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The Things They Carried and How to Tell a True War Story: Key Ideas ((The…
The Things They Carried
and
How to Tell a True War Story: Key Ideas
**War makes you desperate and this desperateness can be harmful.
Physical, emotional, psychological and moral burdens.
"Rat Kiley was crying. He tried to say something, but then cradled his rifle and went off by himself
When Curt Lemon died Rat Kiley was really upset and didn't know how to deal with it. because he was so angry he tortured a baby buffalo to try and make himself feel better
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was desperate to return home so he spend all his time thinking about Martha not his men. this lead to the death of Ted Lavender and was harmful to Jimmy Cross because he has to carry the burden for the rest of his life.
quote "he would imagine romantic camping trips up in the mountains on new Hampshire."
Jimmy Cross was so engulfed in the fantasy for his girlfriend that this was actually harming the soldiers around him.
Soldiers become desensitised and dehumanised.
Quote: "Nobody said much, they were all feeling a mix of things, but there was no pity for the buffalo."
When the Mitchell Sanders cut of the boy's thumb using Kiowa's hunting hatchet and gave it to Norman Bowker and Mitchell also kicked the boy in the head this so soldiers becoming desensitised.
"After they took Lavender away, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross led his men into the village of Than Khe. They burned everything. They shot chickens and dogs, they trashed the village well,...." Soldiers lost thgere sense of empahthy, as they were engulfed by there own grief.
The ones at home couldn't understand the ones that were on the war field and they don't understand what they're dealing with or going through.
The huge divide between those at war and those at home.
The settings of where Jimmy Cross was currently at and where Martha was, showed how life was complelety different. For example, Jimmy would lie in "his foxhole" in the Vietnam Jungle, while Martha was currently at "Mount Sebastian College". Two very different worlds.
Martha carried a "simple pebble" in her pocket, while Jimmy carried a "M-18 coloured smoke grenade". Jimmy also carried "the land itself - Vietnam, the place, the soil - a powdery orange red dust....." , "they carried all the emotional baggage of men that might die." Proportions are compleley differnet .
"This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity."
"because she belonged to another world, which was no quite real."
In Martha's letters, she "never mentioned the war", this shows that there was no real understanding of the true extend soilders were faced to deal with during the war. "She wasn' t involved".
The soldiers are like kids
example: rat kiley and curt lemon iddnt understand how dangerous the war was because they were young
quote: "they didnt understand the spookyness"
Rat and Curt created a game that involved smoke grenades
Morality becomes warped in a situation of obscene and evil behaviour.
There is truth in a true war story but that does not mean it is an accurate retelling of a real experience.
War changes soldiers/people from their true selves.
Rat Kiley shoots a baby buffalo because he is emotional after the lost his best mate. In normal life, Ray would not do something like this showing how war can change people.
"Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear. He shot it in the hindquarters and in the little hump in its back.
"and shot the mouth away."
example: all the soldiers relied on each other. Rat Kiley and Curt Lemons friendship was beautiful.
quote "the thing that still wakes me up years later was Dave Jenson singing lemon tree as we threw the parts down."
quote: "a tremendous human being , rat says. pretty nutso sometimes, but you could trust him with your life"
War stories are full of duality - full of obscenity and evil, but also sunlight and love.
example: "dave Jenson wasn't sympathetic of curt lemons death because of the circumstances"
the soldiers cant mourn over deaths because of the situation of the war.
the soldiers at war forum strong friendships
He carried the love of Martha then it turned into a burden of guilt when he killed Ted Lavender because he wasn't focused on his job as he was thinking of Martha.
Jimmy Cross is desperate for his fantasy girlfriend Martha.
Because he is so desperate, he is distracted.
"More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her,"
Quote: "He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than himself and as a consequence one of his men were now dead."
"The morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha's letters". The letters that he had carried with him, been so careful with suddenly meant nothing because even though they wereent the cause he felf as though they were. It also states that there was rain making it difficult to burn , but he would try and "burn the blame away" just the way the letters burned away.
"They carried their own lives."
Many of the soldiers carried their own gear, however in the back of each soldiers mind they knew that they were carrying their own lives and safety, as it was still a war
YTFB