English Literature Essay

Professor’s Name

ENC 1102 -- Literature

Date

The Weights Men Carry

In his short story “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien makes his characters carry themselves, a grisly combination of gear and fear, across the dangerous lands of Vietnam. “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing – these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight” (126). Not only did their emotional baggage have tangible weight, it sometimes even outweighed their physical gear. The fear of dying greeted these men at every junction, but they were forced to carry on, no matter what. But what drove them to carry on? What coping mechanism is able to keep these men marching straight towards danger even when they witness their comrades die? The soldiers had to face their fears in the same way that I did when my father became ill and, subsequently, passed away. Comment by Martyambrose: Add your thesis here.

“First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey” (117). After long, hot days Lieutenant Cross would slip away into a fantasy world of camping trips and dark movie theaters, far away from the sweaty lands of Vietnam. He did his best to imagine himself gently caressing her knee instead of dealing with a ferocious war. His mental escapism is a perfectly human reaction to the great atrocities that he is forced to deal with. He finds it difficult to grasp the situation he is thrown in to, so he creates his own world, greatly removed from reality. “His mind wandered. He had difficulty keeping his attention on the war. On occasion he would yell at his men to spread out the column, to keep their eyes open, but then he would slip away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha, carrying nothing” (120). However his mental wandering catches up with him and snaps him back to reality in very harsh way. Comment by Martyambrose: In the first half of the essay, summarize the main points from the short story that relate to your thesis. Comment by Martyambrose: Comment by Martyambrose: When you quote from the short story, use quotation marks and the page number from the story.

Lee Strunk had just finished clearing a tunnel and the men were making zombie jokes when Ted Lavender was shot in the head. “He [Lieutenant Cross] felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war” (124). This moment is a drastic turning point for the lieutenant; he confronts his deadly mistake and vows to never let it happen again. The morning after Lavender died, Lieutenant Cross burned Martha’s letters and photographs and refused a response to an imaginary visualization of her. He did it as symbol to himself of letting go of his fantasies and reengaging life as a soldier, and above that as a commander. “He was now determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence. It wouldn’t help Lavender, he knew that, but from this point on he would comport himself as a soldier” (128).

I, like Lieutenant Cross, have faced a harsh reality in my life and I, again like Cross, detached myself from the situation. In December of 2005 my father became sick with what we thought was the flu. Throughout the four weeks that followed he went from the emergency room, to intensive care, to hospice, and ultimately to his grave. During his time in the hospital I visited him often, but it was very difficult to be there. He was noiselessly coughing blood into a tube in his trachea and could not speak; it was always too quiet, too cold and too sterile. I had never lost someone in my immediate family so I refused to believe that he would leave the hospital in any condition other than healthy and hounding me about my grades. I never faced the reality of the situation; I never even considered the possibility he might not be alive in a week. I rejected facts, charts, results, and professional medical advice because I could not even fathom a life without my father. Comment by Martyambrose: The second half of the essay connects the theme to something personal; here, it is the student’s reaction to his father’s illness/death.

It wasn’t until after his funeral that it really began to sink in that I would never see my father again. And once this idea became planted in my mind I thought of nothing else. I became severely depressed and angry. I hated the world because it was unfair and had dealt me a bad hand. For years I carried an intolerable weight of anger, self-loathing, and self-pity. I carried all the emotional baggage of a person who saw no point in living. These dark ages took control of my life until enough time had passed that I was able to rid myself of this dead weight.

I faced my situation head on and realized that life wasn’t bringing me down, I was. I was choosing to carry those weights and from that point forward, I was choosing not to. I took control of my life and began to see the endless possibility of choices I had. I could choose any school, any profession, any life I wanted; I would choose my own weights to carry.

Unfortunately for both First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and myself, it took very jarring situations for us to realize that we needed to turn ourselves around. We both experienced harsh realities and it took the sacrifices of others for us to see the depths of our issues and, eventually, our salvations. I suspect the lieutenant marched on, carrying the responsibility of his men’s lives with dignity and diligence; I, myself, go on with life carrying the ghost of my father, a weight I choose to carry. Comment by Martyambrose: Add a conclusion about what this topic means in larger sense to all people.

Work Cited Comment by Martyambrose: Include a citation that includes the short story in our textbook.

O’Brien, Tim. “The Things They Carried.” Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth

McMahan, Susan X Day, Robert Funk, and Linda S. Coleman. 11th ed. Boston: Longman. 2016. 108 - 119. Print.