Carrying a Heavy Load

Carrying a Heavy Load The word wear means to hold, contain, or living something and to take that something you argon holding or supporting to another go into. In many cases when the great unwashed gabble more or less incorporateing things they speak nearly animal(prenominal)ly carrying an object with some amount of consultt from one place to another. Many times however people carry things with them throughout lifespan that have no animal(prenominal) tip, weighing themselves down with the dense burdens that life brings.Both Wideman and Obriens short stories exemplify a common constitution of persevering through struggles and relieving oneself of the weight of lifes struggles. The soldiers in OBriens short recital The Things They Carried carry dour physical loads necessary for them to survive out in state of war, but they likewise carry heavy emotional loads which will be with them for the rest of their lives if they are unable to anyow them go. Some things the ma npower carry are universal, like a compress in case of black-market injuries and a two-pound poncho that can be used as a raincoat, groundsheet, or tent.Most of the men are common, low-ranking soldiers and carry a standard M-16 assault rifle and several magazines of ammunition. Several men carry grenade launchers. All men carry the figurative weight of memory and the literal weight of one another. They carry Vietnam itself, in the heavy weather and the dusty soil. The things they carry are also determined by their rank or specialty. apiece mans physical burden consisted of weapons, cigarettes, C rations, and packets of Kool-Aid, and the more intangible things, such as fear and silent awe, that weigh these soldiers down.As leader, for example, Lieutenant Jimmy report carries the maps, the compasses, and the responsibility for his mens lives. The medic, Rat Kiley, carries morphine, malaria tablets, and supplies for serious wounds, and the responsibility to free lives. The things t hey carry depend on several factors, including the mens priorities and their constitutions. Because the machine gunner Henry Dobbins is exceptionally large, for example, he carries extra rations because he is top-notchstitious, he carries his girlfriends pantyhose around his neck.Nervous Ted Lavender carries marijuana and tranquilizers to put away himself down, and the religious Kiowa carries an illustrated New Testament, a gift from his father. With the amount of space that the author gives to enumerating the weight of these objects, one expertness assume that these objects are what are really important to these soldiers, but in reality it is the incalculable weight of their burdens that truly weigh them down. The things of the title that OBriens characters carry are both literal and figurative.While they all carry heavy physical loads, they also all carry heavy emotional loads, composed of grief, terror, approve, and longing. all(prenominal) mans physical burden underscores his emotional burden. Henry Dobbins, for example, carries his girlfriends pantyhose and, with them, the longing for love and comfort. Similarly, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, of the Alpha Company, carries various reminders of his love for Martha, a girl from his college in New Jersey. Cross carries her letters in his backpack and her good-luck pebble in his mouth.He carries her photographs, including one of her playing volleyball, but closer to his heart still are his memories. Lavender, one of the soldiers in the story, gets shot on his way back from going to the bathroom. That night the soldiers taunt in the darkness discussing the short span between life and destruction in an attempt to draw sense of the situation. The morning after Lavenders death, in the steady rain, Cross crouches in his fox hole and burns Marthas letters and two photographs.By burning the physical reminders of Martha Cross believes that he will be able to forget about his past with her, and stop fantasizing abou t their future. OBrien wrote Besides, the letters were in his head. And hitherto now, without photographs, Lieutenant Cross could see Martha playing volleyball in her white gym shorts and chickenhearted T-shirt. He could see her moving in the rain. Even without the pictures and the letters he was still carrying Martha. These emotional burdens are the heaviest because they are intangibles and therefore cannot be disposed of.Physical burdens are no more than that if necessary they can be discarded. Emotional burdens, on the other hand, must be endured. OBrien, speaking of cowardice in particular, says, in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down. The soldiers know there is no blue-blooded way to rid themselves of their fears because of their abstract nature, but they dream escapist dreams of flying away in a plane and falling higher and higher, free of weight.Jimmy Cross tries to rid himself of intangible burdens by disposing of tangible o nes that, to him, meet intangible qualities. He does this by burning his letters from Martha. He knows, though, that this simple act cannot rid him of his memories. He realized it was only a gesture Besides, the letters were in his head. His love for Martha is also represented by the small pebble, which she gave him, but the easily disposable pebble, which weighs classically an ounce, represents a much heavier emotional burden that he cannot rid himself of.Though in Widemans short story Newborn Thrown in Trash and Dies a tiny baby is cast down a rubbish chute with no tools to survive, no physical load except for her own weight, she carries a heavy emotional load and reflects on what her life energy have been had she lived on each floor of the tenement building where her 19-year-old mother lives. In the first dissever of the story Wideman quickly expresses the theme of carrying burdens. Wideman writes, Your life rolled into a ball so dense, so super heavy it would drag the unive rse down to hell if this tiny tiny lump of whatever didnt dissipate as quickly as its formed.Quicker. The weight of it is what you recall some infinitesimal fraction of when you remove and crawl through your worst old age on earth. Here the newborn speaks about burdens and mishaps that come about in life. She explains to the reader that she will not be able to receive much of a life but that people would have nothing to live for if they did not forget about the struggles and problems that were flashed in front their eye before they were born into this world. The rest of the short story tells a complete play-by-play of the flash of life she had before she was brought into the world.Each floor represents another stage or point in her short life. The floors of this story disguise the days of life, and the newborn that will have no chance to experience them explains the days of life perfectly in these words I believe all floors are not equally interesting. Less reason to happen upon some then others. Equality would break boring, predictable. Though we may slight some and rattle on about others, that does not change the fact that each floor exists and the life on it is real, whether we pause to wit or not. People cannot have a good day everyday or everyday would become boring and predictable. In many instances of life people are put into situations such as the war that the soldiers in The Things They Carried, that they have no control over, and that they could not even begin to explain to people for the mere fact that the situation that they are in no one should ever have to think about let alone experience. On the other end of the spectrum good days and good experiences are to the highest degree lots remembered and reminisced about for the rest of peoples lives, which they should be.The thing that people dont realize is that very often people carry around the burdens of their pasts and the bad days that they have had which make the rest of their lives less enjoyable. later the war, the psychological burdens the men carried during the war will continue to define them. Those who survive will carry guilt, grief, and confusion, although the heavy backpack filled with tools to survive will be gone. In both stories the characters carried emotional burdens, the soldiers carried fear and bank as well as the newborn baby.The soldiers hoped to see another day, and were scared that the opportunity might not come. They had lived lives before the war and feared that they might never get the opportunity to live happily with their loved ones once more so they carried belongings of their loved ones physically enterpriseing to keep their loved ones close and not forgotten. The equal holds true with the newborn girl. She never gets the opportunity to experience her family, or to even establish a affiliation with anyone before she dies. Still she fantasizes about what it might have been like, what might have happen.The emotional burdens of fear of death seem to be unbearable for the soldiers mainly because they know that they are losing the opportunity of life. The newborn however doesnt seem bitter about dying, she feels sympathy for the mother who put her in the trash and accepts her life as being how it is, as she doesnt know any better. All in all the characters of both the stories carry their emotional loads till death, or until they go back home which even then the psychological affects of the war will still haunt them until they learn to let them go.So as the newborn surrenders to her death she lets go of her emotional burdens floor by floor never looking back, so to should the soldiers realize that their days are numbered and tomorrow is never promised so just as Wideman wrote at the end of his second paragraphs about how people try to forget the flash of their life that occurs before they are born people should also try to forget the bad days and the burdens of life as they happen and, live your life as if it hasnt happened before, as if the tape has not been punched full of holes, the die cast.