The Things They Carried- Blog #2

On page 83 we see some literal relief in the last sentence: “But what wakes me up twenty years later is Dave Jensen singing ‘Lemon Tree’ as we threw down the parts.” Even though it's a little rude this shows the reader what these men went through during their service in Vietnam. Before they knew combat they were normal people, the same as you and me, but now they make mean jokes and take death for granted. This one sentence shows the reader that not only was it used as comic relief, but it was also comic relief the day it happened. Trying to deal with the horrible atrocities on a daily basis caused them to become mean in the mind of a person living a normal life. However, to the soldier these rude jokes were the only way they could deal with witnessing such hideous acts.

O’Brien calls Curt Lemon’s death a “love story” instead of a “war story.” He calls it this because instead of focusing on the worst involved with his death he chose to focus on the beauty of the sunlight as it touched his face a second before he stepped on the mine. This may correspond with what O’Brien said earlier in the chapter about the “proximity to death bring[ing] with it the corresponding proximity to life.” That is, it is not until you experience the horror of death that you begin to see things in a different manner, you begin to really see life in a different perspective. They begin to cherish every moment.

These two points were a way for soldiers who witnessed the horrors of war to attempt to keep things off their shoulders. They would try to make the problems seem somewhat funny in an attempt to not focus on the problem itself in all of its horror. They would also look at things as a great love story rather than a horrifying war story.

The Things They Carried- Blog #1

The chapter On the Rainy River reveals the war and brings out the decision to fight or to run. Jimmy Cross also brings up that he uses his embarrasment as motivation to keep going. O’Brien feels guilty for going to Vietnam against his moral values. He stated that he had been against the war and he even protested it in newspaper articles that he wrote. this tug of war withO'Brian allows the reader to feel the cause and effect of such emotional pull on citizens given the call of duty during the Vietnam War. O’Brien shows the reader the confusion and anger experienced by the soldier when the demands of his country and the demands of his conscience collided.

With O’Brien’s final decision being to go to war, it may seem as though the guilt of committing atrocities against another person had more guilt than that of  the draft. However, O’Brien described how pressure from the uninformed community was the ultimate factor in his decision to go to war. His last three sentences are another sign of the extreme difficulty in going against his moral values due to the overpowering peer pressure of the entire nation: “I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.”
The entire fourth chapter showed the catch-22 situation experienced by all soldiers drafted to the Vietnam War. The only way to escape the guilt was to take a stand that will cause guilt. Going against your country to not be in the draft will bring the disapproval of your community causing guilt and shame. In order to avoid that guilt and shame, you must fight in the war despite your previous objection to the United States involvement in it. This causes personal confusion for being in an act you feel is morally incorrect. One Last thing is the old man at the Tip Top Lodge and if he is real or not. Is he just a made up character or will he appear again?