Plato, Tim, and I
When there’s a question regarding life, the changes throughout life, and life unchanging, I turn to philosophy. The quote in The Things They Carried relates and supports the ideals of Plato, an adroit man of brilliance and skillful ability regarding the difference of change externally compared to the absence of changes internally. I support O’Brien’s beliefs regarding that he was unchanging; he was still the same little boy he was except now physically and mentally older from the element of time. However, time does not age the soul, time’s strength can only plague the external realm through its wrath of aging; time is entrapped only to the physical realm, but the outer change is denied access to the heart and soul.
Plato’s philosophy is that there is perfection and remains constant, or unchanging, beyond the matrix in which we live in. This means that externally everything around us is imperfect because the physical world is changing us. However, inside every object, a paragon of everything exists. This means that there is a perfect apple, a perfect desk, and a perfect human in all individual classifications. On the inside of every object perfection exists, which includes the soul, heart, and spirit; they are the constants inside human beings. This means that these internal bound intangibles remain absolute. In O’Brien’s quote, he believes even though he is physically older, he hasn’t changed at all. He writes, “ Inside the body, or beyond the body, there is something absolute and unchanging” (236). He proves the support of Plato’s philosophy, and I also support it also in its entirety.
I believe that through the philosophy of Plato that human beings do not change internally. You cannot rearrange the mien or psyche of an individual or any living thing. You can pick a leave off a tree, and you can watch the color change, the physicality crumble, and the external wither, however, you still have a leaf. The leaf never changes internally because the leaf internally can never disappear. If the physicality of this externally dead leaf doesn’t disappear off the face of earth just because it is physically dead, is it truly dead on the inside? No. I made this realization on a walk in the woods one autumn evening when I picked up a dead leaf and noticed just because it was dead physically to my eye, it still existed. I believe this is with all life forms that internally perfection and everlasting life exists. It is only the human eye is limited to what it can see. We only can see the shadows of everything that exists which is in the physical realm where time plagues life through change, but on the inside, time cannot harm anything therefore, there is a paragon inside everyone that never can change.
I believe this because as a teenager of eighteen I have experienced a series of changes throughout my life. I mentally am becoming more independent of taking care of myself preparing for the secular realization of the world. I know that my thoughts have drastically changed within the past year or two. Right now I have ideas of my future of going to college, falling in love, and living out the rest of my life with the man that I love. I know it sounds a little jocular, but I even have these yearnings to get married, live in a house together, and have children with the man that I amorously love. Now, let’s take it back even just two years ago, I had no thoughts that somebody would love me, heck, consider even marrying me! I had thoughts of just surviving high school and trying to imagine whether I would get a blue ribbon in the next hunter/ jumper equestrian competition.
I know mentally, the changes I have endured throughout the past years have been mammoth, however, I still believe that I am the same Caitlin on the inside. My personality that is effulgent with amity, my spirit that houses my religious beliefs, and my heart still has the same capacity for love remains constant. Even though my love now is beyond the Philo love for my family, I now display Eros and Agape for one person. Also, even though my love now lies on a significant other and not entirely on family, does not mean my capacity for love has changed. This is because these intangibles cannot be plagued through time and age. My love will never die; my spirit for religion will never wither; my spirit will never be re-sculpted. I will always be the same little girl with the bright smile and spirited walk on the way to the bus on my first day of kindergarten. I have the same smile, the same mind, and the same eyes. My eyes see the world differently, my smile now expunged of my innocent baby teeth, my brain impassive about the sacred teddy bear I had to sleep with every night, and my eyes falling for love; a vow I had made to myself saying that love was “icky,” and that I never would.
Yes, this is sincerely a tough thing to talk about as it brings tears to well in my eyes. The pain burns with doleful intensity; my tears building allowing my vision to become obscured through the warmth of tears. I am looking at my first grade pictures, and envy the little girl I used to be, but never can be again physically. I see a little Halloween costume of a clown I used to be. Oh, how it hurts to see something so adorable and innocent I used to be. It evokes so much doleful sadness that I used to be that cute little girl with the little painted nose, the little hat that sat on my head, now only able to sit on my wrist. I used to wear that costume, my meek little body fitting into something I could probably now not even get an arm into. These sentimental memories accentuate, the pain harboring inside my little heart, struggling with the emotional burden that is drowning my very feelings. I feel the oxygen seeming to be limited as I gasp for breath, but finding myself to sink amongst the strength of time that then envelopes me back underneath the darkness of time. I feel as if being suppressed by a raging river’s strength, (time) but only realizing that the source of this very river, this very water, is in fact my own tears. How I could cry so hard and want to strain all those tears to drizzle, trickle, fall, torrentially down pour; I want them to bring a catharsis; I want to be ridden of the pain so I can relax the tension of my feelings so dilated with pain.
