The Things They Carried is a very interesting book-it is a book full of short stories,which I thought would make it confusing, but wierdly, you can see into Tim O'Brien's head; for example, his true feelings about the war, his time in the war, and well, many more things, like Martha.
Something that comes up a lot is silence. In "How To Tell a True War Story"silence is talked about. O'Brien is told a story about 6 guys going on a Listening Patrol in the mountains. They had to be in the silence for a week, after awhile they started hearing noises-they report this, well enemy movement and warrant an air strike. Even after the attack, they still hear noises. What made these men go crazy-silence? Later O'Brien asks the man, "what's the moral?" "forget it." "No, go ahead.""Hear that quiet, man?" "That quiet-just listen. There's the moral" (O'Brien 77).
The theme of silence also comes up when Rat Kiley is kill the poor baby buffalo. The buffalo did not make any noise the whole time it was being tortured.
Silence, in this book, and all this situations is a horrible thing, it is something that can be really destructive and something that is not wanted.
1 comments:
Well I didnt think of silence to tell you the truth as something that comes up. I guess I just didn't notice how much it is brought up in the book. I just thought about the contradictions that are always being made throught the book. But anyhow, good job :)
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