Emotional Damage in The Things They Carried Essay Example

📌Category: Books, The Things They Carried
📌Words: 758
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 07 April 2022

Individuals carry substantial amounts of emotional damage such as guilt and remorse portrayed in the harming & death of others, in addition to memories such as the events with loved ones, prior to their passing which both cause tremendous psychological and personal issues.

Individuals carry emotional scars such as remorse and guilt, which can cause psychological damage. In the novel, The Things They Carry by Tim O’Brien, its overall use of literary characteristics such as imagery and the repetition of underlying tones, like guilt, within the text portrays the emotional damage an individual may carry. For example, the use of imagery within this chapter portrays how O’Brien is filled with disgust and remorse after killing a Vietcong soldier; After firing the bullet, O’Brien checks to see the man that was shot. In the text it states,”The corpse lay almost entirely in shade. There were gnats at the mouth, little flecks of pollen drifting above the nose… The bleeding had stopped except for the neck wounds… The one eye did a funny trickling, red to yellow. His head was wrenched sideways, as if loose at the neck, and the dead young man seemed to be staring at some distant object beyond the bell-shaped flowers along the trail.” The in detail description of the man he shot and killed connotes how O’Brien is still analyzing the person’s corpse within his head with how gruesome and sick it made him through the meticulous physical detail of the man’s slow decomposing body, leaking out blood; the overthinking and imagery further establishes the idea of the guilt O’brien is met with. In addition, the repetition of underlying tones of remorse creates tension as well in the chapter. After killing the man and viewing his corpse, O’brien starts to think about the man’s life. In the text it states,” After his years at the university, the man I killed returned with his new wife to the village of My Khe, where he enlisted as a common rifleman with the 48th Vietcong Battalion. He knew he would die, fall dead and wake up in the stories of his village and people.. 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.” Once again with the use of imagery & description, it still illustrates and reinforces the emotional damage portrayal through O’brien’s remorse through his overthinking about his future; if O’brien hadn’t cared about taking his life, he wouldn’t go down a great path of thinking about the possibilities of the man’s future as well as the many recounts of his corpse while feeling “frozen” and filled with shock after the instance. These examples present how guilt and remorse are able to personally affect an individual’s psychological state. 

Memories of individuals who’ve passed, cause people to carry emotional recollection of past events. In the novel, The Things They Carry by Tim O’Brien, O’ Brien speaks about his “first true love” from a subsequently young age, named Linda; however, it is revealed that she unfortunately passed away due to a brain tumor at a young age as well. This causes O’Brien to start to use his imagination and dreams to “connect” with Linda once again. It states, ”Lying in bed at night, I made up elaborate stories to bring Linda alive in my sleep. I invented my own dreams.” This quote explains how O’Brien is still suffering from Linda’s death and the emotional toll she carries in his mind. The use of storytelling and dreaming within O’brien’s head allows him to “bring her back from the dead” temporarily, which is his coping mechanism for his grief of Linda, that he’s been suffering ever since a young age. This idea is also presented when O’brien goes into greater detail of possible events that he’s dreamt of him and Linda. The novel states,”And at nighttime I’d slide into sleep knowing that Linda would be there waiting for me. Once, I remember, we went ice skating late at night, tracing loops and circles under yellow floodlights. Later we sat by a wood stove in the warming house, all alone, and after a while I asked her what it was like to be dead.” This quote once again showcases O’brien’s coping mechanism of storytelling in his dreams with Linda; it portrays the emotional damage her death has on his whole life ever since her death; the reanimation of Linda in events, such as them ice skating together, represents the remorse he feels and the way he decides to deal and especially,  heal with the tremendous amount of suffering Linda’s death brought upon his life. By being able to connect and interact with Linda even one more time, allows O’brien to deal with the mental burden he has, allowing him to ease it.

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