“The Things They Carried” seems like a simple story concerning the items carried by soldiers while in Vietnam. But in the real sense, Tim O’Brien uses the stories to focus on the terrible conditions of Vietnam as well as the death of one soldier. He believed that the things men carried inside, and those they did or the ones they felt they had to do was so sad (O’Brien 57). It can be described as a powerful meditation by the Vietnam soldiers that is somehow fictional and fact. Besides, the author created a protagonist as a fictional character and named him after himself through which he relays his real emotions hence challenging the reader to think the story is fictional when it could be true. All in all, O’Brien believes that “a true war story should not be entirely about war but about the related experiences during the war” (Holm n.p.).
Common Structure and Themes
“The Things They Carried” is more of human experiences than the Vietnam War. Besides, O’Brien argues that “in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true” (O’Brien 362). Despite the war being horrible, insane and formless, he feels that the reader needs to have a more historical and compassionate perspective by capturing the inner conflicts by “moving beyond the battlefield” and instead making a story about their experiences (O’Gorman 291).
a) The Art of Storytelling
The typical structure and theme of the stories is the act of telling the stories. It is done as a form of emotional release while expressing the memories of the past. Almost all characters in the stories seek some kind of resolution. For instance, Lt. Cross thinks of Martha, a former girlfriend of his and recalls her memories as well as imagines what could have been if they were together. O’Brien uses a form of storytelling known as “pretending” to describe Lt. Cross’ longings and underscores their importance by emphasizing on the physical artifacts such as Martha’s photographs and letters, hence characterizing Lt. Cross as the bearer of the possessions and the love for Martha. Jimmy Cross experiences the distracting fantasies of Martha that they became so intense that he was distracted when Ted Lavender was shot. He then realized that “such unraveling of gender duality is dangerous” (Smith 39). With the death of Lavender, O’Brien made visible the tension between Lt. Cross imagined fantasies and his participation in the battle. Cross’ conflicting thoughts warn the reader on differentiating the truth from fantasy when understanding the stories. He may have destroyed the physical artifacts that belong to Martha. But he still carried her memory inside now added with the burden of guilt and grief.
b) War and Love
O’Brien uses the theme of war and love to articulate the tension between the two. This idea is very clear with Lt. Cross, who believes that his love for Martha caused Ted Lavender’s death. He literary feels that he allowed love to come between him and his duty as a soldier. Also, O’Brien went to Vietnam because of love. Apparently love made him do terrible things, and he preferred to risk rectitude and conscience and not risk losing love (O’Brien 46).
Fact and Fiction
The title story of the novel dramatizes the memories of the soldiers during the Vietnam War. They are characterized as “grunts” or “legs” figuratively meaning those who carry burdens that may be photographs, tranquilizers, responsibility, and shame. The story about Lt. Cross and his platoon smoothly shifts from fact to fiction such that the reader is needed to understand clearly the meaning of the two worlds to be able to define reality. He introduces the reader to both concrete and imaginary things that are illustrated with almost scientific precision. He even mentioned the “most insignificant details that were not worth mentioning” seemingly to convince the reader of the concrete certainty and reality of the things they carried (Kaplan 45). Besides, O’Brien describes the experiences of the grunts through what he carries and not how he carries on. Lt. Cross was the top ranked soldier among the others, so he did lighter duties and carried lighter things like the compass, binoculars, code books, and maps including his 45 caliber pistol. Alternatively, Lavender carried heavy objects that included a helmet, the flak jacket, several pounds of ammunition, tranquilizers, toilet paper, and water. He also carried “unweighed fear” that apparently was infinitely dense. But fear is intangible and contrasts with the other specified weights he carried and “fear seems to be the heaviest of all his burdens” (O’Brien 162).
