he sometimes remember.
I agree with Dominika. The purpose of the story is to make it as realistic as possible, whether the stories he told are true or untrue. Tim O'Brien also writes, "A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done" (page 68) and "In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen become its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed...The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed."
This is Ernesto Gomez
In "The Things They Carried" By Jim O'Brien, the narrator, being O'Brien himself, keeps restating the same memories over and over again. The first memory I noticed was that the narrator keeps mentioning the time before Lavender's Death. He goes back to this memory by always saying, "Until he was shot," and then continues with something about Lavender, "Ted Lavender carried the star light scope..."(9)
Another memory that keeps popping out is Jimmy Cross's Love for Martha. These memories extend to the story called "Love." O'Brien says that Jimmy said, "It doesn't matter...I love her."(29) Another memory is O'Brien's struggle when it comes to decision making. "I remember staring at the old man, then at my hands, then at Canada...twenty yards. I could've done it. I could've jumped out and started swimming for my life...I felt a terrible squeezing pressure."
I think that the memories of the time before Lavender's Death are the most significant to give us the views of war. It shows that as long as things are fine, everybody is happy. Then, when something tragic happens, such as Lavender's death, people tend to feel guilty of what happened. I think that the felling of war, the feeling of killing, the feeling of those near to you dying, is made real by the author through Lavender's death and the time before his death.
I chose this memory because it realates to the rest of the novel. Death of others keeps coming up, such as Kiowa's and Curt's deaths.
I agree with Dominika in that the stories are made as realistic as possible. The stories make you feel as you are there experiecing the events. For example O'Brien says, "And i want you to feel it...You're at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and there's a hard squeezing pressure in your chest. What would you do?" (56) O'Brien makes you feel like if you were him yourself.
Hello, this is nina.
I'm not officially invited to this blog >.< but I'm going to try posting.
In "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, I believe that one of the three most significant memories that the narrator can't forget was his first job at the meatpacking factory, as 'Declotter' - "At one end was a trigger; at the muzzle end was a small nozzle and a steel roller brush. As a carcass passed by, you'd lean forward and swing the gun up against the clots and squeeze the trigger, all in one motion, and the brush would whirl and water would come shooting out and you'd hear a quick splattering sound as the clots dissolved into a fine red mist... Even after a hot bath, scrubbing hard, the stink was always there... feeling sorry for myself, thinking about the war and the pig factory and how my life seemed to be collapsing towards slaughter. I felt paralyzed." (pg. 43) This was revisited by Elroy when he asked about his last job, "I told him about my days at the pig plant. It began as a straight recitation of the facts, but before I could stop myself I was talking about the blood clots and the water gun and how the smell had soaked into my skin and how I couldn't wash it away. I went on for a long time. I told him about wild hogs squealing in my dreams , the sounds of butchery, slaughterhouse sounds, and how I'd sometimes wake up with a greasy pig-stink in my throat." (pg. 53) I believe the 'stink' from the slaughter of pigs is a metaphor for guilt in how he feels he can't escape it no matter what. I think by this memory, the narrator is trying to show us war is inevitable and it's everywhere. You can't get rid of it, and especially the guilt you feel from it.
The second memory that the narrator mentions and can't forget would be the memory of Curt Lemon, "The dead guy's name was Curt Lemon. What happened was, we crossed a muddy river and marched west into the mountains, and on the third day we took a break along a trail junction in deep jungle. Right away, Lemon and Rat Kiley started goofing. They didn't understand about the spookiness. They were kids; they just didn't know. A nature hike, they thought, not even a war, so they went off into the shade of some giant trees-- quadruple canopy, no sunlight at all-- and they were giggling and calling each other yellow mother and playing a silly game they invented... It's hard to tell you what happened next. They were just goofing. There was a noise, I supposed must've been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight. His face was suddenly brown and shining. A hand some kid, really. Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms." (pg.69 - 70) This was later revisited again with the torture of the baby buffalo -- "He stepped back and shot it through the right front knee. The animal did not make a sound. It went down hard, then got up again, and Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear. He shot it in the hindquarters and in the little hump at its back. He shot it twice in the flanks. It wasn't to kill; it was to hurt. (pg. 78-79) I believe that the author revisits this memory to show again, 'war is inevitable' and that it affects all, because he calls Lemon and Kiley kids who didn't know anything and how war just took so much from them. This was emphasized especially again with the choice of the baby buffalo being tortured, showing how war affects everyone and everything. The narrator also emphasizes on how much innocence is really stolen from them by war because he describes Lemon as a 'beautiful' right before his death and how the buffalo kept getting up and didn't make a sound after being shot.
The third memory, I don't know if this really counts as a memory, maybe more of a motif would be the role of women throughout the novel. Most of the women throughout the novel play the role of 'lovers' or girlfriends of the soldiers and the relationship between the soldier and the woman is ultimately portrayed negatively. The first woman that appears in the novel is Martha who in the beginning Jimmy Cross is crazy over, writing letters to her constantly while also treasuring her picture, however their relationship turns sour in the end. "They were not love letters, but Lt. Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack...he would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there. More then anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her." (pg.1) Later on page 16, his feeling towards her changes "He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war... In part, he was grieving for Ted Lavender, but mostly it was for Martha, and for himself, because she belonged to another world which was not quite real... he realized she did not love him and never would."(pg. 17). The second female in the story would be Mary Anne and the soldier of Mark Fosse. "Over the next two weeks the stuck together like a pair of high school steadies. It was almost disgusting, Rat said, they way they mooned over each other. Always holding hands, always laughing over some private joke. All they needed, he said, were a couple of matching sweaters. (pg. 95) Later on in the chapter, the relationship again goes sour, "All this was said softly, as if to herself, her voice slow and impassive. She was not trying to persuade. For a few moments she looked at Mark Fosse, who seemed to shrink away, then turned and moved back into the gloom. There was nothing to be done. Rat took Fosse's arm, helped him up, and led him outside. In the darkness there was that weird tribal music, which seemed to come from the earth itself, from the deep rain forest, and a woman's voice rising up in a language beyond translation." (pg. 112) The third female would be Sally Gustafson [Kramer] in which Norman Bowker had carried a picture of her in his wallet. "most of Norman Bowker's other friends were living in Des Moines or Sioux City, or going to school somewhere, or holding down jobs. The high school girls were mostly gone or married.... Kramer was one who married." (pg. 139) And constantly through out the chapter he imagines being with her in the car or telling her about his time trick or him almost winning the silver star, but he doesn't because "She looked happy. She had her house and her new husband, and there was really nothing he could say to her." (pg. 139) The last female would be the narrator's first crush, Linda. "When Linda was nine then, as I was, but we were in love. And it was real... it's tempting to dismiss it as a crush, an infatuation of childhood, but I know for a fact that what we felt for each other was as deep and and rich as love can ever get." (pg. 228) and again, the relationship goes sour when Linda dies of the brain tumor. This again shows how war has stolen something precious from each of them, love. For Linda, I wouldn't exactly say it was war, but death, however I think by including the story of Linda, the author is emphasizing death overall is inevitable, because death is a result of war.
By revisiting those three memories, the narrator is trying to show the audience that both war and death is inevitable, in which it affects all no matter what.
In the novel, "The Things They Carried" by Jim O'Brien, the narrator does repeat certain memories so much that you really just don't forget about them. Usually, in any other novel, you would forget details like these, but since the narrator repeats them, you can't forget. One memory is about his buddy, Kiowa. "He pictured Kiowa's face. They'd been close buddies, the tightest, and rememberd how last night they had huddled together under their ponchos, the rain cold and steady...". It continues with the narrator turning on the flashlight, with the guilt of knowing it was a bad idea.
