Remembrance

People need to be remembered. It doesn't matter whether they did something important for the nation or whether they just made you laugh that one time when you were down. Every single person deserves to be remembered in some way. The easiest way to remember someone is through memories. Memories immortalize a person long after his or her body has perished. They enable a person to cling onto all that the person has done for them. Another way to remember people is through memorials. Memorials are a common way to acknowledge people that did something important. However, most people don't realize how sentimental memorials actually are. They go much deeper than just the surface; the location, symbols, design, etc all represent something that is significant to the death of those that are memorialized. Other things such as everyday objects, pictures, people, aromas, etc are all ways to remember people. This can be connected to a theme in The Things They Carried. In the novel, O'Brien believes that the emotions that war causes need to be remembered. A theme in this novel is that it doesn't matter whether the story is true or not, as long as the emotions are the same, the people will be remembered. The theme further exemplifies a way to remember: through emotions. O'Brien makes the reader feel all the emotions that soldiers feel when they go to war, and in turn, it makes it so that there is a connection between the soldier, real or not, and the reader. The USS Arizona memorial in an example of remembrance. Even though the Pearl Harbor attack occurred decades ago, the memorial still stands to honor those that died. The USS Arizona, like many other memorials, has many subtle attributes that exhibit little tidbits of why they should be remembered. For example, the design of the USS Arizona shows the weakening of the United States after the attack, but it also shows how they rebounded and regained prominence again. Also, the people that are remembered are associated with why the United States entered World War II. Remembering is so important because it allows the legacy that people left to be carried on by others.