“The same day that Curt Lemon was killed, the platoon stopped in a village square where a baby water buffalo lay. Rat Kiley went over to water buffalo and stroked its nose. He shot it in the left knee. He shot off an ear. Then he shot it in the hindquarters, the butt, and chunks of meat off the ribs. All the while, Kiley carefully aims carefully to hurt, not kill, the animal. After reloading and shooting the baby buffalo several more times, until only its eyes were moving, he cradled his rifle and went off to cry by himself. The platoon had just witnessed something profound, “a piece of the world so startling there wasn’t a name for it yet.” (Page 79) Sanders commented that Vietnam was a Garden of Evil, where every sin was fresh and original”
http://thebestnotes.com/booknotes/Things_They_Carried_OBrien/The_Things_They_Carried_Study_Guide08.html
Lemon was so emotional disturbed by the death of his best friend that was no true way for him to let out his emotions. The baby water buffalo scene in “The Things They carried” is very emotionally disturbing. It is a scene that arouses extreme astonishment. It is so brutally distressing that this soldier is touring an animal; and to make it worse it is a baby that repeatedly continues to try to stand back up and survive. Some life experiences are so traumatizing that there is no way to act. Lemon was probably not even consciously committing the act he was carrying out because he was so astonished by everything that was happening in his life. War is something that changes a person. After the living nightmares that soldiers have seen I can hardly believe that they are every able to recover. The even more astonishing part about this section of the book is that his platoon just watched. They had such a deep emotional connection because of everything happening to all of them, they understood. As horrifying as this was to watch, I imagine that is was almost a true depiction of sublime to these men. This baby water buffalo was being tortured, slowly killed. It was suffering loosing body parts slowly. These men related to that. They were watching best friends die, killing, fighting to live every day, and writing love letters that would never be responded to. Each man had a strong connection to the baby water buffalo. The difference was that its’ pain would end that night. Each man also related to the pain of Lemon. As he released all of his hatred, for a few moments each member of the platoon was Lemon doing the same thing. For a few brief moments, they were all releasing their anger pretending they had control, being the person shooting and the innocent being shot. It is horrifyingly disturbing and at the same time so incredible beautiful.
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