Quarter 2 English Benchmark

Analytical Essay:

Love, hate, courage, and fear - all of these are emotions that a human can feel. When a person is in or going into a war, or even an personal battle, they encounter a plethora of feelings. Shame and embarrassment may be principle emotions that they experience. These negative feelings can be forces that propel a character into discovering their true identity because their reaction pushes them to discover new things about themselves. In the sentimental and intimate book, The Things they Carried by Tim O’Brien, soldiers fighting in the Vietnam war experience shame and embarrassment which pushes them into growth and new discoveries.

At the age of twenty one, Tim O’Brien was just graduating from college, he was Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude of his class, and he had a full scholarship for graduate studies at Harvard. Suddenly on a June day, he received a draft notice that would halt the course of his life. So he tried to run away to Canada in order to escape deployment. “Even in my imagination, the shore just 20 yards away, I couldn’t make myself be brave. It had nothing to do with mortality. Embarrassment, that’s all it was. And right then I submitted. I would go to the war. I would kill and maybe die - because I was too embarrassed not to.” (page 59) Because Tim was embarrassed of what people would think of him, he decided to respond to the call of duty in Vietnam. This choice pushed him to figure out his identity, who he truly was. In Vietnam, his learned that he never strongly opposed the war to the point that he wouldn’t go or flee to Canada. He found out that he was a man with feelings. He felt bad about making fun of dead bodies. He also could never forgive himself for killing a man. Ultimately, Tim’s feelings of embarrassment led him to discover new things about himself.

Soldiers are often portrayed as heroic men and brave comrades in movies, stories, and etc. However, Tim O’Brien describes them as men afraid for their lives. “For the most part they carried themselves with poise, a kind of dignity. Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn’t, when they twitched and made moaning sounds…They would touch their bodies, feeling shame, then quickly hiding it.” (page 19) Usually one would think that soldiers are always brave and heroic. However, they are very scared. When they are afraid in battle, they panic and duck for cover. When peace arises, they are ashamed that they got scared, but they find out that they are still alive, and that is all that matters.

The lieutenant of Tim’s platoon, Jimmy Cross, was not mentally present in the war, even though he was physically in the war. He was present in his imagination with his love, Martha. He would dream about her day and night, longing to be with her. But that all ended when one of his soldiers died because of his negligence. “In part, he was grieving for Ted Lavender, but mostly for Martha and for himself, because she belonged to another world… and because he realized she didn’t love him and never would.” (pg. 17) Lieutenant Cross blamed himself for Ted Lavender’s death because he was so busy fantasizing about Martha. Not only did he feel ashamed and embarrassed that this happened, but he was also felt very sorry and grieved. Because of this he decided to cast Martha out of his mind, which forced him to become a stricter and better lieutenant. On marches he would impose stricter disciple, he would be careful to send out flank security, he would keep them moving at a proper pace and interval, and also would demand the men to clean their weapons. He also accepted the blame for what happened to the soldier that died because of his negligence. Being ashamed helped Lieutenant Cross become a better commander.

In an interview about Tim’s intentions behind the book, he talks about how war is an instant catapult to pressuring a character to change. “In a war story, there are life and death stakes built in immediately, which apply just by the framework of the story. There is a pressure on characters that in other kinds of fiction one would have to meticulously build.” Some of the pressures that the characters face in war cause them to change. Shame is a pressure that was presented in the book. Many of the soldiers felt shame which caused them to mature and develop into better soldiers and men. For instance, an on field medic, Bobby Jorgenson, was ‘incompetent and sacred’. When Tim O’Brien got shot in a battle, he was too sacred to operate on him. He lay there bleeding and almost dead, while Bobby was staring at him in fear and terror, unable to move. It took him ten minutes to finally touch Tim and when he did, he had already lost a lot of blood. Months later after Tim recuperated and could no longer fight, he saw Bobby again and they talked. Bobby was ashamed, to the point of having nightmares about him lying on the ground. So he deeply apologized for what he did. This shame pushed him to mature and become a better medic. In the future, he got pass his fears and helped keep a soldier, named Morty Phillips, alive.

Shame and embarrassment are often emotions that causes someone to change. They help push a character into development because their reaction allows them to discover new things about themselves. The book, The Things They Carried, perfectly captures a ones development from shame to maturity in the setting of combat.

Works Cited for Analytical Essay:

• O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction. New York: Broadway, 1998. Print.

• "Tim O'Brien Article #3." N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Jan. 2015. <https%3A%2F%2Fscienceleadership.instructure.com%2Fcourses%2F862%2Fpages%2Ftim-obrien-article-number-3%3Fmodule_item_id%3D66187>.

Narrative Essay:

My heart was pounding. Ba boom. Ba boom. My knees were shaking and violently grinding against each other. Creek, snap. Creek Snap. My lungs were rasping for breath. Heww huu. Heww huu.

When I first started running, it was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I was young, dumb (I thought), and slow. Every time I took a step, my feet felt like they were running barefoot on a floor of nails. It felt like someone was stabbing me with a two-edged dagger in my stomach, and my calf muscles felt like they were being viciously ripped away from my bones.

Because of the pain that I suffered, I became too embarrassed to run. I would compare myself to those who were better and more elite than me and notice how they would never feel any pain. I thought that I was some kind of awkward child because my body was so weak and prone to pain. So I wanted to stop running.

“Mrs. Dunda, I want to quit,” I told my coach.

“Why?” She asked.

“Because it’s painful,” I said in frustration.

“I don’t think you should though.”

“Well I am.” I stormed out of the room.

So that was the end of my running career. Everyday when I came home after school, I headed to the refrigerator, grab a ton of food, ate, and sleep until I was full. This routine became a habit. Go home. Head to the refrigerator. Eat. Sleep. l loved doing this everyday because it was a great way for me to calm my nerves after a stressful day at school. After a month of my gluttony, I gained a ton of weight. I would struggle to put my jeans on, my muscles turned into fat tissue, and I always felt tired. That was the point when I really felt embarrassed because I was no longer the small child I used to.

I tried to everything to lose the weight. I would go on Youtube and follow along with workout videos. I tried almost every diet in the book, from the smoothie diet to just eating a bunch of vegetables. Then I resorted to not eating at all. I would starve myself all day until dinner time, where I would just push the food around on my plate. I wanted to be skinny again, but nothing was working. I considered to run again but I was too embarrassed to feel the pain.

A few weeks went by full of depression because I was fat. So I resorted to my last option: running. It was so hard to take that first step but I did. Soon I found out that when everyone starts running, they feel intense pain, however, when you continue to run, your body is conditioning itself and you no longer feel pain. As I kept running, the pain went away. I became so good that I ran a marathon. Then I kept on running, that I ran my second marathon.

All of the embarrassment that I felt lead me to an shameful season of my life, full of wasted time and a lot of gained weight. But my embarrassment pushed me to become a better athlete and accomplish something that most people will never do.