The Things They Carried- Blog #4 Finish Book

The first thing noticeable in the chapter The Ghost Soldiers is that O’Brien’s fears about the dangers of war are actually more intense than the actual danger itself. O’Brien speaks specifically about being shot and shows the experience to the reader. He says the pain pain of being shot is a survivable pain unlike what you see in movies. O’Brien realizes that the actual pain from being shot is much less frightening than the thought of being shot.

The second time O’Brien was shot the actual pain has worn off and he feels nothing but frustration and hatred towards Bobby Jorgenson, who fails to treat O’Brien’s wound properly. As a result, O’Brien almost dies of shock and then again later of gangrene. The wounds O’Brien suffered changed him. Before in the chapter On The Rainy River O’Brien felt an obligation to do the right thing, now he is left with only a want for revenge.

As a reader I can see that O’Brien’s revenge is also driven by jealousy. He has been removed from the war back to normal where things are much safer. The result of this is he lost the deep connections he had with all the other soldiers. When his platoon comes back to have their week of rest, he sees that Bobby Jorgenson is now more a part of the platoon than he was. O’Brien feels almost as if Bobby has taken his place. This jealousy not only helps to fuel his revenge. We see another transformation between the O’Brien before the war and the O’Brien after the experience of war. He is now jealous that he can’t be the one fighting by his fellow soldiers in his platoon.

The Things They Carried- Blog #3

When reading this chapter I was really surprised to see Kiowa, the peaceful Native American who serves as a foil to some of the characters in the story, suddenly killed. Surprisingly a character like her usually isn’t killed early in books. Kiowa’s death affects all of the men, especially Norman, and allows the reader to look within the mind of the troubled soldier after such an experience. This looking into of Norman’s mind is brought on by the way the story was written, which is through Norman’s narrative as he drives around his hometown post war. Switching back and forth between the story of Kiowa’s death and how Norman Baker is dealing post war allows this chapter to not only be about Kiowa’s death, but also how some characters deal with the death.

 The chapter Speaking of Bravery shows not only how telling stories recalls the horror and pain of war, but also how this helps the soldiers to move on after the war. We see that O’Brien deals with his pain and guilt through his writing, but we also see that for some soldiers it is not so simple. Norman Baker is one of these soldiers. Norman drives around silently. There is no one he can talk to about the war, ironically because he cannot speak about the war with anyone. This is a result of his almost obsessive thinking about the incident and his own personal guilt for failing to save Kiowa. Another reason for the result of not speaking about the war is because of his father. His father wants him to go and get all these medals from the war when Norman just thinks they’re worthless and mean nothing.

O’Brien used the sewage field in the story to portray the war itself. There was nothing heroic about this war; instead, it is filthy and unclean. We see that in the end, just as Norman could not save Kiowa because of the stench, he could not save himself from the personal guilt of failing his friend. As Norman sits into the lake and submerges himself, he wishes he could go back and find the courage to pull Kiowa from the sewage mud.