Emotions Are Heavy

Going to war is unimaginable. The only way to know what happens, and what soldiers go through is to either be a soldier, or hear about it through their point of view. That us exactly what Tim O’Brien does in The Things They Carried.  Soldiers like the soldiers in The Things They Carried carry around many things, like a gun helmet and other materialistic necessities. The most important things they carried around everyday during the war, as well as after the war is their feelings, such as regret, sadness, and also guilt. Normal people who have not fought wars get these feeling, and now how the feel, but soldiers get those feeling amplified, because of the memories that cause them to feel these emotions.

Regret is one of the most difficult things to carry around. For soldiers they feel regret from things that are not actually there fault. They put all the blame of one of their platoon members dying on themselves. Originally when it happens they soldiers try to brush it off and not think about it, but after the war, the soldiers remember these events, and they put blame on themselves, which is one of the heaviest things they carry. For O’Brien the main thing he regrets is not letting one of his friends die, but rather going to war he explains this by telling us that his “conscience told me to run, but some irrational and powerful force was resisting, like a weight pushing me toward the war. What it came down to, stupidly, was a sense of shame” (O’Brien pg. 52). This shows his regret not of allowing someone to die, but rather regret of actually fighting for something he did no believe in. He said it multiple times throughout the novel that he regretted fighting in the war because he did not believe in it. Another reason he regretted fighting in the war was because the war left him to carry around sadness for the rest of his life.

O’Brien feels sadness just as any human does, physical sadness, and mental sadness. What he carries around with him day in and day out after the war is mental sadness. He is carrying around this emotion because he lost one of his friends. O’Brien probably a ton of people who he considered friends during the war, due to gun fights and other war related accidents, but not Kiowa. Kiowa drowned in the muck of a sewer area, which was shallow. This caused extreme sadness for O’Brien because this caught him off guard, because he died to a non war or violent reason ,also he describes Kiowa as one of the kindest and most genuine people he has ever met. In the novel he says “That night when Kiowa got wasted, I sort of sank down into the sewage with him” (O’Brien pg. 156), this shows the sadness O’Brien is feeling because of Kiowa’s death. The amount of sadness O’brien is filled with after this event is sad enough to him, to the point where he feels as if he lost part of himself to the pain of sadness he felt because of Kiowa’s death. Kiowa’s death also leads to O’Brien feeling guilty.

Guilt is tough to carry around, especially when the guilt you are carrying around is from a long time ago. O’Brien ends the novel by remembering all the way back to his childhood, it shows that him as a soldiers feels guilt sadness, and regret from other things than just war. He uses the example of when he was in school, by saying “I should’ve stepped in; fourth grade is no excuse. Besides, it doesn’t get easier with time, and twelve years later, when Vietnam presented much harder choices, some practice at being brave might’ve helped” (O’Brien pg. 234). This shows that he feels guilt that every normal human feels, that him and other soldiers feel the guilt of a normal person, along with guilt of war, and seeing and killing people. This quote magnifies the fact that soldiers guilt is magnified that of a civilian American.The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien explains the guilt, regret, and sadness felt by soldiers who have fought in war. The entire novel shows that the emotions they carry around are heavier than that of a normal American. He uses examples to show that, like Kiowa’s death. O’Brien also shows the fact that added onto death of their friends and watching them die, they also have the emotions that everyone has, like the story of his 4th grade year. O’Brien uses these examples to show that the emotions of a soldier after war are heavier to carry than a normal human being should have to carry.