Another memory was about himself after the war. "It's time to be blunt. I'm forty-three years old, true, and I'm a writer now, and a long time ago I walked thorugh Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier. Almost everything else is invented". Or "But this too is true: stories can save us. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda alive. And Ted Lavender, too, and Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed..."
One last one has to do with Ted Lavender. "There is an illusion of aliveness. In Vietnam, for instance, Ted Lavender had a habit of popping four or five tranquilizers every morning. It was his way of dealing/coping..."
I believe the most important memory is the ones after the war, or the after effects. Like him telling stories to make himself feel betetr, as if the people are still alive. It kind of relates with the Ted Lavender memory because while he did the tranquilizers to be okay, or to cope, the narrator made up stories, exaggerated them, and told them over and over to keep his war buddies alive in his head. He just couldn't deal with it any other way. I agree with whoever said something about the narrator mentioning that the stories didn't have to be completely true; nomatter how exaggerated they were, they still showed the person's true feelings...as if it was worse than it looked or how it had been told. The crazy stories are a way for us to see how the narrator really feels...he had to stretch the truth in order to convey himself to us.
//Erika Marquez//
In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien the most significant and important memory that I think affects all the characters and the author himself is located on page 32. “I remember Norman Bowker and Henry Dobbins playing checkers every evening before dark. There was something restful about it, something orderly and reassuring. There were red checkers and black checkers. The playing field was laid out in a strict grid, no tunnels or mountains or jungles. You knew where you stood. You knew the score. The pieces were on the board, the enemy was visible, you could watch the tactics unfolding into larger strategies. There was a winner and a looser. There were rules.” I say this because war was something that was unpredictable and at one point there is never a rule or a clear line that defines right from wrong in Vietnam. That line is blurred causing inner conflict and the loss of reassurance. Many of the people participating in the war were teens or in their early 20’s. It made no difference that they were young and unable to grasp a concept as complicated as war. Also the killing of the puppy that Lavender adopted is further proof that the men have lost their innocence and use their age as an excuse to do something horrible. The fact that at least something as simple as a board games is all they had to hold on to for rules is proof that at least one of the major themes through out the book was fear; fear that what they were doing was not to have a winning or loosing side but to just be there. Almost a test of will.
Another important memory that replayed several times through out the book is the death of Curt Lemon. The image is replayed over five times in the novel. I think the fact that we know because of the foreshadowing in the chapter “Spin” that the death of Curt was inevitable it was sort of preparing the reader. Maybe it is also used as a technique that all the soldiers knew that the person standing next to them could die with a slight change in their footing or a sudden change of light. So we as readers don’t get to experience the death of Curt completely because it is given to us in fragments and small details. But this is also how the writer has experienced it. As said on page 71. “The angles of vision are skewed. When a guy dies, like Curt Lemon, you look away and then look back for a moment and then look away again. The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.”The death of Curt Lemon not only impacted the writer but it changed his view on certain things like his story telling. He doesn’t just write a story as a relief from himself and the haunting experiences that he goes through; but he writes so that we feel his boredom, shock, and thoughts from his perspective as well as his regiments. He doesn’t just use the death of Curt to show that death was present everywhere in Vietnam but to tell us that there were no rules. They could be asleep or laughing and that could be the end of them. Because there wasn’t any innocence in anything anymore it was taken from them in Vietnam; because Vietnam wasn’t a rule or a place where they stayed it was that place that controlled them and their deaths.
The last image that is replayed in the novel is the man he killed. On page 126 “The upper lip and gum and teeth were gone. The man’s head was cocked at a wrong angle, as if loose at the neck, and the neck was wet with blood.” I think that the death of this man was the reason that the writer choose to write the novel. He not only chooses to write it for his daughter who had asked him of Vietnam but, to tell people of the emptiness there was. That because of the blurred right and wrong people didn’t see this death as significant as he did. They saw it as a means of surviving. So this affects the tone and since we can see the thoughts of the writer of the story it feels like it’s something that will forever remain; like the death of his friends and the death of the man.
I agree with Brain Johnson that something simple can be turned into a horrible moment within seconds in the story.
Alexandra Castro..
In "The Things They Carried" there are three memories Tim O'Brien keeps restating..
1.) Martha, the women Lt. Jimmmy Cross is obessed with.
2.) Curt Lemon.
3.) The man he killed.
In the opening chapter O'Brien begins by introducing LT. Jimmy Cross: which i think is significant. He is described as carrying a picture of Martha playing volleyball p.4. It is evident that he is obessed with her,as he on p,8 visualized her at the shoreline and describes how the he thinks she found that pebble.. " he wondered.. "he imagined bare feet . Martha was a poest withe the poet's sensibilities , and her feet would be brown and bare." He is very detailed in his visions. I think that there is significance to Cross opening the chapter. Throughout the novel O'brien is very detail and visual with his memory like its something he cant let go. obviously.. He starts off with another character that share the same problem; that he can't accept the truth and more on..
Instead Cross constantly fantasized of Martha.In the second chapter again,O'brien recounts Cross's love for Martha as he shares that Cross meet up with her again.. He again recieves a picture from her .. as if he will never move on from her.. because even she won't let him forget..
even o'brien daughter says he should write stories of a Shetland pony.. he's always writhing war stories..
and this leads me to my next piece of evidence..
Curt Lemon..
He describes his death and the events that lead up to it in complete detail.. almost painting
a picture for the reader so that we too don't forget his death..
page 70 "Sharp gray eyes, lean and narrow-waisted, and when he died it was almost beautifull, the way the sunlight cme around him and lifted him up and sucked him high intoa tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms."
Later on page78-79 O'brien describes Rat killing a baby water buffalo. He reveals how he thinks Rat let out his anger on the water buffalo for Curt's Death.. He then recalls the letter Rat wrote to Curt's sister even though he had already spoken about it..Inthe next Chapter entitled Dentist..
(Even He though O'brien had already mentioned Curt death) he still goes back in time to describe Curt's experience with the dentist..
Curt's death is significan because it show how good people like curt Lemon are caught up in situations that should have never been in there possesion..
the man O'brien killed is the third memory.. because on page 40 -41 he says he wasn't meant to right in the war since he was clueless when it came to combat.thus he was put in a position he didn't want to be in just like when he killed that man.. He also describes that event vivdly to reveal the heartbeaking side to the war.. how event seem to be capture slowly as if time was the war and not the violence itself.. time went by so slowly they couldn't begin the healing pocess.
Therefore i agree with roro with the idea that the author is trying to reaveal that soldiers are scarred with imagesfrom the war because O'brien seems to describe them so vividly. the Martha memory i agree with roro is also important.
hello, this is justyna ciezobka..
-I think that everyone's comments are right here. There are many memories that Tim O'Brien recalls in his story of "The Things They Carried". I would agree with Dominika as well as the other bloggers that we are taken back to the times of the Vietnam War by the narrator. He tells us of how life looked like during the war, on the front lines. It wasn't easy for them at all...the soldiers had to be away from their families, facing death each day and so on. We also see what affect the war had on soldiers to be..when there's a scene when one of the characters gets a draft letter.."The draft letter came on June 17, 1968...I remember opening up the letter, scanning the first few lines, feeling the bloodgo thick behind my eyes......I was no soldier. I hated Boy Scouts. I hated camping out. ... The sight of blood made me queasy, and i couldn't tolerate authority.."(pg.41) Probably he wasn't the only one to think this way...he wasn't in favor of the war and felt like the ones who were would be the ones to go fight: "If you support the war, if you think it's worth the price, that's fine, but you have to put your own precious fluids on line." There are three specific memories that Tim keeps on recalling. I specifically agree with Gina on which three memories reoccur the most. These memories do include the death of Ted Lavender, the death of the Vietnamese boy and the death of Kiowa. Additionally, another memory Tim recalls is the one of Jimmy Cross's I believe love for Martha, but it's not as significant as the others.
