In his story The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien ostensibly tells a tale about the war in Vietnam that, in actuality, is a mirror of the human condition exposed through the horror of human conflict. In so doing, O’Brien uses an old philosophical theme first set in writing by Aristotle. Through the angst of conflict, O’Brien succeeds in demonstrating the essence of being. Aristotle pointed out that to be complete in essence; a being must be “in the is, and in the is not” (Aristotle 1050). That is, a whole human is the product of both reality and fantasy which work in tandem to create the world in which we live. The “is” of reality comes at the time of reaction; the “is not” occurs at the moment of thought. One is the product of survival; the other is the product of hope. In the building of his story, with all the realities and the fantasies, O’Brien creates the perfect postmodern war story.
O’Brien brings conflict in two pieces, to which any reader can relate. In his attempt to bring “truth as a faithful portrayal of unique experience” (Wesley 1), he grabs the readers and drags them into the horror that was Vietnam.
The closest experience . . . that we as readers of Vietnam literature are ever likely to have that might approximate something of its trauma will undoubtedly lie, along with its authors, in that "liminal state" between what we may already know too well, and what we sense is hardly there for us to imagine. (Jarraway 695)
O’Brien uses the objects of war to define men at war: “In addition to the three standard weapons—the M-60, M-16, and M-79—they carried whatever presented itself, or whatever seemed appropriate as a means of killing or staying alive” (O’Brien 472). Weapons were the means of survival, the method of existing in the “is,” of reality. They included every imaginable resource available as survival was questionable without a weapon for every circumstance. It is these items that deal with the fact of combat, with the “is” that has been with humans for millennium.
The Things They Carried is not a familiar story of war and conflict where weapons become characters as in the traditional storylines with which we are so familiar. O’Brien has a new vision in store for the reader, a view that grabs the heart if not the soul, a concept that is a combination of reality and fantasy. It is the imagination (the “is not”) that must be supported to keep a combat participant human. Acknowledging that, O’Brien covers his men with objects that are not of war.
Vastly more important than the objects of war these images are of the personal things each carried. They alter the definition each character. Cross, with his pictures and letters from “the world”, his daydreams of his girl, Martha, his memories of a meeting that ended badly with little hope of continuance, his good luck pebble that has always served him well; “Dave Jensen carried a rabbit’s foot. Norman Bowker . . . carried a thumb that had been presented to him as a gift by Mitchell Sanders” (O’Brien 476), just to name a few. Every man had his peculiar object, objects that meant a connection to a world to which they no longer belonged. They also carried stories, and they carried their lives. Each held the life of the other in their hands. Combat makes for close-knit groups. The specter of death sits heavy on those who fight.
The stories come intermittently throughout the script. Sometimes they travel freely, sometimes the stories hit hurdles and are interrupted, but the stories never finish. It is the stories within the text that provide the mystique that guides the beginning and the ending of The Things They Carried. Stories about old friends, stories about girls, stories about just about anything other than combat, and sometimes even stories about that. The stories carry no cohesion and the “ambivalence of the stories in The Things They Carried” (Calloway 250) reinforces the direction of the story to uncertainty.
The Things They Carried becomes a story of cycles. One such cycle is a period of calm that turns to fear at a moment’s notice. At a time of weakness, when Cross is daydreaming about Martha, one of his men, Lavender, is shot in the head and killed. It is an instant of clarity. It brings back the reality; the “is,” of combat. Three times Kiowa, a member of the squad, repeats the sight of Lavender’s death. Three times the others in the squad are reminded of what they had seen. Three times, Kiowa is told to “shut up” (O’Brien 478). Not speaking about it dims it as the story marches on. They tell jokes, (O’Brien 479), they wonder what will happen the next day, and they talk about the little things in life questing for that touch with the “not is,” with the world of fantasy. Anything to get the image of Lavender falling, “Boom, just like that” (O’Brien 478) out of their heads. It is not a pretty picture, but it is a picture that the reader can relate too.
