Almost Forgot!

While reading these fantastic short stories by O'Brien, I find myself noticing two themes more than others. Desire to escape, and Chaos and Order.
O'Brien portrays the horrors of war in a way that we everyday citizens can read and not cringe. I believe he does a great way of depicting each of the characters he includes. In the Things They Carried, O'Brien constantly shows how Cross wants to escape Vietnam and be with Martha back in the states. In this story, the lead character, Jimmy Cross, is fighting, not only an internal battle, but also a physical battle, the war.  In the story, O'Brien never wrote that Cross desired to leave Vietnam to be with Martha, but it was inferred throughout. It was made known that Cross carries two photos of Martha in his wallet at all times. The fact that Martha didn't take the photos himself drove Cross a little crazy. Cross's mind wondered to things like "who had taken the picture". I am sure that we can all relate to this. If a person that you "loved" sent you pictures that they did not take, I would think it to be reasonable to question who the photographer was.

In the story The Dentist, Curt Lemon demonstrates the theme chaos and order. The chaos part comes from the fear of the dentist for Curt Lemon. While throughout the entire book chaos and order is shown, this story is short and simple and shows the theme in a flash so-to-speak. Chaos also comes with inexperience, fear, and immaturity for these soldiers, for these kids essentially. They haven't had a real chance at being a young adult to the capacity of most young adults. Somethings have nothing do with that at all, such as this story of Curt Lemon. The chaos comes from the whole experience at the dentist, with the climax being Lemon passing out. He tries to act tough and just says "nobody messes with these teeth", but in reality, Lemon was extremely afraid. The order comes with Lemon manning up and getting his tooth pulled. There is order in this chaos though because Lemon decides to fake a toothache just so it can be pulled and he can say he did it. That was one hell of a way to prove himself to the rest of the soldiers.