The first memory like I said is the death of Ted Lavender. The narrator can't forgive himself that because his mind was occupied with the love for Martha, this caused him to lose one of his men: "and now Ted Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and could not stop thinking about her" (pg 7) Another memory is about the death of the Vietnamese boy where the narrator in the chapter titled "The Man I Killed" where he descirbes what the boy looked like dead: "His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman's, his nose was undamaged, there was a slight tear at the lobe of one ear, his clean black hair was swept.."(pg 124).....and so on.....from what it comes to be I think that Kiowa killed this boy...because the small conversation between Azar and Kiowa on pg 125 comes out to show that:
"Oh, man, you fuckin' trashed the fucker," Azar said.
"You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like shredded fuckin' Wheat."
"Go away," Kiowa said.
"I'm just saying the truth. Like oatmeal."
"Go," Kiowa said.
This dialogue goes to show that Kiowa wasn't used to killing people and his conscience didn't let him be...The final memory mentioned in "The Things They Carried" is the one talking about Kiowa's death: "I sit at this typewrite and stare through my words and watch Kiowa sinking into the deep muck of a field..."(pg32).
This book is really a sorrowful picture of what war is really like. Sometimes people don't agree with it and it takes the lives of innocent people such as the Vietnamese boy as well as the soldiers such as Kiowa, Curt Lemon, Ted Lavender. War is something that affects all people whether they're directly involved in it like the soldiers or people of the country where the war is taking place and the people involved "indirectly". It's something that's best left "unlived"......
This is Thaddeus (Ted) Nowak
In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, certain moments in the book are recalled several times and serve as a writing technique for the author. Among these moments are the death of Curt Lemon, the death of the man that the narrator killed, and the death of Kiowa.
The first reoccurrence in memory that we read about is the death of Curt Lemon. We get a snap shot on page 32 of Lemon’s body parts hanging around in a tree and a mention of sunlight. The sunlight is very important as it is nearly always described when remembering Lemon’s death. “Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree,” (Pg. 83 lines 3-4). We get this image of Curt Lemon, stepping from shade into sunlight and instantly blowing up after that transition; almost as if the sunlight caused it. Lemon’s death is an almost surreal occurrence because of the sunlight effect.
Another reoccurrence in memory that we read about is how the narrator killed a young Vietnamese boy. Again we get only a “sneak preview” of it as early as page 37. The author dedicates a whole chapter to this memory so we can instantly see how important this memory is. In this memory, we get full-blown imagery of the dead young man and it is repeated many times. It becomes obvious that this image has been branded on the narrator’s mind. The following chapter shows us what was going through the narrator’s mind when the incident happened. Again we get this surreal view of the incident as we see what is in the narrator’s mind. The throwing of the grenade is an automatic response to the man walking down the trail. The narrator is haunted by this memory. “but now and then, when I’m reading a newspaper or just sitting alone in a room, I’ll look up and see the young man coming out of the morning fog,” (Pg. 134 lines 8-10).
Finally we have the reoccurring memory of Kiowa’s disappearance/death. Again we have a quick preview on page 32 of this incident. This however, is not a memory of the narrator of the first two memories, but of someone named Norman Bowker. The memory is of Bowker letting go of Kiowa in a marshy field. Bowker blames himself for Kiowa’s resulting death as he was the one who let him go. The memory haunts him for the rest of his life and may have been one of the reasons for Bowker’s decision in killing himself. We see that Bowker has a hard time describing the memory and that it is etched into his brain. One particular detail that Bowker describes is the smell of the field (which was used as a type of sewer for a village). Once again, the effect of death seems so surreal as Kiowa doesn’t simply die, but disappears.
These three memories share several things in common. The first is that they are all given a small preview early in the book before the full incident is described. It is a small heads up that the memory is important. The second is that each of these memories has to do with death. The reader gets the impression that death leaves a significant imprint on our lives. Death becomes a memory that will not leave our minds but will stay with us forever. The third is of course that they reoccur several times in the book. Each of these memories has surreal characteristic to them as well. We can see that the author is trying very hard to get across HOW exactly the event happened. Ultimately however, we cannot understand or see the event in the way that the original beholder of the memory did. We can only try to understand by reading the limited language that is used.
I like erika's mentioning of the first memory of the checker game, but I didn't remember that repeating :P
Hi my name is Jennifer. I agree with chella021 when she stated that the narrator repeats the same memories over and over to the point that you can't forget. One of the memories that he seemed to carry was his love interest Martha. In the first chapter he talks of how he carried pictures of her and how even things in nature reminded him of her. He carried letters from her and would often fantasize about her licking the envelope and her scent. (Chap.1 Pgs.1,4,8) His obsession over Martha shows the reader that every soldier needs something to take there minds off the intensity of war. Also to just relax and help ease some of the tension. The narrator talks about this separate but together quality that Martha wrote about in reference to their relationship.(Chap.1 Pg.8) This could have an overall meaning thats says even though the men in the service are separate in race and where they come from in the end they unite for a cause which is to overcome the war.In addition the narrator's reference to Ted Lavender's death kept reappearing through out the first few chapters. At first it would be casually brought up as a side story to another memory or as a building block to get the story flowing, but as you keep reading he starts saying how Ted Lavender's death was all his fault. The author states that he was trembling.(Pg.16) He also states that he felt shame and hatred for himself. His love for Martha was more than the love for his men and once he got side tracked one of his men died. He was hurt after that to the point that he burned all her pictures and letters.(Pg.23 2nd parag.)This is showing that he felt remorse. Lastly the narrators whole memory of the "Things they Carried" just showed the reader that these soldiers were regular people. They carried letters,pictures, bibles, personal nick knacks, but most of all each other. They had to be a family and feel each others pain. That showed me no matter how far you travel away from home you always need that support system. The narrators memories seemed to always come back to that point of reality.
Hi this is Ana Navarro,
In response to the question, i believe that in "The Things They Carried", the author constantly brouhgt up the death of friends, the suspense of times in "battle", and techniques each soldier had to make war a smoother experience. Now, the reason why instead of choosing three specific things i chose three general concepts was because in a sense, they all come down to one important thought, which is to make something good out what you already know is bad. I mean, in the novel, you have Tim rememering experiences and repeating this process over and over again; once you think about it, we tend to follow this process when we are trying to make sense of something that bothers our concious. Like forcing the mind to alleviate the pain that's been hunting you all your life. In the novel, I think this is exactly what Tim is trying to accomplish. As if convincing himself that he made the right choices when he very well knows that everything that happened during that period of time was unethical.
Going back to those three concepts, its visible that those were the times that Tim felt the most guilt about, as Gina had implied. He constantly remebered the deaths of friends in order to make some sense out of them...to make the moment "right". Perhaps, he thought that by remembering them, he would receive some kind of forgiveness. For instance, in the chapter, “Notes”, Tim in order to remember Norman Bowker writes a story in his memory. He probably wouldn’t have if Bowker were still alive, but because he was dead, it was a way to make sense of Bowker’s life. Likewise, with the moments of suspense, we see that he tries to remember them in order to forgive himself for his actions in those moments. For example when Tims talks about the one man he killed. Later he said, "Even now I haven't finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, others I dont." I feel, this quote "squeezes the juice" out of the whole novel because in a sense, it implies how Tim goes through this "remembering process" to, like a said before, make something good out of what he already knows is bad. Seemingly, the same thing happens when the author gives us a picture of what these soldiers did to make war a smoother experiece. For example, he depicts Ted as a guy who takes tranquilizers in order to calm himself up, Kiowa carried a bible, and others just came up with some jokes and again, all for the sake of alleviating the pain the war had caused on them.
Spencer Harstead:
This book was built around memories of the war. What O’brien remembered seemed to be the one thing that he carried with him throughout the book. Some memories were repeated; some were just in depth.
