The Things They Carried Passage Analysis Essay

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This passage from ‘The Things They Carried’ has a central theme; Ted Lavender. O’Brien shows his feelings about the event, even after so many years have passed by, he is still becoming distracted from the explanation of what the men carried and going into detail of Lavender’s death. With many literary techniques, he shows the horrific truth behind the war and what all of the men must carry, both physically and emotionally.

The prevalent feature within this text is the event of Lavender’s death and how abrupt it is. There is no emotion during this part of the text, however, both the sentence length after the mentioning of Lavender and the repetition of ‘and’ throughout it shows how O’Brien, as the narrator, has been traumatized by the event and attempts to make the reader feel the same emotions that they felt in that moment. The characters within this passage are introduced as they become relevant to this particular part of the story being told, which in unlike earlier in the chapter when everyone is introduced by their names …show more content…
These are used to show the reader that the soldiers have their own ways of coping, for some it is to destroy a village, and for other it is to find some sort of humor within the situation, the worst part of this is that it is their normal. The repetition of the weights of what they carried is symbolic of the burdens that they all had to carry through life after the war. This includes Lavender’s death, both during and after as ‘he was dead weight’ and as ‘they carried Lavender’ onto the aircraft, but once he was taken away they were left with the weight. The repetition of ‘Boom-Down’ as well as ‘and’ slows down the pace of the sentences and draws them out, gaining an overwhelming feeling to the reader and shows the shock that they all felt during that
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