Blog Post

In the book, The Things they Carried, Tim O’Brien describes Courage as one of the main themes of this book. Someone who has courage has to have lots of mental and physical strength. The definition is “the ability to do something that frightens one” This definition is described a lot throughout the movie because O’Brien went up the river and it was courageous. He was courageous because many people wouldn’t want to go to the war but would go and think there is nothing to do about it. But instead he is not going to go and do something others wouldn’t do. I think that O’Brien described it this way because he wanted to show the readers that to do what you believe in. O’Brien thinks that he was going to be judged if we joined the war because he believed in it but if he didn’t join the war people would thinks hes a coward.  I think he did a good job at describing courage in the book because it shows that Tim was courage’s for trying to make the right choice and doing what he believes in. In the book O’Brien says, “Even now, I’ll admit, the story makes me squirm. For more than twenty years I’ve had to live with it, feeling the shame, trying to push it away:” This describes courage very well and that he was courage for what he had to live with and he’s courageous to tell the story. Another quote by O’Brien is “All the eyes on me—the town, the whole universe—and I couldn’t risk the embarrassment…I felt myself blush. I couldn’t tolerate it.” This is showing that he is courageous because everybody is going to judge him whatever decision he makes. It would take courage to make a big decision like this. My definition of courage is to do something that someone else would be afraid of. Something courage someone could do is like running into a burning house to save somebody else. Most others wouldn’t do that because they aren’t courageous enough. Something in my life that was courageous was that once when I was working at Target I caught somebody trying to steal a pair of beats headphones in a suitcase that they were buying. I looked inside and saw them but the customer didn’t see me see them. When he wasn’t looking I called somebody over and they caught him. Most people in this situation would just let them get away and not do anything about it. That guy could have had a weapon on him and could have hurt someone if he knew he was about to get caught. Many people in this world now should have more courage. Some things happen and people won’t do anything about it because they don’t have enough courage to stop it. In this book Obrien had courage and had to decide between two hard decisions to make and Obrien described Courage very well throughout this chapter. Thank you for reading