In my opinion, the most important memory occurs early in the book. In the chapter, On The Rainy River, O’brien discusses a memory that he never shared with anyone before. This reveals the much repeated emotion of shame, which shows up throughout the rest of the book. He was ashamed to run away from the war, but also could not rid himself of a fear of death. On page 52 he mentions all the shame that came from approaching the Rainy River (bordered Canada). “What it came down to, stupidly, was a sense of shame.” He even seemed ashamed of having this shame. He was ashamed of his inability to act morally. All he could do was cry. This memory is so important because it reveals why he decided to go to war; because he was embarrassed not to.
Another important memory is that of the man that O’brien killed. As Joanna mentioned, this event impacted him so much that he had created a story for the man. I agree that you wouldn’t do that unless you cared a lot. On page 31, he tells the story in a simple manner, “…I threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him.” However, he could not stop the story there. He had to remember the entire event descriptively. Kiowa had to keep telling him to stop staring at the corpse. There’s no doubt that he felt horrible about killing the man especially since he mentions that the grenade wasn’t even meant to kill him, just to make him go away. (Page 133) This is another reoccurrence of shame, even if it is not implicitly mentioned.
Another obviously important memory is that of the death of Kiowa, which was mentioned throughout the book. O’brien describes Kiowa’s death as a sort of eerie disappearance. “There were bubbles where Kiowa’s head should’ve been.” (Page 149)
Hola! I’m Miriam Orrego:
Memory phases happen a lot in the book “The Things They Carried.” Tim O’Brien first begins by talking about his comrades and the scenes that come back to him. He has a very clear image of the war and the images he has are all negative. In the book he always looks back to Martha, a girl back from where he was from; here we see that it’s a way of escapism. The author putting this in the book shows how bad the war is that in order to forget it they picture things that are not true and more of fantasies.
One example of a memory that the author uses in order to explain his views on the effects of war is the death and repetition of Ted Lavender. He starts in the beginning to explain all the people that he’s in combat in. One that he really pointed out was Ted Lavender. His description of him was of an amateur, even though they all were, that was very scared and seemed like a wimp. “Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April.” Here he puts in how the weakest are in the world and the fear that the war puts in the people.
Another example of the author’s view is the explanation of the people and their happiness of not being dead. Feeling lucky and rather have somebody else die. ”They felt bad for Kiowa. But they also felt a kind of giddiness, a secret joy, because they were alive, and because even the rain was preferable to being sucked under a shit field, and because it was all a matter of luck and happenstance.” Soldiers in war start to have a different mentality. He views this and it is all bad thoughts. It sucks when certain course of events lead people to think a different way. The author here shows how sometimes your mind is like at the edge of a cliff and what is there to do then think of hoping there is another person in front of you. It’s what war makes you think, again another negative connotation.
Last memory is the death of Kiowa and the remorse of the young soldier, the regret of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, and the anger of the rest of the soldiers. “An officer expressing an officer’s condolences. No apologies were necessary, because in fact it was one of those freak things, and the war was full of freaks, and nothing could ever change it anyway. Which was the truth, he thought. The exact truth.” In war there are so many blames and the author here shows how in war there is always the pointing of fingers. It’s always somebody’s fault. There is loss and a major amount of it.
I agree with Chung Tai they explain that Tim O'Brien keeps remembering these happenings and it keeps on bothering him because it is something that is the back of his mind and keeps blaming himself for it. He sees that it all affects him and the rest of his comrades his fear is that all the time he is going to keep doing mistakes just like the death of Kiowa and the death of Curt Lemon. Like in page 32 e talks how it's hard to remember and hard to think about it. he blames himself and it changed his life and now it’s something he worries at an age of forty-three.
Hi, this is Anali Negrete
In the novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the narrator repeats and returns to the same memories, sometimes with whole stories and other times with just a paragraph or line. One of these memories is the time he spent with the old man, Elroy Berdhal, at the Tip Top Lodge. However, the significant part about this memory is when he is in the boat not that far from Canada. He said, “I remember staring at the old man, then at my hands, then at Canada …What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about you family and your childhood and your dreams and all you’re leaving behind? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?” (pg. 56).
Another memory that’s important in this book is the death of Curt Lemon. O’Brien repeats this memory several times, “In the mountains that day, I watched Lemon turned sideways. He laughed and said something to Rat Kiley. Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree" (pg.83).
Finally, O’Brien also often repeats the death of the man he killed. He says, “He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay down with one leg beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole” (pg. 130). This description of the man he killed is repeated all throughout the chapter. This reveals how much in shock and in pain O’Brien must have been because even now he can still remember all the details.
I think that O’Brien’s memory of Elroy Berdhal is necessary in helping us understand the author’s view on the effects of war. I agree with Dominika’s comment about how this memory is significant. I think so because it’s a crucial part of the book where the narrator tells the reader exactly how he feels before the war and how he might feel during and after the war. The emotions he feels when he finds out that he’s enlisted to go to war are probably the same emotions other soldiers felt. We know for a fact that O’Brien did not want to go to the war but still goes because of the fear of embarrassment, “Even in my imagination, the shore just twenty yards away, I couldn’t make myself be brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that’s all it was. And right then I submitted” (pg. 59). This is what pushes him to go to war.
I agree with Dominika that during this time O’Brien learns that he cannot change all the things he wants to change. Therefore, he must accept them. He must learn to live with them, just like he has to live with those memories of his friends getting killed or even the boy he killed. I think that’s what O’Brien is trying to tell us, that a soldier has to live with the memories of the war. Even before the war begins, an enlisted soldier sort of knows what to expect, just like O’Brien did. O’Brien later on in the novel says, “thinking about the coming day and how we would cross the river and march west into the mountains, all the ways I might die, all the things I do not understand” (pg.76). Obviously during the war, O’Brien still has the constant fear of dying. The fear of death is something all soldiers carry on their back. However, because of embarrassment some men are afraid to show it.
I also agree with everyone that O’Brien repeats all those memories with lots of details that it makes it hard not to forget them. I think he purposely did this to show us that when one has been through war, those memories will never go away no matter how much one wants them to. They will stick to them for as long as they live because they have become part of their own lives.
Magaly Franco. =]
Tim O'Brien reveals in his novel, "The Things They Carried," that the effects of war can transform any young man into a middle-age man full of guilt and confusion who will struggle for the rest of his life attempting to distinguish reality from their imagination while simultaneously trying to make sense of it. O’Brien accomplishes this through his technique of repeated memories which composes the book instead of an actual plot. This technique also makes the reader feel as if they are actually having a conversation with an old war veteran. The mixture of stories and the repetition of the memories make it appear as if O’Brien, the character, is trying to recollect his memories while speaking to us since whenever he repeats a memory he seems to add new information or offer a different explanation. This is different to how most books are written because it does not appear to have been planned out before it was written and instead makes it appear more as O’Brien is simply having a conversation and just trying to share his experience with us. Usually when people think of an old war veteran who continues to tell war stories, they imagine a man who can not let go of his past. People also see others who can not let go of their past as someone who has become traumatized and/or holds a mixture of feelings towards what happened, which usually involves guilt and regrets, and in many situations can suffer some confusion because of it so they are now struggling to understand it. Repetition of the same situations continuously also shows some sign of traumatization. Tim O’Brien has also written several war books which also show how hard it is for him to let go of his past. This leads me to agree with Brian Johnson Jr., the narrator does resemble a traumatic tone. From the technique in general, I can already imagine what kind of character the protagonist, Tim O’Brien has. However, the stories he has remembered and chosen to repeat emphasize this personality not just in him, but in other characters as well. Three important memories O’Brien continuously repeats are Ted Lavender’s, Curt Lemon’s, and Kiowa’s death.
