What Does The Slaughterhouse Symbolize

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In The Things They Carried there was many types of symbolism. One type of symbolism is the slaughterhouse. It symbolized that the war was a slaughter. It gives a sense of thought of what they had to do to get through the war. If they came into contact with the enemy they had to slaughter them like in a slaughterhouse. When Tim O’Brien got back from the war years later he went back to the sewage field. He told his daughter it was a vacation trip. In reality it was for him to go back to where Kiowa had died. He striped down to his underwear and went into the sewage field to put Kiowa’s moccasins where he had died. It shows symbolism because the war was shitty. "The truth," Norman Bowker would've said, "is I let the guy go." (Speaking of Courage.127)