I now recall these changes brought forth by time that tumultuously ripped me from my childhood absence, and my sense of imagination that became stripped through the horrific process maturation. I wipe the tears, little reservoirs of pain dripping down my face, and then disappear into the world somewhere, doubting of they even exist once they’ve fallen, but then I think to myself, have I truly gone? Couldn’t I still be a child inside, could that little girl with that bright smile and spirited walk still be there inside me? I have to believe in Plato and in O’Brien’s words that we are still that little innocent child full of wonder and imagination. We don’t truly become stripped of this wonder unless we allow ourselves to be barren. We must learn to flock together when we feel all the world has failed; we must be strong and let the memories consume us. We must welcome this mellifluous stream of memories and allow them to never leave us, because if we let our inside intangibles die, we let ourselves die.
Plato’s words speak of so much strength to me regarding life. Whenever I am feeling weighted by solemnity, I turn to philosophy to help reestablish my strength. I believe that both O’Brien and I both turn to Plato for support how even though we change physically, we never change. We never are truly gone. I forever can be that little girl with the bright smile and spirited walk. I am her forever. I can always be my daddy’s little girl. Nobody else can ever be her. If I don’t want that image to ever fade, than I must never allow it to go away. I must never accept the false mind set that once the physical is changed, you must internally be changed. I will forever have the whimsical attitude of that little girl with the bright smile and spirited walk on the way to the bus for my first day of kindergarten. Time’s grasp can only make changes so far, and it is beyond time’s reach to put a finger on what lies inside.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
The Things They Carried
Masculinity, Mortality, and Memory
Note: There are few books written that allows the reader to write a paper just because of the strong impact it leaves behind after its completion. This was not an assignment, but I felt it necessary to write a reflection of what these men carried.
Men are enforced to adhere to society’s definition of what is “being a man,” also defined as masculinity. Men are an enigma encrypted in a language different from the female mind; men still have a heart, a soul, and feelings with the same emotional abilities a woman possesses. The role of man has been defined by society, and this is what governs the role of man: no tears, no fear, and no display of emotion. Nothing but a solid concrete block defines the heart of an invincible man. O’ Brien’s The Things They Carried proves this well-known philosophy incorrect regarding man. O’ Brien incorporates this in his writing by exposing the great sensitivity and emotional complexity of man. In this novel, man learns through war that emotional burden and lack of emotional expression can be their greatest enemy. Through this book, man learns what properly should define masculinity. Sometimes a little love and emotion can prove what really molds a powerful man. O’ Brien’s writing reveals the uncertainty of why there is war, and why people die for war. Through the journey of the senses, and the power of human memory, these soldiers learn how to carry the burdens of war.
These soldiers suffered immensely through their emotions. Many men experienced remorse and blame over the death of a fellow comrade like Kiowa. Tim suffers immensely because Kiowa is lost in the sewage field. The haunting memory of Kiowa’s loss produces extensive brutality on the soldiers. These soldiers carried the memories of the men that they killed like the young mathematician with the star-shaped eye wound. Many times killing them just because they are required to out of proving themselves courageous. “ They carried all the emotional damage of men who might die, grief, terror, love, and longing. Those intangibles had their own mass… they carried the common secret of cowardice”(O’Brien, 21). These men suffer because they do feel and they do possess the ability to mourn and suffer. These men have to fight because “society” defines them to do so. Men’s emotional ability to suffer is the same to a woman’s, and they only reason they must fight is because their role in society is to do so. “ Men killed and died and died because they were embarrassed not to”(O’Brien, 21). These men must fight in a war to prove that they are truly a man and are strong enough to be considered “a man”. Later, they find out that courage doesn’t truly define a man, writing and expression fights harder than killing and fighting.
Men fight not because they are brave, strong, or fearless, but because they are programmed by society to do so. They fight so they don’t get the term “woosy” or unmanly. These soldiers are like programmed robots on a battlefield. These soldiers are programmed to shoot, to hurt, and to die. These men are afraid; they fear with all their hearts, but they fight to so they can live up to the term “masculinity.”