Ted Lavender’s death is repeated several times throughout the whole book since the beginning. His death however appeared to impact Jimmy Cross the most. Cross was a young man who had signed up for the war only because he would get a few extra credits and his friends were doing it but in reality has no interest in it. As a result he ends up becoming a Lieutenant and is in charge of a team of men. Cross is really only a sophomore in high school, too immature to take care of a platoon, and the only thing he wants is to share his love with Martha, a girl he once dated. He is too fascinated with the letters and the good luck pebble he receives from Martha or even the simple idea of her that LT Cross looses focus on his men one day when Lee Strunk went to check a tunnel and Ted Lavender went to urinate, “Kneeling, watching the hole, he tried to concentrate on Lee Strunk and the war, all the dangers, but his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered,” (p. 11). It was then that “Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing, (p. 12). This caused Jimmy Cross to feel guilty because “He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war, (p. 16) and so “Jimmy Cross led his men into the village of Than Khe. They burned everything,” (p. 16) which he probably thought would ease his guilt. Jimmy Cross later reveals to O’Brien his guilt when he goes to visit him years after the war, “Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he’d never forgiven himself for Lavender’s death. It was something that would never go away, he said quietly,” (p. 27). Cross went from an immature sophomore in college who was learning about love to a man who fought in a war and left filled with guilt.
Curt Lemon’s death also had a huge impact on another character, Rat Kiley. Like all the other soldiers, he was young and still somewhat immature. He would spend his time playing games with Curt Lemon and they grew to be best friends. One day they were playing catch with a grenade. As they were playing, “Curt Lemon stepped on a booby-trapped 105 round,” (p. 78) and he blew up into a tree. Rat Kiley was so upset he later tortured a baby water buffalo, “He shot it twice in the flanks. It wasn’t to kill; it was to hurt,” (pp. 78-79) and when he was done he was crying. His friend’s death hurt him tremendously and he needed something to take his anger out on. Although he never said it, I would assume Rat Kiley felt some kind of guilt since if they hadn’t been playing Curt Lemon might not have died. Kiley went from joyful guy always playing to a cruel man who would kill a baby buffalo so violently and without morals to make up for the lost of his friend.
Another important memory is the death Kiowa. Kiowa’s death affects our protagonist, Tim O’Brien the most. LT Cross had his men camp out in a shit field one night and later it started to rain. O’Brien decides to show Kiowa his girlfriend’s picture and therefore has to use a flashlight but the light attracted attention and soon enough a mortar round hit by Kiowa. Kiowa started to sink in the muck and O’Brien tried to pull him out but the smell was too strong. I can tell this strongly impacted O’Brien because he first tried telling the story by saying it happened to Norman Bowker but later admitted it happened to him, “Norman did not experience a failure of nerve that night. He did not freeze up or loose the Silver Star for valor. That part of the story is my own,” (p. 161). Years after the war O’Brien still feels so guilty over Kiowa’s death that he decided to return to where he died hoping that he could find something to ease his mind, “I returned with my daughter to Vietnam, where we visited the site of Kiowa’s death, and where I looked for signs of forgiveness or personal grace or whatever else the land might offer,” (p. 181). Tim O’Brien joins the war avoiding the shame of running away from the war as well as the guilt of letting down his family but instead leaves the war with even heavier burdens.
In the end all the surviving men are forced to return home carrying guilt from those who have died and confused as to what is forgivable.
Hi this is Steven Gallardo,
In "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, the narrator of the story is remembering past memories. The narrator shares more memories as the story progresses. i agree with everyone else that it keeps repeating and reinstating everything to remind us that some things just dont go away. The war has a part in soldiers lives that can change them forever. Some memories stay with you even when you're at the height of the battle, that can keep you alive. I also agree with most of everyone that some memories in the story are incredibly detailed that can seem very realistic to the reader and it is key that description is told in the most important of topics especially in memories because some are hard to make out because something might be missing. The deaths of Curt and Lemon make a difference because it explains how death can have an effect on people. It is very hard sometimes for people and coping with it is the hardest thing if they are close so this explains a lot about the character.
Hi, my name is Kerri Carnahan.
Tim Obrien's "The Things They Carried" is a series of memory stories from Vietnam. The novel is written primarily in the first person, but O’Brien also uses the third person as either a distancing tactic or a chance to let one of his platoon-mates, such as Mitchell Sanders or Rat Kiley, tell his story. The narrator continuosly revisits many of the same accounts that he remembers from the time he served in Vietnam.
The narrator remembers, "I sit at this typewriter and stare through my words and watch Kiowa sinking into the deep muck of a shit field, or Curt Lemon hanging in pieces from a tree..."(32). He also states, "Curt Lemon steps from the shade into bright sunlight, his face brown and shining, then he soars into a tree." (32) Again, the narrator often revisits the same memories over and over.
One of his most revisted, and most significant, memories is, "He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole." (180) This quote is very effective in the text because it clearly shows that, even though the Lieutenant Cross felt so terribly about the deaths of Kiowa and Ted Lavendar, he did not hesitate to kill a man himself. It shows the reader how war is not a thoughtful process. Well, I take that back. Everything is usually mapped out, and the lieutenant tells his soldiers the plan. He tells them how they are going to go in for the kill, or how they should react under gunfire. However, when it is life or death between you and another man, your "opponent" to be exact, you don't just sit down and think about it. You shoot. You shoot because that is what they told you to do and trained you for. So, the loss of one of your men is, I agree, painstakingly traumatizing. But it's war, man. War is complete and utterly stupid violence enacted in order to "create change". Violence is not the key to solving any problems.
The author states, "They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, love, longing-these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight." The author explains the soldiers' in time of war like nothing else. They were burdened. They were scared to be killed and scared to kill. However, they had to come to the war. They would rather die a brave soldier than die an embarrased coward. This quotation, not a memory really, is the MOST significant throughout the text. I believe it is very evident as to why it is so significant. The above quoted clearly states the overall meaning of the book. The men carried, not only their supplies, but they carried intangible feelings that burdened them so heavily that they actually had mass.
That being said, I am in agreeance with Christina and Lyric. The soldiers didn't carry only ammunition, canteens, magazines, food, etc., but they also carried the burden of just being in the war. They picked up AK-47's and Silencer guns, and the choppers brought fresh food supplies every other day, somtimes three. They shot through that AK-47 and they shot through that Silencer gun. They lost that ammunition, the bullets. They ate the food and they drank the water. But the most intangible things they picked up on their journies through Vietnam could not be lost. Not ever. Those tangible feelings-guilt, regret, fear- would always burden them.
Hi, this is Stephanie Hernandez.
In "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien there are many situations in which there is repetition of events. One being, (pg. 224) "I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, and even still, right here, I keep dreaming Linda alive." Another memory that is repeated is when Tim killed a man and he recalls the physical appearance of the corpse and describes it, "His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman's, his nose was undamaged, there was a slight tear at the lobe of one ear, his clean black hair was swept upward into a cowlick at the rear of the skull, his forehead was lightly freckled, his fingernails were clean..." (pg. 124) and another repeating memory is when Curt Lemon died and was "hanging in pieces from a tree" in page 32.
