Essay On The Soldier In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried
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Through the use of the soldier’s physical baggage in the book “The Things They Carried” Tim O’Brien presents the reader with metaphors for the emotional baggage they carried. O’Brien suggests that often times the emotional burdens are far greater than the physical loads we carry. “ They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love longing- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had there own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight” (357) This book voices the tangibility of mental burdens, showing how emotions such as fear, love, and responsibility can outweigh our physical pain.
The most common and also possibly the most backbreaking emotional burden in this story is fear. Fear is an oppressive dictator within each of the soldier’s minds and it ultimately becomes the…show more content… Although each one of the men carry a responsibility in one way or another, a substantial amount of the towering responsibility falls upon the back of Lieutenant Cross. In many ways Lt. Cross becomes a metaphor for Jesus Christ and the cross that he bears. Lt. Cross carried “… a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men.’ (346) Just as Christ carried the lives of mankind upon his back, so did Cross carry his men’s lives. Cross cared deeply and felt the pain of his men; he empathized with his soldiers as he led them. “Kiowa admired Lt. Jimmy Cross’s capacity for grief. He wanted to share the man’s pain, he wanted to care as much as Jimmy Cross cared.” (354) Some of the soldiers begin to see Lt. Cross as an illustration of what they wish they could be, similarly as Christ was a divine exemplification of the perfect man. The burning of his letters to Martha for the soldier’s sake is parallel to the ultimate sacrifice Jesus Christ made for the good of all. Even the name “Lieutenant Cross” alludes to an unbearable weight that must be hoisted up the hills of