War, it is almost always seen as a poetic and wonderful justified encounter. In both The Things They Carried and Slaughterhouse-Five this is not the case. In The Things They Carried the author writes his story in a segmented way, in which all the pieces relate but not necessary in chronological order. I think this is done to build the story up since each mini story seems to progress in severity. The underlying concepts here seem to be link to depression, fear, acceptance, and regret. Depression can be seen when the first member of the Alpha Company is killed, Ted Lavender, not because there is not any remorse for his death by his team members, but more so because it is seen that Ted’s first love was never reciprocate of his feelings and that this heavy burden weighs him down.…show more content… The whole book has multiple ties to both acceptance and regret, for they go hand in hand. In the later parts of the book, the narrator talks about his first kill and how he years after the event cannot make himself truly see the justness of killing another human being; why he created a backstory for the kid. However, when the narrator goes on to retell the story to his daughter, it is seen as almost an acceptance of how the past came about and how by sharing his story he can move on. I think the author chose this way to tell the story for a few different reasons. One, it gives almost a peek into the sporadic lives a person lives after going to war. It is not linear to the individual and each moment has a story leading up to it. Second, each segmented piece is focused on a generalized emotion. Lastly, the use of having other main characters and their struggles about facing dying helps make one understand that dying happens differently to all
