Exploration 4 by Carlyn

One theme that is prominent throughout the last 5 chapters in The Things They Carried is that people learn to cope with loss in different ways. One example of this is that in the war the soldiers would often joke around after witnessing someone's death. An example of this is when they came across the corpse of an old man, facing up. One by one, the soldiers "grabbed the old man's hand and offered a few words and moved away" (O'brien 214), as if greeting him and showing respect to their elder. This sick kind of humor is one of the many ways that they were able to cope with all of the death that they encountered on a daily basis. Although it still disturbed Tim, others were able to laugh it off because they were so used to it by then.

While reading The Things They Carried, one thing I was curious about was the unemployment rate of veterans. I initially was curious about this because I could never imagine going away and experiencing something as life-changing as a war, then coming back and having a normal job again. This question was prompted while reading the chapter "Speaking of Courage", because I wondered if there were many other people who, like Norman Bowker, found it impossible to return back to their old lives. After researching, using dol.gov, I found that the unemployment rate for veterans in the United States is currently at 3.8%. This number was a lot lower than I expected, which was a very positive surprise. I also discovered that the rate has been dropping over the past few years.