Death In The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

When people see and experience death, they lose a part of themselves and the experience forever changes a person. Death is all around and people experience it every day, especially during war. Soldiers are constantly surrounded by death and experience more trauma than an average person does. In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien demonstrates how the horrific experiences of war cause people to lose their composure and act against their preexisting morality. Death is a constant at war, especially in Vietnam. Soldiers, especially, witness death more than the average person. As a result, soldiers go “crazy” and start to act differently after witnessing all the violence and death of war. Soldiers have to endure the loss of loved ones

After Rat loses his best friend, Curt Lemon, the troops are exploring and making advancements they encounter a baby animal, “It wasn’t to kill; it was to hurt. He put the rifle muzzle up against the mouth and shot the mouth away. Nobody said much. The whole platoon stood there watching, feeling all kinds of things, but there wasn’t a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo” (75). Rat Kiley lost himself after he lost his best friend. He went crazy and did things he normally wouldn’t do. He took out all his anger and frustration on a baby animal. This demonstrates how he was unable to cope, how he lost himself and his mind to the death of war. The platoon didn’t feel bad or intervene for the water buffalo either. This shows how the end of the war changed all of them. Furthermore, Rat Kiley’s actions portray how he feels and how he is handling the war. When Rat Kiley is torturing the baby water buffalo he shows his emotions and how he truly feels: “Rat shot it in the nose. He bent forward and whispered something, as if he was talking to a pet, then he shot it in the throat all while the baby

Most of the time soldiers are sent to war and are expected to return to their families and lives unchanged, expected to pick up where they left off. War, however, has a different lasting effect. Experiences of war leave soldiers scared for their life and change who they are as a person. War and death change a person both physically and mentally, Tim O’Brien shows this when Rat Kiley loses Kurt Lemon at war. Rat Kiley sees unimaginable events over and over again and it changes who he is as a person, “ ‘These pictures in my head, they won’t quit’… His voice floated away for a second. He looked at Sanders and tried to smile.” (211). He is tormented by the images of his dying friend. These never relinquishing images contribute to his inability to cope and he finds himself lost, losing the person he once was before the war, losing his sanity. O’Brien elaborates on Rat’s wellbeing telling how the voices won’t go away and how he tries to be happy but he can’t. The trauma and death he experienced has changed him and he is scared for his life. Also, when someone always sees death, they start to see things others don’t and they lose their sanity. As Rat Kiley is going insane and losing himself, he says, “I don’t know- it’s like staring into these huge black crystal balls. One of these nights I’ll be lying dead out there in the dark and nobody’ll find me except the bugs…The next morning he shot himself… Nobody blamed him”