Great piece of work, I just wanted to share some of my thoughts and analysis on a novel of James Joyce.
Soldiers at war carry artilleries, workers in the city carry they bags, some other people carries a whole lot of things visible to everyone, when it comes to emotions, feelings and destiny, no one can’t see how much it weighs. The intangible weigh, is sometimes heavier than any other physical baggage that we carry. Having to carry our life, destiny, can be heavy and having a lot in our mind can actually affect our faculty to discern the good from the bad. The intangible weigh can be the emotional stress carry by anyone.
Conscience is a sensitive regard for fairness and justice. When you carry something in your conscience, there is a sense of unfairness or unrighteousness. At this time, the conscience plays a reminder role and here is where the intangible weigh affect any decision you want to make because of what happened in the past, ‘’ from the night you did that terrible thing you haven’t really existed to me’’ (Fitzgerald, p.277). In this passage, the idea expressed by the author creates a bridge between the desire to forget and what the conscience brings on the table. When someone has hurt you, it is hard to fairly judge them since there is still mistrust and suspicion. In the case of a man who has done something that affected his entourage in a negative way, and he knew that, his conscience plays his main role, reminder. Not only our conscience bother us, but just a single memory that comes in mind after we witnessed something that we could not let go. First step at war, everybody came with their personal memories such as family affections, loved one left behind and more importantly the wish to return to them alive. Through days and nights, their memories begin to fade away and new memories come along with what they see and do.
All of the things they carried were a great burden, but none more so than their emotions. All of them carry great loads of memories, fears, and desires. These intangible objects are an essential part of them and therefore cannot be put down, but carried and endured, ” They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die” ( O’brien, p 613). Moreover, as Jimmy Cross comes to realize, “It was very sad…the things men carried inside.”The weight of these abstract items is as real as that of any physical ones, and unlike those physical objects, they are not easily cast away. This story shows that everything has weight, including thoughts, memories, and emotions. Of all the emotions, love is perhaps the heaviest, closely followed by fear. Everyone knows the emotional baggage that comes from a love unreturned. It weighs down the mind making thought processes hard, and causes emotional stress. Dreaming and distracting daydreams are other symptoms of such a diagnosis.
Emotional stress is often triggered by a dramatic event that puts a person’s nervous system under severe strain. This could be an event such as losing a loved one, seeing someone die, or being put into a life-threatening situation. An event such as this can put severe strain on a person’s mind and nerves and the incredible strain can cause changes in the way that the brain works. In fact, a severe emotional strain could even cause someone to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. However, emotional stress does not arise from a sudden shock. It can also arise from a total emotional strain that adds up to an overwhelming strain that prevents a person from thinking about anything other than the problems that seem to have no solution,” It spreads quickly, even to people whose jobs aren’t threatened,” he said. ”People get so disturbed just at the thought of losing their jobs that the stress they’re under begins to affect their morale, productivity and physical well-being recently stress in the workplace has been much more in evidence during what amounts to a national mergers-and-acquisitions binge.”(New York times, web) Then, as the stress mounts, the mind is left in its own cocoon of stress that can only call attention to itself, cutting the person off from the world outside. Thus, emotional stress can lead to detachment, and inability to concentrate, fatigue, and even memory problems. In many from veteran of Vietnam and Iraq, this emotional stress led to a post-traumatic disorder.
As jimmy Cross-decided to get rid of every memory that was slowing him to do his job, he burned Martha letters and pictures, blaming himself of Lavender death. He may have got rid of the physical part of his problem but he could not forget the death of his men, ” Lavender was dead, you couldn’t burn the blame’’ (p.614). When you had witnessed something like death , it is hard to forget it. many soldier returning to their home after being at war for year have sometimes one memory that can affect them every day, which medical doctors call post traumatic stress disorder, ”Sgt. John Newport left Iraq months ago, but he is still struggling with what he experienced there. He keeps playing one scene over and over again in his mind. It took place when he was in his Humvee, passing a convoy of trucks that was hauling tanks. One of the truck drivers tossed a bag of M&Ms at a bunch of Iraqi kids. A little girl went to pick it up, but there was a truck behind her. The driver didn’t see her, and ran her over. “The hardest part for me is that she was about the same age as my daughter is,” Newport told “Nightline,” with tears welling up in his eyes. “After that truck had run her over, you couldn’t even tell it was a person.”( abc News, web). Even though he was not responsible of anything that happened, his memory brings that back to him, and just the thought of it make him tear up, how much heavy such image can weigh on a man shoulder? When fear ads up to those feeling of anxiety and hurting memory, the weight carry by each on get heavier.
When a man decides to go to war, for some of them, it is a proof of courage and patriotism. Behind that courage shows to the rest of the world, deep inside, there is fear, fear that no one can see and feel because the soldier want to show pride and glory,” they were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it” (612). Just the thought of people knowing that they were scared to die, will be even more scary than death itself. There is more pressure on a man who wants to show his strength to the outside world, than a man who accepts his failure and move on. Most of the people consider those war veterans as heroes and model for the young kid, but when we visualize what their life after war is, a lot of them would not recommend it to anybody else especially if their traumatism is incurable. Moreover, their fear was mostly the thought of dishonor and shame. But making a choice can be those soldiers issue.
For insistence, at the age of raison, when the young man and the young woman mature, and start to make decision, they all face the problem of making a choice. Which choice is good for them? Some call it a rational choice, for other it can be the right choice. However, no one them made a choice with their reason because it was a duty, a duty to defend the country they love. Tim O’brien in the ”on the rainy river” says: ” my conscience told me to run but some irrational and powerful force was resisting, like a weight pushing me to war. What it came down to, stupidly, was a sense of shame.” Tim O’brien tells his story and what he had experienced at war, can totally relate to every single soldier today, back home or still oversea, fighting.
The things men carried inside along the way were heavier than any other physical item they carried for survival. The weight of the abstract will eventually hurt them physically since they could not put it down at any time. Each of us, carry something, something that no one but you can feel the weight and the stress it causes. If those soldiers had a choice to decide which things to carry during that period, they would have chosen the tangible because they can escape it weight when they wanted.
-