These men truly portray emotion and fear about death and dying. They are afraid what death is like, and start seeing themselves as simply pieces of meat. “ I start seeing my own body as chunks of myself. My own heart, my own kidneys… I can see the goddamn bugs chewing tunnels through me” (O’Brien 225). These men do not understand why they are out on the battlefield, but they see themselves as dead hunks of meat rather than living soldiers.
These soldiers also carry the heavy question of why there is war. “ You could blame war. You could blame the idiots who made war. You could blame God” (O’Brien, 177). The soldiers do not understand who created war and why they must fight in it. Human beings are gifted with the ability to use compromise and words rather than war. If we are so superior over the animal kingdom, why do we solve conflicts through the same animalistic attack system that animals use? Animals defend by blood and force, and so do “powerful human beings.” If we are so strong intellectually, why do we use war and not compromise? It is a question that not many know the steadfast answer to. War is a wasteland; war has very little purpose to these men out there. “ Kiowa got lost in the rain. He was folded with the war; he was part of the waste” (O’Brien, 153). These men who lost their lives died for war, a meaningless waste that swallows up the gift of precious lives. “ This whole war, you know what it is? Just one big banquet. Meat man: You and me. Meat for the bugs” (O’Brien, 223). The soldiers begin to see that war has no purpose but only cruel ways of proving an opinion, and sacrificing lives for the ability to prove a point of right or wrong, winning or losing.
This burden of weight concerning “why is there war” makes many of the soldiers to escape more weight carried through the senses. It is amazing how powerful memory connects to the senses. “ Various sounds, various smells… tasting the field in his mouth…(O’Brien, 171). Scent and sounds carries powerful holding to memory. These men greatly recall the scent of the “excrement field,” the scent of blood, and the sound of injured soldiers, and torrential rain. These burdens from the senses lodge themselves into the memory of man. These “senses” create memory of war in man, another heavy burden they remember. It is peculiar how small unimportant objects stay heavily remembered in the soldier’s mind. “ Those boots were one of those details you can’t forget, like a pebble, or blade of grass. You just stare and think, dear Christ, there’s the last thing on earth I’ll ever see (O’Brien,199).
Those small items were the last things seen by Tim when he was injured by bullet shot. Tim recalls those same boots when he sees them again at the end of the novel. “ I looked down at those boots: I remembered them from when I got shot”(O’Brien, 198). The power of memory and the recalling of small insignificant items prove to be of great weight and importance to the human mind. These memories tie in with great emotional impact. Like the man Tim shot with the star- shaped eye, he remembers that star shaped eye more than anything else. A small detail, but that defines the entire memory. It is the power of the human brain that stores certain visual or sensual details. The senses continue to define the weight of the war for Tim. Tom numerous times remembers in immense detail the man he killed. These men also start to feel how delicate they are as man, and that they aren’t strong and invincible, but rather feeble and delicate to something as small as a bullet. “ I felt it happen like a genie swirling out of a bottle. I was half in and half out. There were indications of a spirit world” (O’Brien, 214). This torturous weight-bearing memory is of Tim balancing on the brink of life and death. His spirit was trying to escape the horrors of war, but there was something horridly scary about the life after death. All of these memories, fears of death, and definition of masculinity through society help fully represent the weights of the soldiers that they carried.
So fully defined are the weights of the soldiers, but what helps these soldiers carry all of these burdens? These burdens are alleviated through the art of story telling. These stories allow these men to escape war, and to dream about their family and life at home. For Tim, he writes for his beloved Linda to keep her alive when she passed on from a brain tumor. There is a whole parallel that connects Linda to the soldiers lost in the war. The way Linda is portrayed in death mirrors the way the soldiers appeared in death.
“ Her arms and face were bloated. The skin at her cheeks was stretched out tight…”(O’Brien, 242). This parallels to the soldiers in death: “ They were all bloated…”(O’Brien, 243). This connection between the death of both Linda and his comrades gave him reason to write these war stories. He could bring Linda back through his writing. He could make her kiss him, hold him, and love him. Linda was alive when he wrote. The same goes for his comrades. They come back alive again when Tim writes stories when they were alive. He begins writing about Linda when he was nine. “ At nine I practiced the magic of stories” (O’Brien, 244). He realizes through writing, “ It is Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story” (O’Brien, 246). He keeps his childhood and his love alive through his writing.
The soldiers all carried immense amounts of burdens on their backs. Many of these men remained unsure of why they were fighting, dying, and suffering for war. These soldiers kept themselves alive through exposing their emotions openly through their war stories and writing. These men overrode the false tag of masculinity to relate to each other and help survive and stay strong as a unit. Without this realization, there would be the death of the soul, death of the mind, and death of humanity. And that alone, would be of weight too heavy for these men to carry.