One of the techniques O’Brien uses is the “use of easily identifiable physical and emotional effects—the chill of apprehension and the desire for laughter to relieve tension” (Wesley 3). The audience identifies with the combatants through shared experiences that make them human. The readers cannot remove themselves from the commonality of what they are reading. Thus, the experience becomes a part of the reader’s essence, making the reader whole through the suffering of those in the story. O’Brien does well showing that significant point where men “at” war become men “of” war. The reader knows that everything will change, change to the world where the “is not” exists is unimportant because survival demands that the soldier lives in the “is.” What O’Brien does not show, and intentionally so, is how this is just a leg of the journey. When soldiers change from men at war to become men of war, they are no longer influenced by the concept of what “is not,” of the world of fantasy; within can no longer hide from the reality of their surroundings. It is when deadly combat experience is thrust upon men again and again that they become real warriors that do not remember what it is to be of the world. O’Brien accomplishes this through the action of not finishing the story, of utilizing the formula of postmodern literature that deconstructs rather than completes the experience. There is not a happy ending, indeed, for many of the soldiers that experienced Vietnam there is no ending at all.
In postmodern or deconstructionist theory one can no longer assume the outcome; no one can assume the existence of what they see. “There is an incontinuity where the world is a field of contingency, not natural order, that the identities of truth that [are taken] for granted are unstable” (Rivkin, Ryan 261). Deconstructionism runs rampant throughout The Things They Carried. Memories impinge upon the present. Reality confines memories. Weapons represent the combatants. Familiar items represent the combatant’s humanity. Deconstructionists watch for binaries where meanings focus with opposites, such as in “is/is not” or “war/peace,” or “reality/fantasy.” The Things They Carried is ripe with binaries. Weapons/personal items, conflict/friendship, confusion/understanding, life/death, fantasy/reality. The list is only limited by the number of readers as each will come to find their own binary.
Weapons, in The Things They Carried, are metaphoric defense mechanisms. The mind will always find a defense if allowed to do so. The personal items are a connection to home, to the possibilities of life, to the hopes, to the desires, to the needs of each member of the squad. Conflict is the bringer of discord which is only sufferable in a communal sense, each soul being supported by others. Understanding is an elusive hope that raises its head only to be dashed by conflict creating an imbalance that has no ending. Life is a precious item that drives the combatants on, a dream that cannot happen; death is a rest from the toil of war. Fantasy is not, reality is. There is no ending to the turmoil of combat. O’Brien demonstrates that at great length and to tremendous effect by eliminating the possibility of home.
“Exile in The Things They Carried is rendered as a multiply located mode of experience; it is a condition both singular and plural in its manifestations” (Chen 80). The combatants of the squad know that they cannot go home, there are only two exits, survive for the duration or die. The little cards and pictures and home tools are links to home. Reading The Things They Carried brings a realization that it is “not about recovering from trauma or resolving the conflicts contributing to or created by the war in any permanent way, [it is] about accepting indeterminacy and learning to live not through Vietnam but with it” (Chen 80). There can be no finishing act as there is in the romantic war story. There is only the continuing conflict, the ongoing suffering, and the continuing exile from a home vaguely remembered.
At the end of The Things They Carried, Cross burns his letters from Martha as a realization that there can be no return to something that is not. He comes to his “is,” his reality; divests himself of his “is not,” his fantasy, for the survival of the people about him. His is a story that continues with a sign of peace as he transforms into a warrior and leader of men.
“As with exile, central to the notion of displacement is the idea of home” (Chen 83). Without the fantasy of home, there can be no feeling of exile or displacement. High emotions about home run early in The Things They Carried, about the hearth, about the family, about the friends, and about the girls. But, because of the exile, the displacement from home, and the need to survive, it is the “is not,” the fantasy of home, that must be given up for the “is,” the reality of conflict.
Works Cited
Aristotle, and Hippocrates George Apostle. Metaphysics. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1966. Print.
Calloway, Catherine. ""How to Tell a True War Story": Metafiction in The Things They Carried." ProQuest Central. Critique, Summer 1995. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.
Chen, Tina. ""Unraveling the Deeper Meaning": Exile and the Embodied Poetics of Displacement in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried." ProQuest Central. Contemporary Literature, Spring 1998. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.
Jarraway, David R. ""Excremental Assault" in Tim O'Brien: Trauma and Recovery in Vietnam War Literature." Modern Fiction Studies. The Purdue Research Foundation, 1998. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.
O'Brien, Tim. "The Things They Carried." The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction: 50 North American Short Stories since 1970. Ed. Lex Williford and Michael Martone. 1st ed. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. 469-83. Print.
Rivkin, Julie, and Michael Ryan. "Introduction: Introductory Deconstruction." Literary Theory, an Anthology. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 257-61. Print.
Wesley, Marilyn. "Truth and Fiction in Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone and The Things They Carried." ProQuest Central. College Literature, Spring 2002. Web. 11 Mar. 2016.
