19. Dealing with Death

In the final section of The Things They Carried, O'Brien recalls his first experience with death in the army and his first experience of death ever at the young age of nine. It really bothers me how the soldiers treat the dead bodies. "In Vietnam, too, we had ways of making the dead seem not quite so dead. Shaking hands, that was one way. By slighting death, by acting, we pretended it was not the terrible thing it was. By out language, which was both hard and wistful, we transformed the bodies into piles of waste," (225-226). Reading the things that the soldiers said to the farmer just really got to me. That definitely is no way to treat someone who just died. I suppose they had to do that in order to deal with killing so many people, but I just have a hard time finding that okay, especially them referring to bodies as "waste." They were real people, not garbage. I definitely know I would not last a day in any war. I would never be able to handle the things I would see and hear and experience.

15. Pedro Romero

In Chapter 15, the week-long fiesta begins including the bull-fights. Jake is introduced to Pedro Romero, the young bull-fighter. There is something different about Romero compared to the other bull-fighters because he "never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line. The others twisted themselves like corkscrews... to give a faked look of danger... Romero's bull-fighting gave real emotion because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements..." (171). I believe Pedro's character could possibly be symbolic of the life of Jake before he entered the war, mainly because of how fascinated Jake seemed to be with him. Before joining the army, Jake was "straight and pure," like the young bull-fighter. He was not yet "twisted". The same goes for Brett I believe. Before she lost her true love, she remained "straight and pure" as well. But once the war took place, she was shaken, similar to how the old bull-fighters changed their ways after a fellow fighter was killed. I think this symbolism really showed how and why people changed so much in the 20s. Hemingway really came up with a great symbol to explain the actions of Jake and his friends. I feel that I have a much better understanding of the characters as a result.