Note: There are few books written that allows the reader to write a paper just because of the strong impact it leaves behind after its completion. This was not an assignment, but I felt it necessary to write a reflection of what these men carried.
Men are enforced to adhere to society’s definition of what is “being a man,” also defined as masculinity. Men are an enigma encrypted in a language different from the female mind; men still have a heart, a soul, and feelings with the same emotional abilities a woman possesses. The role of man has been defined by society, and this is what governs the role of man: no tears, no fear, and no display of emotion. Nothing but a solid concrete block defines the heart of an invincible man. O’ Brien’s The Things They Carried proves this well-known philosophy incorrect regarding man. O’ Brien incorporates this in his writing by exposing the great sensitivity and emotional complexity of man. In this novel, man learns through war that emotional burden and lack of emotional expression can be their greatest enemy. Through this book, man learns what properly should define masculinity. Sometimes a little love and emotion can prove what really molds a powerful man. O’ Brien’s writing reveals the uncertainty of why there is war, and why people die for war. Through the journey of the senses, and the power of human memory, these soldiers learn how to carry the burdens of war.
These soldiers suffered immensely through their emotions. Many men experienced remorse and blame over the death of a fellow comrade like Kiowa. Tim suffers immensely because Kiowa is lost in the sewage field. The haunting memory of Kiowa’s loss produces extensive brutality on the soldiers. These soldiers carried the memories of the men that they killed like the young mathematician with the star-shaped eye wound. Many times killing them just because they are required to out of proving themselves courageous. “ They carried all the emotional damage of men who might die, grief, terror, love, and longing. Those intangibles had their own mass… they carried the common secret of cowardice”(O’Brien, 21). These men suffer because they do feel and they do possess the ability to mourn and suffer. These men have to fight because “society” defines them to do so. Men’s emotional ability to suffer is the same to a woman’s, and they only reason they must fight is because their role in society is to do so. “ Men killed and died and died because they were embarrassed not to”(O’Brien, 21). These men must fight in a war to prove that they are truly a man and are strong enough to be considered “a man”. Later, they find out that courage doesn’t truly define a man, writing and expression fights harder than killing and fighting.
Men fight not because they are brave, strong, or fearless, but because they are programmed by society to do so. They fight so they don’t get the term “woosy” or unmanly. These soldiers are like programmed robots on a battlefield. These soldiers are programmed to shoot, to hurt, and to die. These men are afraid; they fear with all their hearts, but they fight to so they can live up to the term “masculinity.”
These men truly portray emotion and fear about death and dying. They are afraid what death is like, and start seeing themselves as simply pieces of meat. “ I start seeing my own body as chunks of myself. My own heart, my own kidneys… I can see the goddamn bugs chewing tunnels through me” (O’Brien 225). These men do not understand why they are out on the battlefield, but they see themselves as dead hunks of meat rather than living soldiers.
These soldiers also carry the heavy question of why there is war. “ You could blame war. You could blame the idiots who made war. You could blame God” (O’Brien, 177). The soldiers do not understand who created war and why they must fight in it. Human beings are gifted with the ability to use compromise and words rather than war. If we are so superior over the animal kingdom, why do we solve conflicts through the same animalistic attack system that animals use? Animals defend by blood and force, and so do “powerful human beings.” If we are so strong intellectually, why do we use war and not compromise? It is a question that not many know the steadfast answer to. War is a wasteland; war has very little purpose to these men out there. “ Kiowa got lost in the rain. He was folded with the war; he was part of the waste” (O’Brien, 153). These men who lost their lives died for war, a meaningless waste that swallows up the gift of precious lives. “ This whole war, you know what it is? Just one big banquet. Meat man: You and me. Meat for the bugs” (O’Brien, 223). The soldiers begin to see that war has no purpose but only cruel ways of proving an opinion, and sacrificing lives for the ability to prove a point of right or wrong, winning or losing.
This burden of weight concerning “why is there war” makes many of the soldiers to escape more weight carried through the senses. It is amazing how powerful memory connects to the senses. “ Various sounds, various smells… tasting the field in his mouth…(O’Brien, 171). Scent and sounds carries powerful holding to memory. These men greatly recall the scent of the “excrement field,” the scent of blood, and the sound of injured soldiers, and torrential rain. These burdens from the senses lodge themselves into the memory of man. These “senses” create memory of war in man, another heavy burden they remember. It is peculiar how small unimportant objects stay heavily remembered in the soldier’s mind. “ Those boots were one of those details you can’t forget, like a pebble, or blade of grass. You just stare and think, dear Christ, there’s the last thing on earth I’ll ever see (O’Brien,199).
