Good Essay On Character Analysis For The Book The Things They Carried By Tim Obrien

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a novel and a collection of short stories related to one another. It talks of the war with a protagonist that shares the author’s name. However, perhaps the most interesting character in the book was Kiowa. He was American Indian and was raised a Baptist by his father who taught Sunday school. In the midst of war, Kiowa brought rationality and a sense of calm to the members of the Alpha Company.
Kiowa was kind to everyone, and it was apparent that he was Tim O’Brien’s closest friend, although it was never verbalised by either of them. When Tim arrived in the company, it was Kiowa who helped him with the transition. He would explain to O’Brien the things that go around the camp, like how the others joke about corpses. Although the other men teased him endlessly about his being religious and how it was strange in the midst of war, he never responded to them.
With Kiowa’s innate kindness, members of the company opened up to him about the things that worried them. It was to him that O’Brien talked about how he really felt about killing the North Vietnamese soldier. O’Brien also told Kiowa about his nine-year old first love who died of brain tumor. Through his conversations with Kiowa, O’Brien learned about the importance of communicating. In a sense, it was also because of Kiowa that O’Brien became a writer, to tell stories about the people he encountered especially during the war.
O’Brien was feeling so much guilt and grief after he unfortunately killed the Vietnamese soldier. With compassion, Kiowa comforted him to ease his emotional burden, something that no other member of the company would ever think of doing. It was a fact that some of them were rather insensitive about it, mocking the soldier that O’Brien by calling him names. Kiowa, on the other hand, advised O’Brien to take his time coming to terms about it, and rationalized that the soldier was also armed and would eventually be killed by someone from their group. This gentleness and deep understanding somehow illustrates how his presence in the midst of the war is incongruous but in a way necessary to lessen the gruesome image that the war depicted. Kiowa’s kindness also made it easy for the other members of the company to tell him about their burden in life. In fact, the night he was killed, an unnamed soldier was talking to him about the girlfriend he left behind, even showing Kiowa her picture. The soldier later on told in remorse how the flashlight that he used to show Kiowa the picture must have been the reason why Kiowa was seen and shot by the enemy, causing him to fall headfirst and drown under the sewage field.
Kiowa mentioned how he liked the feeling of being inside churches, illustrating just how deeply religious he really was. He always had inside his rucksack a bible, along with his father’s tomahawk and a pair of moccasins that he used to be able to walk silently. Although he did not always talk about it, he was bothered by the things that went on around him, especially so when the war started encroaching on religious territory. He believed that all churches should be given respect, and when his platoon decided to camp out outside an almost abandoned temple where two monks still resided, he greatly opposed it. He also agreed with Henry Dobbins in his belief that people should live with common decency and make an effort to live their lives trying to be good. This was why he commended O’Brien after he refused to shake the hand of a burnt old man who lost his arm as the other soldiers made fun of it.
In essence, Kiowa brought light to the otherwise dark mood inflicted by the war. He radiated kindness which is completely obliterated during war, and this kindness he extended to others in his troop. Where violence rule in war, he encouraged the other members to be less violent and exhibit a sense of respect to the victims and show decency to the people of Vietnam. But, when faced with the difficult decisions that war has forced upon them, he was always there to support them. These inconsistencies that Kiowa presented in the story made his presence in a war story dubious. He was, by nature, soft-spoken and peace-loving, and both these characteristics are out of place in war. However, upon closer scrutiny of the role he played in the lives of his troop members and the stories as a whole, his being in the story starts to make sense.
Kiowa was in part the neutralizer in the story, a reminder that where there is evil, goodness also resides. He was a prominent character that touched the lives of everyone and made an impact that some of the member of his troops felt even long after the war ended. This is the reason why when he died, the relationships of the members of the troop changed as well.
His death is something that could be considered senseless and sudden. For his company, it was considered the worst event brought by the war. Among those who were very much affected by the tragedy was Jimmy Cross, the lieutenant in charge of the troop. It was, after all his order that they camp in the sewage field after he already had a negative feeling about it. The morning after Kiowa’s death, Jimmy Cross lead all 18 soldiers to search for Kiowa’s missing body. While searching, Cross was already composing in his mind the letter that he was going to send to Kiowa’s father. In the end, he came to the conclusion that it was his fault that Kiowa was killed. He blamed himself for not removing the men from the field even after his impulse told him to do so. As a result, he lost a good man.
While the search was ongoing, one of the men made jokes and contrary to their common practice, they censured him and asked him to be sensitive. Cross spotted one young soldier weeping from a distance. It was the soldier that Kiowa was talking to the night before. He too was feeling guilty as he felt he was the reason for Kiowa’s death. In his attempt to establish a connection with the older soldier, he told him about the ex-girlfriend, even turning on the flashlight to show him the picture. The light showed Kiowa’s image to the enemy which lead to the shooting. The younger soldier then vowed to help find Kiowa’s body so as to get the last copy of the picture of the ex-girlfriend as well.
After the men found Kiowa’s body, they all felt relief and a sense of sadness for the loss of a good friend. However, after the body was taken, they tried to take their minds off Kiowa and even felt a sense of comfort that they were still alive even if Kiowa was not. This short-lived sadness that most men from the troop felt about Kiowa’s death was far from the grief that Bowker felt. Even after the war, he was consumed with grief and guilt for he believed that somehow he betrayed his friend. He was heavily burdened with this idea and he wanted desperately to tell someone about it, but he didn’t have anyone to talk to in his hometown. Bowker felt that no one will be able to understand how he felt, and that when Kiowa died he felt that he also died. As he was contemplating about what to do, he then resolved to tell his father about how he could have acted bravely for his friend but failed to do so. In the end, he asked O’Brien to write a story about it and when it didn’t suffice, he killed himself.
Perhaps the man who was deeply affected by Kiowa’s death was O’Brien. Not only was Kiowa a dear friend to Tim, he was also in a way a mentor. It was through their conversations that inspired Tim to write about his thoughts as a way of communicating. He felt that after telling Kiowa about his first love’s death, he was already able to come to grips with it. However, after the war, he realized that he has yet to move on from both his lost young love and Kiowa’s deaths. There was refuge in telling their stories and those of the other men but he was still unable to let go of the deaths of the two important people in his life. In the end, upon his return to Vietnam, he brought his daughter with him to the river where Kiowa was killed. He hoped to tell her the story and pass it on. There in the dried river, he left Kiowa’s moccasins to the spot where he thought Kiowa died as a way of saying goodbye and letting go of the guilt.
At the beginning, Kiowa has always been kind and understanding of the troop members’ different characters. He understood that everyone was reacting differently to the horrible incidences brought about by the war. For his part, he believes that there should be a sense of respect to the people killed and affected by the war as they were just victims. However, when Ted Lavender died, he was the only one who was able to make jokes about it. He witnessed how Ted just fell like a rock, how “the poor bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down.” This showed how despite his being religious, he was also affected by the war negatively. In hindsight, he admitted that he was just so surprised of what happened that he didn’t think of how he really felt about it. He just reacted the way he knew how to comfort himself. At night, though, when he was about to sleep, he confessed to his own fear of death and tried to take his mind off the other gruesome things that they are forced to witness in the war. He was scared of dying, and yet he was not afraid to fight with his troop. He clung on to the sense of security that his bible gave him, the thing he carried that represented both his fears and his strength. The story told of how Kiowa evolved from a religious man to a mature man strengthened by his religion and fears, openly and courageously accepting whatever challenges the war brings.
When O’Brien killed the young Vietnamese soldier, Kiowa was there to offer support to him. He tried hard to pull him out O’Brien out of his guilt and encouraged him accept it as something that can’t be helped. In his desire to make O’Brien feel better, he distributed the guilt that his friend was feeling among the members of the company. “The guy was dead the second he stepped on the trail. Understand me? We all had him zeroed. A good kill – weapon, ammunition, everything.” Like himself, he was teaching O’Brien how to be accepting of the things that are happening around them, of the things that they had no control of. Kiowa might be a religious man with a deep respect for people and life, but he was also smart and courageous and knows how to protect his life despite his fear of death.
Kiowa touched the troop members’ lives when he was still alive and became a constant emotional support to them as they encountered difficult problems during the war. They appreciated and respected him even when they found him strange in the field because of his religiosity and kindness in the middle of war. However, they looked for him whenever they needed someone to share their problems with and he was always there to listen to them. Kiowa had the gift of compassion that made even the war-hardened men trust him. With him, the men knew instinctively knew that they will not be judged.
He served as the voice of wisdom in the troop, teaching the men to be less vicious even if the war made it a little impossible. Kiowa understood the brutality of war and that lives had to be taken in order to win it, however he also understood that those who were innocent should be treated with respect as they too were victims. Together with Henry Dobbins, he reminded the men of the importance of making an effort to be good in life. He taught them even in war, there are certain things that had to be respected and one of those was the religious places.
Kiowa had a deep well of understanding emotions and even though he had seen how the other men could be crass in their treatment of some of the victims, he also understood the emotional trauma that they must have felt when they were left with no choice but to hurt and kill others in order to protect themselves. He helped them understand the rationale behind their actions and aided them into coming into terms with it. Although at times he got ribbed by the men for his kind image and how it was misplaced in a land embattled with war, they listened to him and his advice.
Kiowa was the voice of calm and goodness in the troop, the silent force that pulled together the men who were otherwise divided by indifference and the desire to survive. It was then an outrage to see have him die in the most senseless way possible. Despite his kindness, he was no coward. For him to get shot without getting a chance to defend himself was simply pointless. To make matters worse, he drowned in a field of sewage which was a very undignified way to die. When his body was recovered and he was seen covered with mud green mud, it gave a sense of injustice that such a good man should die a sorry death. However, there is no justice in war where lives are taken indiscriminately and Kiowa was no different. He became a number in the list of casualties who were remembered with fondness but at the same time were thanked that it was them who were taken.
Despite the regretful way things ended with Kiowa’s life, his character in the stories was undeniably potent and influential. With his signature kindness, compassion, kind heart, understanding, and deep sense of religion, he created a web that connected everyone in the story. Although each of them had different stories to tell, Kiowa’s faith and wisdom brought them to the surface and were given different perspectives. His role in the stories will be a constant reminder that even in the presence of constant darkness, there could be a light that everyone can share and let shine through. It may not be the best way to end the life of a good man, but the emotions that it evoked from the readers such as I only intensified the desire to live a better life. This way, Kiowa’s legacy continues and is passed on to those who have open minds. Kindness goes a long way, and in Kiowa’s life, he had men like Dobbins, Bowker, the unnamed soldier, and especially O’Brien to attest to it.