The narrator's memory that I think is the most significant in helping us understand the author's view in the effects of war is the one where Tim keeps staring at the man he killed. I think it's the most significant one because the narrator keeps talking about what the boy would have done if he hadn't gone to war, or what would have become of him if he hadn't gone to war. This shows an effect that war had, not only on the narrator, but the effect that it had on the boy that died that didn't want to go to war in the first place. Going to the war caused the boy to die and with his death his future was destroyed, his future plans and his desire to keep living vanished. I think this shows how war can ruin a person physically, and mentally (it is obvious that the narrator finds it troublesome to get rid of the strong memories that he saw long ago but that he keeps replaying in his head over and over again). The most important effect of the boys death is that the life that he wanted to enjoy and live so much was taken away from him. This boy's death also hurt Tim because he couldn't stop staring at the dead boy, (126-129) and thinking about how he destroyed the chances of the boy being able to do what he wanted in life ("the man I killed would have been determined to continue his education in mathematics" pg.128). As the narrator states, this didn't really happen but the author gives us this story so that we can see the damaging effect war has on people's lives. The narrator's daughter tells him that he only writes about the war and that he can't forget it and that he should write about something else and this also shows that effect of war on a person, witnessing and going through so many things at war such as friends deaths and rotting corpses it is reasonable that it would be very hard for a person to be able to forget these images and for them to replay them in their minds. I think that the repetition also helps us to see how significant the memory is to the narrator and it allows us to share the same feelings as the narrator regarding the memories he replays in his head.
The memory of when Curt Lemon dies shows what the soldiers had to go through, witnessing the death of their friends and then having to carry pieces of their bodies. The narrator also repeates that he is fourty-three years old and a writer, and with this shows that although the narrator is a writer, the war stayed with him and will continue to do so throughout his lifetime because all he writes about is the war, what happened and specifically describes what it feels like to be a soldier in war.
This is Nancy Catalan:
The memories that keep popping up in th novel as gina sewell mentioned are the ones of kiowa's death.
Three references:
1. start: "He wished...." end at " No I could fell it...." (pg153-154)
2.Start: "Kiowa, after all,...."
End: " even here it's not easy" (pg160)
3.Start:"Kiowa was gone..."
end: "Maybe worst ever...." (pg162)
As you have notice these references were taken from three different chapters that follow one another. Each story main focus is kiowas death. The first reference is taken by the part where norman bowker blames himself for kiowa's death. Norman feels as if he has in a way betrayed kiowa. He felt he ashamed that he did not enough bravery to attempt to go in and save him. Kiowas death effects norman bowker emotions and actions. Showing the power and importance kiowa's death is. Reference two is taken from the story in which obriens clears the way norman felt and the reality of what it truly was. He states that norman was not in any way responsible for his death yet. In a way it seems that o'brien is trying to continue the ways of kiowa and he helped others soldiers rough times seem ok and helped them move on. O'brien lets out this story to bring peace to norman, although he is death,about kiowa and how he was not guilty of kiowas death. Just as kiowa told o"brien that it wasn't really his fault for that one guys death. Reference 3 shows that kiowas death was one of the worst days of the wars as he quotes. "It had been a hard night. Maybe the worst ever." out of the whole war the event of kiowas death was the most hurtful of all.
Hi, This is Jimmy He
The book “The Things They Carried” was written about the experiences and memories of Tim O’Brien during the Vietnam War. The Author uses his memories to reveal to us the true nature of war and its effects on soldiers.
In the chapter “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien reveals to us how much stuff the soldiers actually carried on their back. Also, besides the necessary equipment, soldiers like Ted Lavender abused tranquilizers and marijuana to relax him from the anxiety from the war. Later on in the chapter, it is revealed to us that Ted Lavender was shot on his way back from the bathroom. Cross also feels the guilt of causing Ted’s death since he was busy reminiscing about Martha rather than paying attention to his company. I believe what the author meant in this chapter was that the men not only carried a heavy backpack, they carried physical and emotional burdens, fear, guilt, and anguish.
In the chapter “The Man I Killed”, O’Brien vividly describes the condition of the Vietnamese Soldier outside of My Khe. Tim does not speak to his company in the entire chapter which reveals to us his sense of guilt for killing the Vietnamese Soldier. He examines the body without saying a word which also reveals to us that he is in a state of shock. The death of this Vietnamese soldier is a symbol for all the “Things They Carried”, which includes immense guilt.
In the Chapter “Speaking of Courage”, the war was over and Norman was back in the US. Norman begins to tell his father the story about how he almost won the Silver Star medal. Then the memory of Kiowa’s death reappears. What I’ve interpreted from this chapter was that the author used the death of Kiowa as a way of describing how war is not glorious and leaves you with painful experiences. When Norman was talking about medals, I believe that the author was actually trying to say the medal for committing murder and other atrocities of war were meaningless.
These three chapters shared similarities in which all three of them reveal to us the true nature of war. With that being said, I agree with Magaly on how the soldiers are forced to go through all that they went through during the Vietnam War, and had to live with that for the rest of their lives with the burden of death on their hands.
This is Kyle Trentz
In the novel "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, there are several memories that the narrator cant seem to forget; most of them concerning death.
One of them is of his friend Kiowa, who had drown in a field of shit. On page 32 of the novel the narrator says, "I sit at this typewriter and stare through my words and watch Kiowa sinking into the deep muck of a shit field."
Another memory is of the death of Curt Lemon. On pages 82-83 of the novel the narrator says, "This one wakes me up. In the mountains that day, I watched Lemon turn side-ways. He laughed and said something to rat Kiley. Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree...The gore was horrible, and stays with me."
Another memory the narrator can't seem to forget is of the Vietnamese man he killed. On page 124 the dead mans body is explained in much detail. "His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone...His rubber sandals had been blown off."
I believe that the memory that is most significant in helping us understand the narrators view on the effects of war is the memory of Curt Lemon dying. One moment Lemon was walking along with his buddies, laughing and having a good time, and then in a split second he was blown to pieces. I believe that this memory shows us the overall effect of the book because hes trying to say that there is no room for fun and games in war. It is cruel and merciless. Also, when the narrator said, "The gore was horrible, and stays with me. But what wakes me up twenty years later is Dave Jensen singing "Lemon Tree" as we threw down the parts", shows how that even after the war is over, it is still affecting his life. I believe that he chooses to bring up memories many times in this novel and to keep repeating them over and over to show that the memories are the most dangerous things about war. They are the things that make you wake up screaming in the middle of the night. They are the things you have to live with until the day you die.
I also agree with what Nancy had said. She made a really good point when she explained how the memory of Kiowas death showed the narrators views on the effects of war. I liked how she said that the war cause him to lose his identity, and that he had to write these stories in order to figure out who he was.
In "The Things They Carried" By Tim O'Brien, the narrator remembers and restates the same memories continually to remind himself of the mental baggage that he carried on a day to day basis. Some of his most reiterated memories are very vivid and detailed so that the reader can have a clear understanding of it all. One of his hoghly reiterated memories is the one about Curt Lemon and how he died. The significance of this memory is to show just how expendable life was in the war. People died so often that it seemed as though someone was always on the other end of a metaphorical play bomb and they just had to hope that it wasnt a faulty bomb.
[This is Yesica Prado ^-^]
In the novel "The Things They Carried" by Tim O’Brien, the author mainly talks about death, and the emotional impact that it had in him and others. One of the memories was Curt Lemon’s striking death. In the chapter “How to tell a true war story”, the narrator depicts his death in a surreal yet beautiful way, “On the third day, Curt Lemon stepped on a booby-trapped 105 round. He was playing catch with Rat Kiley, laughing, and then he was dead” (78). This memory reveals that many of the soldiers that fought in the war were really young and were not quiet ready to take such an immense responsibility. To them it was just a silly game and the author keeps remembering his death because it shows how the war can destroy everything, even the innocence and dreams of a young man.
This brings me to the second memory, which is Ted Lavender’s death. The author keeps remembering the death of his fellow comrade because it was so sudden, that there was no time to feel anything at all. In the first chapter “The things they carried”, the narrator describes the instant and unexpected death of Ted Lavender, he states, “Lee Strunk made a funny ghost sound, a king of moaning, yet very happy, and right then, when Strunk made that high happy moaning sound, when he went Ahhooooo, right then Ted Lavender was shot tin the head on his way back from peeing” (12). This memory demonstrates how soldiers can die so instantly and in the most inappropriate times, you must be ready to face death at any giving time. As a result, soldiers are not able to handle the pressure and just as Ted Lavender, they go through an emotional break down. Throughout the war, soldiers are only capable to feel pessimistic emotions such as distress, fury, grief and agony. The war gradually drains out all the delightful sentiments, the feelings that make us human beings such as faith, love and happiness. When Ted Lavender died and just fell flat to the floor like “cement”, it shows us how these soldiers become nothing but just hollow bodies of organs and meat.
