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“The Things They Carried” How does death affect the behavior of people? Although death affects everyone’s behavior differently, knowledge of one’s imminent death is a main force behind behavioral changes. This knowledge causes emotions that motivate people to act in ways that they normally would not. In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” the knowledge of death and its closeness causes the men in the story to alter their behavior by …

…of changing as the men did in the story, separate themselves, lose compassion, and kill, because someone else told them to. The orders gives the person an excuse that “I was just following orders,” well in a sense that is what the men were doing in the story. In the story they were following the unwritten orders of war and they changed their behavior because they were told to by the war. Bibliography n/a