Thursday, October 25, 2007
O'Brien: Response Opportunity #8
Tim O'Brien is giving us a particular view of war in this story and seems to encourage certain responses from his readers to such a view. For your response, make an argument about what view of war he is showing us, what reactions you think he wants to elicit, and how he goes about doing so.
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In my argument of Cross’s view of war I want to consider the aspect of personal emotion and how despite the fact that they are in battle they are all still human. What I found interesting about this story is the fact that Cross is a 22 year old leading an entire troop and he is suppose to be the soul eyes for the entire regiment; yet, he allows personal emotion to dismay his judgment. Every character that you consider carries around something that ties them back to their emotions. Cross carries the photographs, letters, and pebbles from Martha, Kiowa carried an Old Testament from his grandfather, Lavender has his steroids, Mitchell Sanders a thumb of a dead war victim and Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriends panty hose around his neck just to name a few. The key between all the men was that they knew they were out there to do a job but still kept some memory of home.
In the case of Cross’s though, his view of war was much displaced because he allowed his mind to be filled with thoughts of Martha. Cross was quite young he managed to not know how to separate his personal emotions from his duty which jeopardized the lives of all of his men. On countless occasions through O'Brian paints a very vivid picture for you as to where Cross’s head is many times. Let’s take for example the pebble. It was a small pebble that stood for together but separate. Throughout many lines of the story Cross dotes on this pebble he even goes into great detail so as to tell us that Martha carried it around in her breast pocket which is position close to the heart. While in battle he puts the stone in his mouth and closes his eyes and has a fantasy of being on the beach with Martha. He even goes on to say that he can taste the salt water so that we get this view of this man who is really into his feelings for a woman who shows and has no love for him at all.
O'Brian does a phenomenal job of showing us the field’s view of war. When looking at the story from the viewpoint of emotion you feel two distinct feelings. First you feel anger thinking that he is out there wasting time and jeopardizing lives, then, you come to a more realistic view and realize just like us he is human and cannot go out there and turn off his emotional connections. The question then arises though is this acceptable? At first I said no way do I want a young solider out there who can’t keep his head focused then it dawned on me, what else they have to turn to. This was the one person and all of her memorabilia that kept Cross sane and we saw the drastic change the day Lavender was shot.
The author’s tone changes when he was making reference to Cross he made a very monotone lifeless style of writing. Earlier when referring to anything with Cross and Martha he gave vivid detail to each and every action but when it came time to purge he rout of his system he makes mention that he burned the letters and picture but would still have it engrained in his mind and in reference to the stone as the reader we actually do not know what he does with it because he says I guess I will just swallow it. Unfortunately now though, every time he thinks back to Martha in her white volleyball shorts he will think of the image presented to us by Kiowa of his man being shot in the back of the head going down like concrete due to him not being able to find the proper place and time to display and reminisce on his personal attachment. Toward the end especially on the last page I picture Cross coming out of this war like a Vietnam Vet, very scarred and afraid to love and actually not knowing how to. He suffered a great deal but his suffering was only momentarily because both images will sit with him and the realization that personal emotions ruined his judgment.
"Kids At War"
According to Tim O’Brien, wars are driven solely by pride. In his short story “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien seeks to expose the core of why young men kill other young men. It’s not a soldier’s pride in his country. It’s not a soldier’s pride in his family. It’s not for world peace or for a better tomorrow. The reason young men fight and kill and die in battle is because of their pride in themselves. As strange as it may sound, an American soldier would rather kill someone that he has never met, whom he will never know well enough to hate or even dislike, just to avoid being called “a coward”. O’Brien’s soldiers, as he put it, “died so as not to die of embarrassment”.
O’Brien stresses how young and imperfectly human the soldiers are. A prime example of this would be Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s obsession with the junior English major from New Jersey named Martha. The very first paragraph describes his unrequited love for her at great length and this remains a significant theme throughout the story. Even though he is responsible for his own life and lives of his entire platoon, he wastes precious time daydreaming about Martha. His decisions every day have a massive impact on whether the soldiers in his platoon will survive the war, yet Lieutenant Cross is more worried about whether or not Martha is a virgin. This says a lot about his character and about soldiers in general. Because Jimmy Cross is just a young man, he doesn’t know how to deal with his feelings for Martha. He is in love, perhaps for the first time, and is having a very normal human struggle with love and heartache. At one point in the story, when Lieutenant Cross is starting to realize that his love for Martha is endangering the lives of his troops, O’Brien writes: “he could not bring himself to worry about matters of security. He was beyond that. He was just a kid at war, in love. He was twenty-two years old. He couldn’t help it.” It’s okay for a man in his early twenties to be in love. Is Lieutenant Cross wrong for letting his love for Martha captivate his thoughts, or is the war wrong for interfering with his love affair with Martha? O’Brien is hoping that his readers will choose the latter.
The things they carried are significant because they symbolize two things at the same time: instruments of death and reminders that the soldiers are ordinary people. O’Brien lists in great detail all the weapons, ammunition, and explosives the soldiers carry. He also lists all the ordinary items that they carry, like a starlight scope, the New Testament, condoms and dope. These extra items serve as reminders that these soldiers are ordinary people, kids really, in a world of hurt. The other things they carry are their emotions and anxieties. This is ultimately the focus of the story. “They carried their lives”, O’Brien writes toward the end of the story. The idea is that the things they carry are beneficial and detrimental at the same time. The tools and weapons they carry are essential to their survival. But if they carry too much junk, or love, they could end up dead – “zapped while zipping”. Because of the things Jimmy Cross carried, Ted Lavender was killed.
O’Brien’s is not a glorious picture of war. A battle doesn’t seem worth fighting when the purpose behind it doesn’t even matter to the soldiers. O’Brien’s purpose is not to make American soldiers seem like cowards. He is just calling them what they are – kids. The American soldiers in Vietnam weren’t fighting for freedom any more than the VC were fighting because they actually believed in the ideals of communism. Young men kill each other to avoid being looked upon as cowards. This principle being the driving force behind wars that claim millions of lives might seem silly and pointless because that’s the response that O’Brien is looking for from his readers. This story is meant to convey a unique anti-war message through the eyes of the soldiers themselves.
Humanization of the Soldier
O’Brien’s purpose in writing “The Things They Carried” is to humanize the image of the American soldier in Vietnam. His goal is to reduce the emotional distance between the reader and the infantrymen participating in the war. He attempts to elicit feelings of empathy for the soldiers by portraying them as ordinary men thrown into extraordinary circumstances.
During the Vietnam War, American television sets and radios were inundated with accounts of crimes committed against civilians (namely the My Lai Massacre), leading many to view the soldiers as remorseless killers. O’Brien tries to counter this attitude by depicting the soldiers as scared young men struggling to come to terms with the violence surrounding them. He portrays them not as monsters but as unwilling actors performing before a critical international audience, lacking the psychological preparedness needed to help one cope with the horrors of war. After providing a long list of weapons made available to the soldiers, O’Brien writes, “They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried” (76). He goes on to state that it was not courage or blood thirst that brought them to Vietnam, but a fear of being labeled a coward, of failing to avoid “the blush of dishonor.” The author calls this “the heaviest burden of all” (81). O’Brien hopes that the portrayal of the American soldiers as confused and overburdened young men will cause the reader to feel a sort of shared humanity with them, and therefore be more sympathetic and less judgmental.
As a result of this depiction, the narrative bridges the visceral gap between the soldier and civilian. O’Brien’s goal of humanizing the servicemen includes dismantling the attitude of separateness felt by the American populace. This remoteness is personified by Martha, Lieutenant Cross’s love interest back home. He explains that “she wasn’t involved” with the war, and the reader picks up on an “us over here/them over there” dichotomy experienced by both the soldiers and civilians (82). However, the author states that Cross was “just a kid at war, in love,” reminding the reader of his humanity (78). In making the soldiers more relatable as human beings, O’Brien works to decrease the assumed emotional distance between those stateside and those fighting in Vietnam.
The author goes about doing so by first presenting the physical burdens shouldered by the soldiers, then transitioning to the emotional burdens they had to bear. Initially, he lists such things as rations, equipment and weapons that are easily quantified and categorized. Then he goes on to describe the less concrete psychological things they carried, which are in a sense much heavier, since they cannot be thrown off for comfort like their other equipment (79). “The intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity,” O’Brien writes (81). “They all carried ghosts” (77). The author summarizes by explaining that “for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least one single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry” (79).
By illustrating the immensity of their personal encumbrances, O’Brien forces the reader to empathize with the American soldiers in Vietnam. “They carried their own lives,” he writes, and “the pressures were enormous” (79). O’Brien renders the reader unable to emotionally distance himself from the soldiers by portraying them as average, everyday men doing their best to maintain their composure (and sanity) in an unimaginably physically and psychologically taxing environment.
In O’Brian’s The Things they carried I believe that he is trying to show us the view of the war from the common soldier’s standpoint. I believe that he is trying to show us that the war is different for every person fighting in it and that’s why they all carry different things.
It seems to me that O’Brian is saying that everyone is scared and that’s why they have their personal effects to help them deal with the fear. He says that everyone was scared but even more scared to admit it. The Indian has his grandfathers Hatchet to remind himself of home and what he has waiting for him when he gets there. Ted Lavender carries tranquilizers and good dope so that he can get his mind off of being scared and out of the war. Cross carries the pictures, letters and pebble from Martha and it literally puts him in a daze and he doesn’t notice the things like he should around him. I think O’Brian does this to make us realize that the soldiers are human and it isn’t just a country fighting another but it is the people that do the fighting. He does this by telling everyone’s story and what they carried and needed to make it through these times.
In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brian presents a view of war that is quite unusual to the typical reader. War is something that most assume is a horrific, frightening, and life-changing thing to most people, but to these soldiers war is something that is cryptically distant throughout the story. It is almost as if they are ignoring the fact that it is staring at them in the face, threatening their very lives. The soldiers try their hardest to push the reminders of war out of their heads and focus on trivial matters.
During the night conversation between Kiowa and Norman Bowker, Kiowa just keeps talking about the death of Ted Lavender in a manner lacking grief. He continues to describe how Lavender just fell “boom down. Not a word.” And later after Norman tells Kiowa to shut up, Kiowa sits content in the night, just happy to be alive. He lays so detached from the war in the night, ignoring the looming threat of death which could happen any day, and his thoughts dwell in the comfort of the moment. He even consciously desires to share in Lieutenant Cross’s grief over Lavender, but “all he could think was boom-down, and all he could feel was the pleasure of having his boots off and…the comfort of night.” He becomes mentally detached from the war in his mind, and thinks on his own comforts and the joy of living. The other soldiers have other ways of distraction, too. After Norman Bowker tells Kiowa to shut up at night, he sits up and tells Kiowa to talk, not as if he had heard exactly what Kiowa would say a good ten times. He simply wants to be distracted from the horrors of the war they participate in daily. He wants Kiowa to continue to talk about Lavender’s death to strike up anger, annoyance, frustration, anything really to distract him from the real violence they face daily.
Lieutenant Cross is the exact same way throughout the story, up until the end. He carries pictures and letters from Martha, constantly allowing his thoughts to go to her, and escape the realities of Vietnam. Even as one of his soldiers is inspecting tunnels before they blow them up, and they believe that the tunnel collapses, he thinks of Martha. He should have been worried about his man, down in the tunnel. Yet his mind desires so much to be another place, perhaps any place, with Martha. Perhaps he did not love Martha as much as he loved the escape she provided throughout the time that he obsessed over her letters, pictures, and stone. These allowed his brain an easy way out of thinking about looming death and the violence that he and his men have created and are subjected to daily. He lives in a false world, having a false relationship, to escape the realities of war.
Only in the end of the story does Lieutenant Cross realize that one in command, such as himself, cannot find refuge in an escape from the reality the way that he does. He needs to be alert, tied tightly to the reality that his men could die at any second, so he needs to keep them in check, and keep them safe from harm, not being a friend-figure anymore. He becomes a true leader in the end of the story, throwing away his escape and embracing these harsh realities of war that his men try so desperately to flee from. This is the significance of the story, although O’Brian presents the war from these soldiers’ perspectives who are trying so hard to flee from it. These soldiers see war as something not to think about, something to keep distant from. And, in their minds, perhaps if distance is kept, the war will not catch up to them and steal their lives away.
