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Chapter 1 - The Things They Carried - Coggle Diagram
Chapter 1 - The Things They Carried
The men carried burdens both emotionally and physically during the war.
"shared the weight of memory"
"burdens far beyond the intransitive"
"they carried the sky"
Allusion to Atlas, compares the burdens of the men to that of a god, emphasising the absurdity and unfairness of them to be placed on a mortal
Repetition and listing prevalent, slows flow of text and creates a sluggish, encumbered reading experience, represents sluggish and encumbered soldiers with the burdens of war placed upon them
The war was monotonous, boring, slow and sluggish.
Repetition and listing prevalent, slows flow of text and creates a sluggish, encumbered reading experience, represents sluggish and encumbered soldiers with the burdens of war placed upon them
Asyndeton and anaphora of They carried again creates a sense of repetition, monotony, of war
"Just humping, one step and then the next and then another, but no volition, no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy"
Series of short phrases interrupted by repetition of conjunction 'and' or a comma. This interrupts the flow of the syntax, creating an stop and start rhythm that functions as syntactical imagery of the steps of the soldiers, slowly "plodding along"
Expectation of Masculinity - Indefatigable, Dogged, Staunch
Page 14
"Just humping, one step and then the next and then another, but no volition, no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy"
Series of short phrases interrupted by repetition of conjunction 'and' or a comma. This interrupts the flow of the syntax, creating an stop and start rhythm that functions as syntactical imagery of the steps of the soldiers, slowly "plodding along"
Simile: "Moved like mules"
Simile compares the men to mules, animals specifically bred both for their stamina and their ability to carry things, referencing the weight of the burdens placed on men, as well as the expectation to continue forward no matter what.
Comparison to mules also interesting, as they are the offspring of a horse and a donkey, suggesting the incompatibility or incongruity either of the men with the land, but also the men with the expectations placed upon them
Asyndeton "Plodded along, slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against the heat, unthinking, all blood and bone, simple grunts..."
Slows rhythm of text, conveys sluggish and cumbersome nature of war superficially, the envrionment of war acts as a microcosm of expectations of masculinity in society
In war, flaws of masculinity exposed, exaggeration of masculinity highlights its ridiculous and unachievable nature
Fear
Semantic field of claustrophobia describing the searching of Vietnamese tunnels
"Very strictest sense"
"swallowed-up feeling"
"dense, crushing"
In some regard, the tunnel represents the fear of the men in the war, seemingly closing in on them from all sides, crushing them
Imagination and fear of unknown prevalent in the war, fear stems from the unknown
repeated mention of 'fog', obscuring, playing with the minds of the soldiers
"Imagination was a killer"
Metaphor, along with other indicators, suggests that the fear, and the shame that accompanied said fear, was more detrimental to the soldiers than physical death
Allusion to Lazarus when Lee Struck emerges from tunnel, suggests he is a dead man walking
"fucking zombie"
"came up grinning, filthy but alive"
"made jokes about rising from the dead"
Also demonstrates the bravado of the soldier; they feel the need to subvert their fear in order to appear to their own sense of bravery, do this through humour
"hard vocabulary to hide the terrible softness"
Terrible softness somewhat of an oxymoron, emphasises the soldiers fear and hatred of their own emotions, due to the societal expectation of them to lack emotions
Men hide behind the bulwark of hard language and their personas of gruffness to avoid confronting their own emotions, which bring them shame, as well as to give off the image of lack of fear
"squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn't"
again demonstrates the shame of the men towards their own fear, squealing alludes to pigs and implies derogatory connotations of fear within the minds of the men
Extremely paradoxical view of cowards, feared being cowards
"Afraid of dying but even more afraid to show it"
"died so as not to die of embarrassment"
"frightened to be cowards"
Relates to fear being linked to the irrational