1 Historical View of The Things They Carried A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing things that men have always done. 1 Tim O Brien s book The Things They Carried is a compilation of stories and memories of a soldier who served in Vietnam. It is a very honest view of the brutality of war. Unlike many fictional historical novels, the author does not glorify anything, and portrayed it exactly how he saw it. As a Vietnam Veteran, O Brien offers an in-depth look into the psyche and experiences of the soldiers before, during, and after the war. Although the average American might never be able to fully understand what those who served in Vietnam experienced, O Brien gives his readers a glimpse into the brutality and humanity of war through the experiences of Alpha Squadron. The Things They Carried is comprised of a series of memories and experiences. Like most chains of memory, O Brien s is not always cohesive. To the casual reader it could be easy to become confused by the order in which the stories are placed. In reality, the order of the stories is what makes them so effective. O Brien begins his book by jumping right into the basic drudgery of war. What makes this compelling is his descriptions of the items that each soldier carried with them daily. Although O Brien mentions the physical things that they carried, he focuses specifically on the emotional things that they carried. He explains this when he states: They carried the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, longing these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. 2 The most obvious example of this is the items that First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried with him. 1 Tim O Brien. The Things They Carried. NY: First Mariner Books, 2009, 65. 2 Ibid., 20.
2 Although Jimmy Cross carried a few tangible items with him, such as couple of pictures of the girl he loves, the things that O Brien focuses on are the intangible things; his love for Martha, his feelings of inadequacy as a leader, and his guilt when a man in his command is killed. The experience that exemplifies Jimmy Cross intangible baggage is the death of Ted Lavender. O Brien explains that Cross often spent time daydreaming about Martha and, as a result, often found it difficult to pay attention to the task at hand. When Ted Lavender was fatally shot, Cross was daydreaming about Martha. Because of this Cross felt terrible guilt for his lack of vigilance and blamed Lavender s death on himself. O Brien states, He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war. 3 As is stated later, Cross never forgave himself for Lavender s death, even after the war ended. For Jimmy, and for many others who fought in war, the things that he carried in war weighed on his conscience years after the physical battles ended. In 1968 when Tim O Brien received his draft notice in the mail, he was a young man that could never see himself fighting in a war. As the fear of going to war weighed on his chest, he had a choice to make: go to Vietnam, or dodge the draft by running to Canada. Panicked by such a difficult decision, Tim made it almost to the border before stopping at some cabins where he stayed for a few days. There the proprietor of the place, who O Brien calls the hero of my life, 4 helped him to make his decision by taking him on a boat to the border of Canada. While recounting his experience of staring at the border and trying to decide what to do, O Brien asks the reader, You re twenty-one years old, you re scared, and there s a hard squeezing pressure in your chest. What would you do? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you 3 Ibid., 16. 4 Ibid., 45.
3 think of your family and your childhood and your dreams and all that you re leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did? 5 It is difficult to imagine a single person who would not feel fear and apprehension at the prospect of being forced into a war that they did not agree with, let alone fully understand. Even the bravest of men would shrink at the prospect of facing their own mortality. Ultimately, O Brien decided, not out of bravery or valor, but out of embarrassment, to face his own fears. I would go to the war I would kill and maybe die because I was embarrassed not to. 6 It is interesting that so many people hated and ridiculed those who fought in the Vietnam War when in many cases, as with O Brien, they were given no other choice. For many the choice was either that they fight in the war and be called a baby killer by the more liberal population, or that they dodge the draft and face the stigma of being a traitor and a coward. Neither option was good or right but that was the state of the nation during that time. It is sad that after facing so many horrors in Vietnam and just doing what their government asked of them many veterans were shunned or ignored. It is only recently, thirty to forty years after the war ended that the government is making more of an effort to help those men who gave so much of themselves. One of the chapters that was the most heart wrenching and thought provoking was The Man I Killed. O Brien begins the chapter with the shocking imagery of the dead man: His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole. 7 Throughout the chapter O Brien cannot take his eyes off of the dead man in front of him. Between vivid descriptions of the corpse and Kiowa s urgings of Tim, it s a war. 5 Ibid., 54. 6 Ibid., 57. 7 Ibid., 118.
4 The guy wasn t Heidi he had a weapon, right? It s a tough thing for sure, but you got to cut out the staring 8 O Brien speculates about what this man did before the war. He imagines that this man was good at mathematics and as a child was teased for it. He imagines that this man had a wife waiting for him at home who will never see him again. O Brien struggles with the fact that he killed someone, a person, and he cannot take it back. By adding the descriptions of the man s life before his death O Brien gives a face to the enemy and proves that they were just as human as him and his comrades. Humanizing this man makes this chapter extremely effective because it reminds people everywhere that there are always common people on both sides of a war, people who do not want to be there any more than you do. Another extremely effective chapter was Speaking of Courage. In this chapter Norman Bowker had returned from the war physically, but struggled to return from it mentally. Norman wanted to be able to share his experiences with the people around him, such as his father and his ex-girlfriend, but he cannot bring himself to do it. He drove monotonously around the lake playing out scenarios in his mind that he knew he would never be able to accomplish. He knew that they would never be able to understand how Kiowa died and how he was not able to save him. This thought seems to haunt him. Although he had left the war and the battles physically behind in Vietnam, the war had not left him. It is interesting how often history seems to dismiss the Vietnam War, but obviously, to the people who fought in it, it is still as real now as it was then. O Brien explained that the transition from war to peace was relatively easy for him because he had been talking about it virtually nonstop 9 through his writing. Bowker did not have this outlet and instead bottled his experiences and pain deep inside himself. As a result he ended up hanging himself in order to 8 Ibid., 120. 9 Ibid., 151.
5 relieve his pain. Would he be considered a casualty of war? Would all the men and women that continue to fight psychological battles after the physical battles have ended be considered casualties of war? War is damaging, although many people only see the physical effects. Even O Brien in his chapter Notes failed to recognize the fact that someone could be suffering long after the war ended. But as evidenced by the experiences of Jimmy Cross and Norman Bowker it can be difficult to separate from traumatic experiences of the past. Twenty years after the end of the war O Brien returned to Vietnam with his daughter and made a specific effort to visit the spot where Kiowa died. In a way this trip was a healing trip for him because he was able to see what Vietnam had become after facing so much tragedy and death. He states, Twenty years. A lot like yesterday, a lot like never. In a way, maybe, I d gone under with Kiowa, and now after two decades I d mostly worked my way out. A hot afternoon, a bright August sun, and the war was over. 10 Returning to the place where he had faced so much trauma helped him to come to peace with his experiences and end the war that at times had seemed like a dream and at other times had plagued him. The Things They Carried by Tim O Brien is a book about the true horror of war and as the title suggests, the things that soldiers carry during the war and continue to carry after the war has ended. By providing a view of soldiers before, during, and after war O Brien gives the reader a greater perspective on what those who served in Vietnam felt and faced during the war and what they continue to face today. 10 Ibid., 178.
6 Bibliography O Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. NY: First Mariner Books, 2009.