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Literary Devices
Definition of Alliteration
Alliteration is a figure of speech in which the same sound repeats in a group of words, such as the “b” sound in: “Bob brought the box of bricks to... read full definition
Alliteration is a figure of speech in which the same sound repeats in a group of words, such as the “b” sound in: “Bob brought... read full definition
Alliteration is a figure of speech in which the same sound repeats in a group of words, such as the... read full definition
The Things They Carried
Explanation and Analysis—Freedom Birds:
Toward the end of "The Things They Carried," O'Brien introduces the reader to one of the soldiers' shared fantasies: freedom birds. In a long paragraph, which teems with metaphor, simile, imagery, and alliteration, the narrator describes bird-like jets that carry the men away from Vietnam, "beyond duty, beyond gravity and mortification and global entanglements." While this fantasy clearly appeals to the soldiers for a number of reasons, it revolves around a core dream: that of being carried rather than carrying.
In the passage, the plane is metaphorically described as a bird:
At night, on guard, staring into the dark, they were carried away by jumbo jets. They felt the rush of takeoff. Gone! they yelled. And then velocity—wings and engines—a smiling stewardess—but it was more than a plane, it was a real bird, a big sleek silver bird with feathers and talons and high screeching. They were flying.
This dream, full of light, movement, and sound, contrasts with its origin point—a soldier standing still in the dark, quiet and alone. The diction and tone seem to take off with the plane. Additionally, the passage also contains several instances of soft alliteration: jumbo jets, smiling stewardess, big sleek silver bird. As the passage continues, the dream becomes increasingly fantastical and the soldiers' relief turns into glee.
They laughed and held on tight, feeling the cold slap of wind and altitude, soaring, thinking It’s over, I’m gone!—they were naked, they were light and free—it was all lightness, bright and fast and buoyant, light as light, a helium buzz in the brain, a giddy bubbling in the lungs as they were taken up over the clouds and the war, beyond duty, beyond gravity and mortification and global entanglements.
The alliteration continues here, with a number of words starting with the letters l, b, and f. With a similar effect to the alliteration, O'Brien uses a simile to liken the soldiers' emotional and physical sensations to light and lightness. By placing war, duty, gravity, mortification and global entanglements in a single category with the clouds, he gives these intangible things a physical existence. For the soldiers, the ultimate freedom is escaping duties, obligations, and conflicts by flying up above them.
In the rest of the passage, the narrator describes the soldiers' "restful, unencumbered sensation" as "riding the light waves." Eventually, they find themselves above the United States:
[...] sailing that big silver freedom bird over the mountains and oceans, over America, over the farms and great sleeping cities and cemeteries and highways and the golden arches of McDonald’s, it was flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher, spinning off the edge of the earth and beyond the sun and through the vast, silent vacuum where there were no burdens and where everything weighed exactly nothing
The visual image of the men sailing the freedom bird above mountains, oceans, farms, sleeping cities, cemeteries, highways, and beyond the sun is one of the most fantastical images of The Things They Carried. It offers a notable contrast to the rest of the story, in which the men trudge along, weighed down by the war and all of the tangible items they have to carry. The narrator emphasizes, however, that it is only "at night" that the men are able "to give themselves over to lightness" and experience the sensation of being "purely borne."
Related Themes:
