Sonny is not the only one Singing the Blues

             Not many things in life can wear down on a person emotionally as a guilty conscience. A person's conscience tells them when they are about to do something that they will likely regret. Both Lieutenant Jimmy Cross from "The Things They Carried" and the narrator, Sonny's brother, from "Sonny's Blues" experience a guilty conscience during their respective story.
             Having a guilty conscience is knowing you should do something or knowing you shouldn't have done something. It weighs down on you like a paperweight on a stack of loose paper. Having something unsettling on your conscience can cause a person to loose sleep and feel miserable throughout the day. Being depressed and sad are two emotions that go hand-in-hand with feeling guilty.
             Sonny's brother and Lieutenant Cross share in this horrible feeling. They each go through extensive periods of time where their feeling of guilt bears down on them. The narrator and Cross put other people in jeopardy while they are battling with their problems. However, by the end of each story the respective character learns to overcome his guilty conscience and save the people around them, though in different ways.
             The guilt felt by Lieutenant Cross is one that most people could not even fathom. To lose someone under your watch doesn't make you just feel guilty, but it can make a person go crazy. Ted Lavender, who was killed on his way back from relieving himself in the brush, was one of Jimmy Cross's men. "Lieutenant Cross gazed at the tunnel. But he was not there. He was buried with Martha under the white sand at the Jersey shore. They were pressed together; and the pebble in his mouth was her tongue. He was smiling" (O'Brien 338).
             One of your first duties as a leader of a group of soldiers is to always be aware of what is going on and to protect your troops. Lieutenant Cross failed to do this for a ...

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Sonny is not the only one Singing the Blues. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 09:08, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/9842.html