The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

The ordeal that a soldier experiences during a war is often unshakable, haunting both memories and the current happenings in one’s life. In the beginning of The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, O’Brien describes the lasting turmoil both he and Lieutenant Jimmy Cross feel as a result of the war: “... Jimmy rubbed his eyes and said he’d never forgiven himself for Lavender’s death. It was something that would never go away, he said quietly, and I nodded and told him I feel the same about certain things” (26). The tragedies of war can never be understood by one who has not experienced it, and soldiers must overcome the mental barricade of fitting back into an unknowing society when returning from duty. At times, this mental barricade, combined with the
Bowker recalls his struggle to find someone who will listen, however, in reality, he focuses on the way in which people of his past would react to his stories as an excuse to keep them bottled up. For example, he thinks about how Sally Kramer, a past friend, would be too disgusted by his story to even listen, and how his dad, a veteran himself, would be disinterested by the fact that he has his own war experiences to think about. Bowker bases these assumptions on past personalities and reactions, and fearing rejection, he decides that society does not know enough to understand his turmoil, letting his emotions chip away at his morale from inside. O’Brien discusses the benefits that sharing may have held for Bowker in sharing his own personal experience with writing: “...when I received Norman Bowker’s letter, it occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse” (152). By never sharing his emotional upset, Bowker is paralyzed, forever stuck in that night in the sewage