Lastly, the third memory and the most significant of them all is the death of the young man that the author killed. In the chapter “The man I killed”, the narrator keeps remembering that gentle and innocent young man, he said, “He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole” (130). The author cannot seem to bring an end to this hunting memory of the dead young man, it somewhat seems that he regrets the incident and wishes to go back to fix things. In the chapter “Ambush”, the narrator confesses, “Even now I haven’t finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don’t” (134). The war has a traumatizing impact on the soldiers, even though the war has been over, they will always carry those memories with them for all eternity. It changes their perspective towards life and they do not go back to being the same person ever again.
I strongly agree with Ashley on how the things they carried were not just weapons, but they carried sorrow, pain, guilt and fear. The author also seems to still carry the past with him, the mistakes that he committed and how he could of made better choices. The narrator lives a life full of culpability and regret, due to his unwillingness to move on. He is not just mentally still fighting a war in Vietnam, but fighting with himself wether to carry on with his life or keep living in the past. “I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war” (61).
Hi, I am Cristina Perez =D
In the novel "the Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien repeats several memories that he has carried throughout the years of his life. One of the memories is that of the death of Kiowa. There's a whole chapter dedicated to this memory that goes by the name of "The Man I Killed" on page 124. The narrator explains how this memory which he blames himself for is always in the back of his head and how this memory has changed him. " There was a slim young man I would one day kill with a hand grenade along a red clay trail outside the village of My Khe" (p. 59) the narrator keeps on basing his stories in this particular memory. Another memory that the narrator keeps on mentioning specially at the beginning of the novel is that of the girl named Martha and the letters that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross would carry. The narrator starts mentioning her since page 1 where it says "". . .carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in
New Jersey", then he goes on about how he thought that Jimmy would love this girl more than his men. The third memory that the narrator keeps on mentioning is that of what he calls "the things they carried" in the beginning of the novel the narrator would say what each man would carry as in arms and goods (p. 2,5,7,11. . .) by the middle it would be what each man would have on their head and the narrator would start with the phrase "the things they carried. . ." This memory or phrase kept on going on as the book took shape and the narrator would remember and go back to what happened during the war and after the war.
I think the most significant memory that the narrator has that help us identify his view of the world would be his memory of Kiowa and how he remembers him. I think that the narrator bases the whole book on how he looked at things before Kiowa and the after effects his death had on him. That's why I think that his death has such an impact in the narrator's life and how he views the world. The narrator admist that he has changed his views on the world after the war and part of this thought ties back to how Kiowa's life came to and end because of him. On page 59 the narrator goes back ot how he wanted to commit suicide and the memory of Kiowa is one of his lasts in order to push him to do this but he doesn't because he says it was impossible to do. The narrator thinks that war just makes you be aware of more and more things that sometimes people are not aware of. The title of the book goes with what I am trying to defend because that memory of Kiowa's death is one of the things the narrator carries due to the war.
I agree with Erica because she is defending the same point I am trying to make of how huge Kiowa's death is in the life of the narrator. I agree with ther that this memory is a life changing one that the narrator is almost impossible to recover from. Most of the narrator's stories start with "I watched a man die. . ." and then he blames himself for what had happened which makes this such an important and key memroy for the novel.
Hi, I am Cristina Perez =D
In the novel "the Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien repeats several memories that he has carried throughout the years of his life. One of the memories is that of the death of Kiowa. There's a whole chapter dedicated to this memory that goes by the name of "The Man I Killed" on page 124. The narrator explains how this memory which he blames himself for is always in the back of his head and how this memory has changed him. " There was a slim young man I would one day kill with a hand grenade along a red clay trail outside the village of My Khe" (p. 59) the narrator keeps on basing his stories in this particular memory. Another memory that the narrator keeps on mentioning specially at the beginning of the novel is that of the girl named Martha and the letters that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross would carry. The narrator starts mentioning her since page 1 where it says "". . .carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in
New Jersey", then he goes on about how he thought that Jimmy would love this girl more than his men. The third memory that the narrator keeps on mentioning is that of what he calls "the things they carried" in the beginning of the novel the narrator would say what each man would carry as in arms and goods (p. 2,5,7,11. . .) by the middle it would be what each man would have on their head and the narrator would start with the phrase "the things they carried. . ." This memory or phrase kept on going on as the book took shape and the narrator would remember and go back to what happened during the war and after the war.
I think the most significant memory that the narrator has that help us identify his view of the world would be his memory of Kiowa and how he remembers him. I think that the narrator bases the whole book on how he looked at things before Kiowa and the after effects his death had on him. That's why I think that his death has such an impact in the narrator's life and how he views the world. The narrator admist that he has changed his views on the world after the war and part of this thought ties back to how Kiowa's life came to and end because of him. On page 59 the narrator goes back ot how he wanted to commit suicide and the memory of Kiowa is one of his lasts in order to push him to do this but he doesn't because he says it was impossible to do. The narrator thinks that war just makes you be aware of more and more things that sometimes people are not aware of. The title of the book goes with what I am trying to defend because that memory of Kiowa's death is one of the things the narrator carries due to the war.
I agree with Erica because she is defending the same point I am trying to make of how huge Kiowa's death is in the life of the narrator. I agree with ther that this memory is a life changing one that the narrator is almost impossible to recover from. Most of the narrator's stories start with "I watched a man die. . ." and then he blames himself for what had happened which makes this such an important and key memroy for the novel.
In someones life, certain memories can fade over time and some stay with us throughout our lives. The fanciful memories, we hold onto to recall in times of sadness and the negative ones are sometimes seared into our memories.
In "Things They Carried" by Jim O'Brian, the author uses this natural human trait as a device to help the reader understand the overall theme of the story. The three reoccurring memories the author used in his device were the death of Curt Lemon, When the narrator killed the man, and the death of Kiowa.
"Curt Lemon steps from behind the shade into bright sunlight, his face brown and shining, and he soars into a tree." (pg. 32 lines 7-9). That is the first memory of Curt Lemon's death, the narrator explains it as it happened so fast.
"Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree," (Pg. 83 lines 3-4). The second time we get wind of Curt Lemon is a deeper recollection of the terrible sight. The author uses sunlight in both memories. I think he stresses the image of sunlight to show the reader just how fast someone's life can be taken away when they're in times of war. One minute everything is fine and everyone is happy and the next, someone's life is taken away.
"A red clay trail outside the village of My Khe
A hand grenade,
A slim, dead, dainty young man of about twenty.
Kiowa saying, "no choice, Tim. What else could you do?" (pg. 37 Lines 19-23) This is another snippet of a dreadful memory that is recalled in the narrators mind. as the memory is recalled more and more as we read, we see just how much it effected the narrator. Especially when the narrator sees this man in the most normal moments of his life.
The following memory is not the narrators but a comrade of his by the name of Norman Bowker. Norman blames himself for Kiowa's death or disappearance. Norman let go of Kiowa's hand as they crossed the marshy field, and Kiowa disappeared. This haunts Norman for the rest of his life.
All the memories can suffice as significant in helping us understand the author's view on the effects of the war. I've concluded this because most of the memories he associates himself with are the negative ones and one's about death. These memories show us just how terrible the effects war can have on the soldiers emotions.
