The Commentary of Bobbie Ann Mason

" This com manpowertary does an excellent business organisation of showing the symbolism and meaning behind the things the soldiers " consort" in set upon. For they carry necessities like food, water and ammunition but they alike carry the horrific memories of combat and the pain of loss and isolation from home. At times, they to a fault carry their dead brethren.

We see in O'Brien's story that some of the men can hardly apply and cope if they rely on memories of home or carry with them reminders of home. One such individual is First Lieutenant treasure Cross. Cross is a right(a) soldier but he is very much in love with a young lady back home named Martha. Martha sustains him through the worst ordeals but she also causes him to endure some of his worst moments as far as suffering from longing, loss and the need for love and normalcy in combat. In his commentary on "The Things They Carried," Steven Kaplan (p. 44) maintains that many of the things the soldiers carried, even the good things, were like a double-edged sword in their horny impact: "At the end of the chapter, after one of Cross's men has died because Cross was too busy thinking of Martha, Cross sits at the bottom of his foxhole crying, non so much for the penis of his platoon who has been killed ?but mostly it was for Martha, and for himself, because she belonged to another world, and because she was?a poet and a virtuous and uninvolved."

We see in O'Brien's commentary on "Alpha Company," that combat often turns normal

values into subnormal ones and normal ones into abnormal ones. We see this in the character of nauseated bull's eye, a platoon leader who no one is sure got his moniker first or after exhibiting emotional behavior. However, in combat, it is not some hysterical or aggressive qualities that earn Mark his nickname. Rather, O'Brien (p.

1552) tells us his unusual nickname stems from what we might typically rise up a normal value, tranquility: "The madness in afflictive Mark, at any rate, was not a hysterical, crazy, into-the-brink, to-the-fore madness. Rather, he was frantically calm. He never showed fear." In combat, it is this kind of behavior that appears mad compargond to other soldiers engaged in contend and constantly at risk for their lives.

O'Brien, Tim. "Alpha Company," 1973, pp. 1553.

Kaplan, Steven. "The Undying Uncertainty of the Narrator in Tim O'Brien's ?The Things They Carried.'" Critique, 35(1), pp. 43-52.

In conclusion, while we learn that many of the values typically associated with war and perpetuated through propaganda and the media are actually false. Honor, courage, bravery and valor may exist but on the battlefield they are small comfort to the troops who risk their lives and sanity in defense of their country. This is particular true in a war where justification for intervention is weak or does not make merry the full support of the citizenry. Vietnam was such a war. As such, the only way O'Brien is able to bring greater understanding and heal to this unfortunate incident in American history is by telling his story and the stories of those who fought alongside him i
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