Summary:
The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, is a generalization of his own experiences in Vietnam although the story itself is a work of fiction there is still much to be learned from it. Through the actions of soldiers in The Things They Carried we can begin to explore the effect war has on the human condition and the toll it plays on their minds.
Andre Kratzer
Professor Huston
English II, 151 - 80
7 March 2005
The Things They Carried
The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, is a generalization of his own experiences in Vietnam although the story itself is a work of fiction there is still much to be learned from it. Through the actions of soldiers in The Things They Carried we can begin to explore the effect war has on the human condition and the toll it plays on their minds.
Some of the themes in the book, The Things They Carried, are bravery and what true bravery is, truth and how the manipulation of truth is sometimes necessary and how truth can be molded or distorted through memory, and lastly, the demoralizing effects of war on the human condition. These themes are all played out through the actions of the main character, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross.
Half the story takes place in Vietnam and the other half inside the mind of the narrator. Through the narrator, we see that the men all struggle with bravery and often pretend they don't feel as much as they do to avoid looking silly in front of the other men. Jimmy carried a pebble and letters from Martha to help comfort him. Other men carried pictures, or rabbits feet, some take tranquilizers, some smoke pot, but all to help comfort them.
"Awkwardly, the men would reassemble themselves, first in private, then in groups, becoming soldiers again. They would repair the leaks in their eyes... light cigarettes, try to smile, clear their throats and spit and begin cleaning their weapons."(O'Brien 860). From this passage we see how the men hid their feelings from each other. Often when coming close to death the men defuse the tension by joking, saying things like "that's sure as hell was close" or "I almost shit my paints"(O'Brien 860) and pretend like the war doesn't bother them. All the solders are trying to portray a stereotypical image of a "tough guy" because that's what they have been culturally conditioned to think. When in fact bravery is the ability to stand up for what you believe in despite what others think. For instance, it takes a lot more courage to allow yourself to cry in front of your peers. A coward hides his emotions because he's afraid of what others might think.
Jim also struggles with the nature of truth and feels that events can become more real in a story than in reality, as if by turning the memory into a story makes it more concrete and committed to one version. And in the process of telling the story all the men can come to an agreement of what happened and add to it. Sometimes things happen so fast in life that they don't really happen until you go over them in your mind and set down the facts and details, finalizing the version in your mind of what happened. And if you are totally unable to remember an event then it's like that event never happened, in this way the mind can triumph over matter. When they are put into a story that doesn't change and has facts and little details to give the story weight and a sense of reality. Also the story allows them to control reality and they block out things they don't want to remember so they can make life bearable.
Lastly we see the effects of the war on Jim. We see how guilt tears him apart. When Ted was shot Jim felt that if he wasn't thinking about Martha then somehow he might have saved Ted. Ted was shot by sniper fire; there was nothing Jim could have done. However, this guilt turns a lighthearted man into a killer. Many of his fellow soldiers are unable to adjust to civilian life after the war. School or work seems trivial or even silly in comparison to life and death missions. Everyday, veterans commit suicide or suffer from mental illness. Jim is lucky that he wasn't driven totally insane by the war, but he will be plagued by the things he saw and did in Vietnam for the rest of his life. This is the price we pay for war; this is the price they paid for us. There is no good in war. As Jimmy Carter said, "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good."
Works Cited
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Rpt. in Legacies: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Nonfiction. Ed. Elizabeth Cruce Alvarez. Second Edition. United States: Thomson Wadsworth, 2002. 850 - 864.
This is the complete article, containing 765 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