Those small items were the last things seen by Tim when he was injured by bullet shot. Tim recalls those same boots when he sees them again at the end of the novel. “ I looked down at those boots: I remembered them from when I got shot”(O’Brien, 198). The power of memory and the recalling of small insignificant items prove to be of great weight and importance to the human mind. These memories tie in with great emotional impact. Like the man Tim shot with the star- shaped eye, he remembers that star shaped eye more than anything else. A small detail, but that defines the entire memory. It is the power of the human brain that stores certain visual or sensual details. The senses continue to define the weight of the war for Tim. Tom numerous times remembers in immense detail the man he killed. These men also start to feel how delicate they are as man, and that they aren’t strong and invincible, but rather feeble and delicate to something as small as a bullet. “ I felt it happen like a genie swirling out of a bottle. I was half in and half out. There were indications of a spirit world” (O’Brien, 214). This torturous weight-bearing memory is of Tim balancing on the brink of life and death. His spirit was trying to escape the horrors of war, but there was something horridly scary about the life after death. All of these memories, fears of death, and definition of masculinity through society help fully represent the weights of the soldiers that they carried.
So fully defined are the weights of the soldiers, but what helps these soldiers carry all of these burdens? These burdens are alleviated through the art of story telling. These stories allow these men to escape war, and to dream about their family and life at home. For Tim, he writes for his beloved Linda to keep her alive when she passed on from a brain tumor. There is a whole parallel that connects Linda to the soldiers lost in the war. The way Linda is portrayed in death mirrors the way the soldiers appeared in death.
“ Her arms and face were bloated. The skin at her cheeks was stretched out tight…”(O’Brien, 242). This parallels to the soldiers in death: “ They were all bloated…”(O’Brien, 243). This connection between the death of both Linda and his comrades gave him reason to write these war stories. He could bring Linda back through his writing. He could make her kiss him, hold him, and love him. Linda was alive when he wrote. The same goes for his comrades. They come back alive again when Tim writes stories when they were alive. He begins writing about Linda when he was nine. “ At nine I practiced the magic of stories” (O’Brien, 244). He realizes through writing, “ It is Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story” (O’Brien, 246). He keeps his childhood and his love alive through his writing.
The soldiers all carried immense amounts of burdens on their backs. Many of these men remained unsure of why they were fighting, dying, and suffering for war. These soldiers kept themselves alive through exposing their emotions openly through their war stories and writing. These men overrode the false tag of masculinity to relate to each other and help survive and stay strong as a unit. Without this realization, there would be the death of the soul, death of the mind, and death of humanity. And that alone, would be of weight too heavy for these men to carry.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
The Things We Carry
O precious love
In my heart you tarry
Your mien your soul
are the things that I carry
Sentimental are the bonds we've sewn
Cultivated from the seeds of our love
Nurtured by affection
The saplings we've sown
Schmaltzly spoken the words we've said
In our hearts
We've already wed
O perfect love your it is your heart that I carry
Two hearts become one
In our eyes married
I will carry a promise to soon embrace my hand
An eternal gift
The binding of man
We succumb to our love
In the form of a band
I carry him
When he starts to cry
I give him my comfort
I stay by his side
I hold him tight
His pain now mine
And we weather together
Till the pain subsides
The pain we carry
Through sorrow and strife
Our heart beats as one
A single life
To get lost in his eyes
Eternally hand in hand
The things that we carry
Shared by two hearts married
In language only our hearts could understand
In my heart you tarry
Your mien your soul
are the things that I carry
Sentimental are the bonds we've sewn
Cultivated from the seeds of our love
Nurtured by affection
The saplings we've sown
Schmaltzly spoken the words we've said
In our hearts
We've already wed
O perfect love your it is your heart that I carry
Two hearts become one
In our eyes married
I will carry a promise to soon embrace my hand
An eternal gift
The binding of man
We succumb to our love
In the form of a band
I carry him
When he starts to cry
I give him my comfort
I stay by his side
I hold him tight
His pain now mine
And we weather together
Till the pain subsides
The pain we carry
Through sorrow and strife
Our heart beats as one
A single life
To get lost in his eyes
Eternally hand in hand
The things that we carry
Shared by two hearts married
In language only our hearts could understand
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