Hi this is Bryanna Johnson, i agree totally with Ashley Hart "lyric" about the emotions and thoughts the men carried wer far heavier than the tangible things could ever be. Having to endure such diress situations and yet still have to move from each fully mentally attached was a task in itself and most men could never really recover from all the mental anguish, pain, hurt, fear etc. Carrying around such baggage can leave te body drained and some men had noting left in them to finsh the journey because they were so bound by all that they had to carry
This is Martin Arriaga
In the book "The Things They Carried",the narrator recalls many things from his past memories in the Vietnam war that greatly changed his life.
One of the big memories that he had was the death of Ted Lavender. On page 6, he mentions how Ted as a result of carrying so many rations and weaponry was one reason Ted Lavender died. Another reason was Ted's obsession with Martha would lead to his death.
Another memory that is mentioned by the narrator is the death of Kiowa after trying to show him a picture. Using a flash light to show Kiowa the picture led to the enemy finding their position which led to the mortar to hit and kill Kiowa. (pgs. 124 and 160)
Another memory that was mentioned by the narrator concerns is the death of Curt Lemon. The narrator created this sort of technique of going into more detail each time he mentions the death of Curt. From pgs. 69, 78, and 81, he keeps going from a general to a descriptive detail of what happened to Curt.
The narrator recalls the many memories that have greatly impacted his life during the war and how each event he went through changed his sense of thought and the way he viewed war.
I agree with Robert in the fact that the narrator did have that way of changing the way the narrator viewed the death of Curt to be in those three instances of flashbacks.
Egder Dominguez
In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried ”, Tim O’Brien utilizes his own detailed memories of his time fighting in the Vietnam War to narrate a collection of short stories. These vivid memories are enhanced with fictional stories to entertain the author with astounding events while at the same time helping the reader understand the emotional aspects of the Vietnam War that would not have been possible had he not made up some particular elements of the stories. An example can be of the Vietcong soldier whom he killed. “He lay at the center of the trail, his right leg bent beneath him, his one eye shut, his other eye a huge star-shaped hole. ” (133) This memory would stick with him throughout his life and he kept repeating the sight of the dead soldier. He created an imaginary life story for the soldier he killed to show us how much it had affected his mind. He was in shock of having carried out a horrendous act which to many seems a normal act that is part of the war.
The death of Kiowa, described by the sight of “There was a knee. There was an arm and a gold wristwatch and part of a boot.” (149) illustrates the feeling Norman had right before Kiowa sunk into the mud. Tim does not describe Norman’s emotions, rather allows the reader to have a sense of the feeling of being in Norman’s position at the time being. Tim confesses having made up parts of the story in the last line on page 161.
The third memory, which is not as continually referred to by Tim, is of the suicide committed by Norman Bowker. “Eight months later he hanged himself,” (160) is a clear example of how the memories of Vietnam had a negative effect on most soldiers. It has ties with the memory of Kiowa’s death and the numerous other harsh experiences in Vietnam that soldiers could not forget about in their post-war lives. Norman seemed fine yet he kills himself. Part of Norman’s post-war life must have been fiction such as driving around town twelve times, although part of it is true. The exaggerated story enhances the sadness of Norman, who could not cope well with the death of Kiowa.
Many of my ideas agree with Laura, one being that not all of the stories are totally real and accurate, but are created as to capture the reader’s attention. Laura’s idea of belnding fiction and non-fiction make one better understand the emotions of the soldiers and how it still has affected them after the war such as Norman hanging himself is a good concept. I also agree with Jasmin’s observation of how the repetition helps remind us of how these experiences had affected their lives and could not be forgotten. She is right when she says that the book would not have had the same overall effect if Tim wouldn’t have kept repeating numerous memories throughout the entire book. Gina made a good point in mentioning how the experience at the Tip-Top Lodge was not one of the main concepts of the book as the majority of the book focuses on war stories rather than that solo experience Tim went through.
In the novel the narrator repeats and returns to memories such as that of Curt Lemons death, “The angles of vision are skewed, when a booby trap explodes you close your eyes and duck and float outside yourself. When a guy dies, Like Curt lemon, you look away and then look back for a moment and then look away again.”(71) Another is Kiowa’s death, “Norman Bowker looked out across the wet filed “Nobody’s fault,” he said “Everybody’s”,”(176) And finally he can’t stop remembering the war, “I feel guilty sometimes, forty three years old and I’m still writing war stories.”(34)
All these memories are significant because he uses them to make us see what he feels and has affected him the most about the war. He talks about how Rat lost his friend and how it affected everyone. Their friendship wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the war but their friendship helped them survive it together not making it seem as horrible as it truly was. Rat loved his friend and the war took him away and also took away his sanity. You can see that in another part of the story when they find a baby buffalo and Rat brutally kills the buffalo. No one else says anything they are all amazed as to what they witness because they had never seen anything like it its all new to them such as what Mitchell Sanders said “Garden of Evil. Over here, man, every sin’s real fresh and original.
Kiowa was a friend to all of them when he died they were all to blame but not really. They all felt as though they had a part in his death the Lieutenant though it was his fault for having set up camp there and Norman Bowker for not having held on to him. War killed brutally it spared no one of the most merciless death just like when Ted Lavender got shot in the head and he didn’t even feel it. Deaths like those would impact the narrator for the rest of his life. He talks to his daughter about his war stories and he feels guilty because he still writes them after so long has passed. War is now a part of him and there is no way to surpass that because you’re impacted by so much death that you are traumatized for the rest of your life.
- Macrina
This is Erik Villegas..
One memory that the narrator kept repeating during the beginning was Jimmy Cross' letters and martha. Even though the letters had nothing to do with a romantic relationship, Jimmy Cross liked to imagine as though they were. This shows how participating in a war allows you to appreciate every little thing, even if its a bunch of simple letters.
Another story that kept coming up was Curt Lemon's death. It represented the fact that no matter how fine things seemed in a war, it is still a war. He used the example of two young soldiers playing with a smoke grenade, trying enjoy themselves the best they can under their troubled circumstances and one was blown up by a booby trap.
Another point was that after seeing horrible things like a friends death, one can snap and end up doing something cruel, like the way Rat Kiley killed the baby buffalo.
the man i killed.
The main story that came up repeatedly, and also the one I think was the most important was when the narrator killed the enemy soldier. You could clearly tell that he was severely traumatized because of how he kept staring at the corpse and wouldnt talk. Another way you could tell is the fact that he keeps writing war books, as his daughter suggested.
Overall i agree with Magaly that after returning from a war, a soldier is confused, traumatized, and changed forever, and for the rest of their lives, some may try to redeem themselves for what they believe they did wrong.
Hi, I'm Katarzyna Razniak...hoping for at least partial credit.
In the book, "The Things They Carried", Tim O'Brien creates a narrator that repeats certain memories from his past. Three memories that are particularly important to the effect of the story are the death of Kiowa (pg. 150), the man the narrator killed (pg.125), and Jimmy Cross's Martha. (pg 23)
All these memories have a significant role in the book. The death of Kiowa is repetative in the way that the narrator emphasizes how he drowns as if Vietman itself comsumed him. This reflects the authors view of the war because he understood that at one point he was consumed by the land he was fighting on and there was no escape from drowing until the war was over or when Kiowa was lifted from the mud.
The repetition of Martha accurs only in the begining of the book. This shows the reader that it is possible to limit yourself to remebering certain things. Jimmy Cross stopped himself from remembering Martha because he knew it was hazardous for his men so after he decides that she is no longer mentioned after the chapter "Love."
I would agree with Najelly in saying that the man he killed is the most significant memory. The narrator makes up a complete background for a man he knew absolutely nothing about because he still carries a guilt that he tries to get rid of by writing stories. In his stories, at one point that man is alive and everytime the story is retold before the narrator actually kills the man he gives him a chance to live in the story, even if it is only for a short time as a way of apalogy.
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