What else could I pull from these two stories to compare and contrast?I am currently writing a compare and contrast essay in comp II for "War" by...

In The Things They Carried, I would
choose "The Man I Killed," "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," and "The Lives of the
Dead."  All of these stories are connected to Tim's view of death and how he is actually
writing to women, his ideal readers, as part of a coping process.  He knows that if he
can get a woman (his daughter, Linda, Lemon's sister, the "dumb cooze," or Martha) to
understand war and death, then he has succeeded as a man, a soldier, and
storyteller.

Most of the men, after they have killed,
internalize their feelings, whether it be guilt, anger, depression, or loneliness.
 Bowker's the best example: no one in his hometown listens to him, not his dad, not his
ex-girlfried.  And so he kills himself because of a lack of communication.  For O'Brien,
the best way to deal with death is to talk about it and, better yet, write about it.
 Not only should one write about it, but he should write to someone who might even hate
him for ever being a solider and killing in the first place: a woman (like Martha or
Kathleen or Lemon's sister).

You have to decide why O'Brien
does this: why are women his ideal audience for dealing with death?  Are women better
listeners?  Does the wife, mother, and daughter comfort and forgive better than the male
equivalents?  Are women able to give soldiers who've experienced death a better sense of
purpose?  Is the female community at home, ironically, stronger than the male one that
goes to war?

When a soldier dies, all the soldiers in the
company loose something.  After O'Brien killed "the man I killed" he seems to have taken
on the guilty feelings that Cross took on with Lavender's death.  The part of O'Brien
that was killed with him, whether it be innocence or inexperience, was not replaced with
something, like courage or guilt. O'Brien's point is that war first leads
to a death of one's identity, and the lack of identity that follows is a vacuum that may
be filled with guilt (Cross), fear (Lavender), an overdependence on camaraderie (Kiley),
a rebellious spirit (Bell), or nothing at all
(Azar).