The Significance of Death

Death is a topic most people don’t want to discuss very often. In Tim O’Brien’s, The Things They Carried, and Toni Morrison’s, Sula, this subject is embraced fully and shows as a main theme in both books.

Death is usually something that comes abruptly and without warning. That is the very thing that makes it so frightening. To Shadrack, “it was not death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness of both” (Morrison 14). He feared this aspect so much; in fact, that he institutes something called National Suicide Day, in which it was everyone’s “one chance to kill or commit suicide” (Morrison 14). From The Things They Carried, Ted Lavender is also prepared to reduce such uncertainty. He carries extra ammo, and tranquilizers in hopes of ensuring his own survival.

With the unexpectedness comes irony. In Sula, the townspeople have high hopes that they will get the opportunity to help build the tunnel that the “thin armed Virginia boys, the bull-necked Greeks and the knife-faced men” (Morrison 162) got to build instead. On National Suicide Day they decide to march through this tunnel that they were kept from building and end up being crumpled by the rocks above. There is a similarly ironic death in The Things They Carried, when Kiowa sinks into the Earth. Being one of the favored characters, it is interesting that he was killed in the most grotesque way: drowning in a field of shit. Both authors seem to have the wish to get the message across about death’s erratic ways. It can come for anyone at anytime and there is no way to prepare for it. Even the most liked characters can die, and not necessarily in an honorable way.

“They did not believe that death was accidental—life might be, but death was deliberate” (Morrison 90). Clearly, death is sometimes intentional. Suicide is apparent with Norman Bowker in The Things They Carried, and with Hannah in Sula. In both instances, it is only after a feeling of unworthiness or unloving comes about inside them. Hannah, after feeling that her mother doesn’t love her (or at least like her) lights herself on fire and burns to death. Unfortunately, Eva jumps out the window almost dying herself to save her daughter, but it is in vain as Hannah dies anyway. Somewhat similarly, Norman hangs himself years after the war because he is consumed with loneliness and unworthiness. He is missed by his friends because in their eyes, he had no reason to feel unloved or guilty. Everyone needs to feel love; sometimes it becomes a tormenting factor. In both stories, the need for love drives people to take their own life because they feel that they lack affection in one way or another. The power of this emotion is apparent in both books.

Surprisingly, death does not always spring emotions in people; they become indifferent to it. When Chicken Little drowns in the river, a bargeman finds him: “He would have left him there but noticed that it was a child…He dumped Chicken Little into a burlap sack and tossed him next to some egg crates…”(Morrison 63). The boy is basically dehumanized by this act. In The Things They Carried, there is so much death every day that the men form immunity, “they kicked corpses. They cut off thumbs. They talked grunt lingo” (O’Brien 20). They authors could be trying to get reaction out of the reader; they want us to feel angered and ask ourselves, how could death be so ineffective in someone?

There are many deaths in both books. Sometimes it is ironic, sometimes it is deliberate, and sometimes it seems to be something trivial and repetitive. Tim O’Brien and Toni Morrison find ways to show the different sides of death and how it affects people. Readers can open their eyes to the suffering of the characters and realize that anything can happen.