The soldiers are referred to as grunts because of what they carry. Guns, ammunition, water, flares, and rations hold them together as a group, and everyone depends on the other to share what they carry. Therefore, the physical things they carry make them one as a group but they are also men and have things they carry that differentiate them from one another. They have objects that they feel comforts each one of them individually hence leading to the alienation from others. For instance, Rat Kiley is a medic who carries M&Ms often meant for bad wounds. This fictional load he carries signifies the intimate knowledge he has of death hence the distance he creates between him and the other soldiers. Fear was Lavender’s heaviest burden, and although he shares the crippling fear with others, he uses tranquilizers while others do not. By carrying his medicines, his fear became apparent thus distancing him from the fellow soldiers (O’Brien 41). Lt. Cross’ strong love for Martha led to his imaginations away from Vietnam that he felt paralyzed. He later burns Martha’s photographs and letters since he blamed himself for the death of one of his soldiers but then realizes that he still carried her memories inside. Therefore, the physical artifacts they carried created the illusion of collaboration and unity whereas the individual objects that are grouped as the fragile collective comprise of the invisible things the carry inside through emotions and meanings (O’Brien 117).
O’Brien places the real and imaginative events side by side as well as the physical and notional burdens of the soldiers. For O’Brien, “there is no sound sense of truth and reality when it comes to war” (Holm n.p.). Instead of being heroic like other Vietnam literature, “The Things They Carried” uses gritty realism to attempt to relate to the intimate details of the lives of the Alpha Company members. The most private details include the bodily and material conditions of the soldiers while in Vietnam. It appears that their efforts had no meaning since they were engaged in endless matching with no purpose simply for the sake of it. The experiences were severely physical that” reduced the soldiers to just bodies” that were in Vietnam for the sake of it (O’Brien 98). O’Brien describes the things they carried as ordinary and metaphorical to make their experiences seem somehow unreal. He first listed some mundane items they carried then he went beyond the real world where they “carried the sky and the entire atmosphere including gravity, humidity, the monsoons, and the stink of decay and fungus” (O’Brien 102). O’Brien is evidently trying to use the extraordinary events to indicate that the soldiers carried a lot of weight on their shoulders that even “gravity found them too heavy” (O’Brien 59).
The weight of the things they carried was too much for them that they began to dream of “freedom birds.” They began to imagine themselves as the things they carried and not the grunt. Among the things the soldiers carried, the freedom birds were both real and unreal since it was meant to be more that just a plane but a real bird that can fly high where there are no heavy loads to carry. The soldiers probably imagined a life without anything to bear where instead they were the ones carried and returned to innocence. But in the end, not all their burdens were carried away since Lt. Cross still carried the weight of responsibility to his people and the burden of shame and grief for Lavender’s death. He realized there was no way to be entirely free from the things he carried so he decided to make the weight bearable by burning Martha’s photographs and letters to put aside some of the unnecessary burdens. In a way, O’Brien meant that for one to survive at war, he needs to let go of the feminine side since “survival depends on excluding women from the masculine bond” (Smith 17). However sad it may seem, it is a necessary sacrifice when at war.
Conclusion
The stories in “The Things They Carry” are all controlled entities but they are all interdependent on the other, and they even have common themes. In all of them, there is the use of fiction and truth. O’Brien uses does not feel contended in merely stating the facts, but he creates a technically false story that truthfully portrays war and relays it to the reader in an emotional manner. Therefore, this novel is not centrally about Vietnam, but about the experiences of the soldiers during the war.
Works Cited
Holm, Catherine Dybiec. "Critical Essay on 'How to Tell a True War Story'." Short Stories for Students. Ed. Carol Ullmann. Vol. 15. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature Resource Center.
Kaplan, Steven. "The Undying Certainty of the Narrator in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried." Critique 35.1 (Fall 1993): 43-52. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Joseph Palmisano. Vol. 74. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center.
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1998. Print.
O'Gorman, Farrell. "The Things They Carried as Composite Novel." WLA: War, Literature & the Arts 10.2 (Fall-Winter 1998): 289-309. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Joseph Palmisano. Vol. 74. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center.
Smith, Lorrie N. "'The Things Men Do': The Gendered Subtext in Tim O'Brien's Esquire Stories." Critique 36.1 (Fall 1994): 17-40. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Joseph Palmisano. Vol. 74. Detroit: Gale, 2005. Literature Resource Center.
