Emotions in The Things They Carried Essay Example

“War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead. The truths are contradictory.” (Page 51).

Fear, anger, regret/guilt, these are all things that we feel and dwindle on in life, many think about these things every day and sometimes even lay up at night dawning on the topic. Some may affect people more than others, but they are always there to haunt, from the day you are born to the day you die. The general topic is what we will be going over in regards to the emotions I mentioned in the beginning of this. There will be evidence from the text supporting all of them along with much more to support it. Emotions are what makes us human, and I will be going over how emotions affected the soldiers during the war in Tim O’Brien’s novel “The Things They Carried”.

This theme that is currently being looked over in this text is the most important one that I have come to find in “The Things They Carried”, and there will be text evidence to support that. One of the emotions I went over was the biggest one that Tim and most of the people that were gone over in the book had to go through, fear. In the book, he went through the most by Tim, in the chapter “On The Rainy River” Tim was “afraid of walking away from my own life”(Page 28). This was without a doubt fear of everyone else too, leaving their friends and family behind. The people who were going to war didn't want to leave just like it was nothing, and for what, to fight in some war, being sent to die, and constantly being in fear that nobody wanted to partake in straight from the beginning. This introduces us to the feeling of the people who were drafted had kept locked inside, fear of the unknown. Fear for what would happen to them, their family, their friends, while they were out fighting a pointless war.

Anger, everyone has this emotion, no exceptions, and certainly not anyone from this book. Even the main focus character in the book, Tim. There have been many instances where Tim has shown his anger in the book. One time that stood out to me the most was in the chapter “The Ghost Soldiers”. This chapter was where Tim got shot in the butt and the medic was scared and he couldn't move at all, eventually, the medic almost killed Tim because he didn't treat him for shock. Tim had a “need for revenge kept eating at me” (Page 128). Later the night he couldn't stop being angry when he said this, he wanted revenge as payback, and he’d “ remember getting shot and yelling out for a medic and then waiting and waiting and waiting, passing out once, then waking up and screaming some more” (Page 128). We are shown how Tim feels towards the medic and the anger he feels because of the fact that the medic almost killed him. There are many more examples of this but this is one of the strongest text examples of the anger that is held in the troops.

Lastly, there is regret and guilt which are key emotions of that which the soldiers feel the most in their time away. Guilt and regret are shown in a whole bunch of ways, but it is always followed by other emotions. Tims’s emotions also change a lot too depending on the situation, Tims “emotions went from outrage to terror to bewilderment to guilt to sorrow and then back again to outrage”(page 29). This quote is going over everything we have talked about so far. The anger of a soldier and how it impacts them. The guilt and regret that a soldier has lying within them. Along with the fear that everybody who we have gone over so far has. This emotion is one of the best you can go over for storytelling and I believe that O’Brien did a great job with getting the soldier’s emotions across to show everyone what was inside their heads and how they felt.

Tim does a great job going over the emotions and feelings of what makes the soldiers in the book relatable and able for the reader to really get in their head. The mental state of the soldiers was heavily thought over and went in-depth in the book. This was the main theme that I found to be one of the best features in the book. There were many emotions emphasized in “The Things They Carried”, But I believe the ones that I have gone over and in-depth on are the most important. Especially what we know about Tim and his journey in the army.