The Things They Carried is extremely symbolic not only in the literal sense of what these men carried, but also the “things” they carried on their minds and in their emotions. When the passage “Imagination was a killer” comes into play I think it has multiple meanings. The phrase comes into Lieutenant Cross’ mind when he is thinking about his almost girlfriend, Martha. He is “killed” by the thoughts of her and cannot seem to get her off his mind. He is distracted and his mind is in a way murdered by thoughts of Martha.
Later on reader’s find out because Lieutenant Cross was in heavy daydreams about Martha one of his soldiers, Ted Lavender, is killed. So the passage “Imagination was killer” foreshadows the death of Lavender. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is obviously troubled by the knowledge, his lack of attention on the war and his men caused on of his men’s death. He is truly disturbed by this fact. Tim O’Brien knows the end from the beginning he is a writing about the past, he can foreshadow with little hints. This passage alongside Ted Lavender’s death could show that Lieutenant Cross completely blames the thoughts of Martha for the death of Lavender, rather than blaming himself. Guilt always feels better if you are sharing it with someone or if you are able to pawn it off on someone else.
With this passage “Imagination was a killer” Tim O’ Brien also gives the impression that when a soldier is at war there is way too much time to think about all the other things going on in the world besides the war. In the first few chapters the other characters are introduced, but the one I became emotionally attached to was Jimmy Cross. Tim O’Brien spends a great deal of time and detail on him and his “imagination” of his “almost” girlfriend, Martha. There is obviously more on the subject of the imagination that will come into play in the rest of the novel.
I believe that Tim O'Brien was trying to relate what soldiers experienced in this crazy war. I lived through the vietnam war and later did a research paper on the effects of the war on the vietnam/american children left in vietnam after the war. This book is actually much less psychotic that most of the other things I have read. It was a very difficult war. The Viet Cong used torture and cruelty as a major tactic. These soldiers lived through things we can't even imagine. Their daily lives were filled with visions of all kinds of unspeakable possibilties of pain and death. It was a political war and so it was difficult for many of them to feel like they were doing their patriotic duty. So, I believe the author is trying to help us understand that sometimes the soldiers suffered more through their imagination and dealing with their fears of what could happen than reality. They also used their imagination to escape the realities of death and fear that they lived with 24 hours a day.
ReplyDeleteI think that he also uses Lt. Cross' imaginery encounters with Martha to help demonstrate the impact that living in a dream world has on how we cope with reality. He was in his imaginery world when one of his soldiers got killed. A few pages later he says that the things they carried were mainly governed by their superstition which is our imagination experiencing the what if's. He hints at the fact that when we spend too much time in our imaginery world it can kill our reality. When we waste too much time dreaming, we don't spend enough time doing or making choices and life can just pass us by, or even fail us.
We also see that Ted Lavender used tranquilizers as a coping mechanism. In this altered imaginery serene world he was unattentive and void of caution. Typically they all sat in patrol mode watching the surrounding country for the enemy while the tunnel was searched - this day, some key players were lost in their imagination resulting in Ted's death.
And finally, O'Brien finally buries his imaginery relationship with Martha because of his guilt over Ted's death. So imagination was the source of the death of his soldier and friend and result in the death of his dreams about Martha.