“Emotional Distraction”
In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien really shows us how war can affect the way a soldier thinks, feels, and reacts. Lieutenant Cross is distracted the whole story by his love for Martha. It just shows us how many soldiers go away for so long and miss their families, friends, and girlfriends very much. Although O’Brien does not say this, it seems like war may drive a man to insanity. The people back at home who the soldiers love may cause them to be hesitant and endanger the platoon members’ lives as well as their own.
Martha is all Lieutenant Cross thinks about. The sad thing is that he loves this woman and she does not feel the same. What can he do about this? It is not like he can call her and tell her how he really feels. He is just left with a memory of her and he knows she will never love him the way he loves her. These thoughts of Martha may even made Lieutenant Cross hesitant at times. Lieutenant Cross hesitated to go in the tunnel to see if Lee Strunk was alright. For a second he just sat there and thought about Martha which could have put Lee’s life in much danger.
My girlfriend’s cousin has been in Iraq for the past few years and he has a little boy. The memory of his wife and child must live with him constantly. That has to be the only thing he can think of which is totally normal. It is just sad because he has no idea what is going on. What happens if something goes wrong? I can only imagine how this feels and I can see how this can drive a man crazy.
I think O’Brien might want us feel for the soldiers and sympathize with them. Unless we have been at war, none of us will ever know what it is like to be fighting at war away from your family without contact by phone. The only way to contact is by letter which takes a while. Also, O’Brien wants us to realize that along with the burden of worrying about your loved ones, some soldiers have to worry about staying alive, keeping your platoon members alive, and carrying or “humping” all of the necessities along with them. All of this is a tremendous weight on their shoulders and I cannot imagine how they deal with all of these things. The only things they have to comfort them were the strange things they took with them on different missions. Maybe those things such as pantyhose or M&M’s gave the soldiers comfort and got them through some of the tough times. Being a soldier at war is the hardest job in America. It takes a very tough individual to do a thing such as going overseas to war and leaving everything you know behind at home.
Throughout “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien is showing the readers the physical weight, literally, and the mental weight of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. I believe he wanted the readers to react with a great degree of sympathy towards the story by describing in detail the hardships soldiers faced on a daily basis.
It was interesting to read the specific weights of objects the soldiers had to tote or “hump” around. I calculated how much the average soldier physically carried, disregarding their specialties, to be roughly forty pounds; which included their personal belongings (a.k.a. necessities), helmets (SOP), flak jackets (SOP), and ponchos. In addition, soldiers’ specialties could have them carrying an additional twenty plus pounds for medical equipment and artillery. So a soldier could’ve potentially carried a maximum of roughly sixty pounds on their bodies in a very hot, humid climate throughout the day. Many people can’t imagine how much weight that is, but O’Brien emphasis on the description gives readers the impression that it’s a lot to carry. Heck, I’d break a sweat walking around in Baton Rouge about that time of the year; I couldn’t fathom toting another forty pounds of stuff for days at a time. I mean these guys had to do this everyday, all day!
In addition, the mental weight seemed far more heavy and pronounced throughout the story. O’Brien stated that “Imagination was a killer.” The soldiers’ imagination was a good and bad thing. For instance, when the soldiers were commanded to tour through heavily mined areas, they carried around a whopping twenty-eight pound mine detector without much effective utility, yet they carried it for the “illusion of safety.” The soldiers needed something to believe in during those times even though they knew it didn’t work, kind of like a false hope. But they needed these thoughts to help them get through their obligations. In contrast, the main character, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s, imagination possibly cost him one of his soldiers, Ted Lavender. At first, Cross set aside time to imagine about a life with Martha and the world she was currently living in. Later on, his thoughts about Martha seeped through into his duties as a soldier. Consequently, he blamed himself for the death of Ted Lavender due to his lack of awareness of the platoon’s surroundings. Although Cross’s actions might have caused Lavender’s death, he still needed his imaginations of Martha to survive. It gave him something to fight for, a purpose.
I believe a man’s physical build can only take him so far in an adverse situation such as war. For that reason, O’Brien tried to explain and stress the mental anguish soldiers faced. O’Brien stated “the endless march…without purpose” and “they searched villages without knowing what to look for, not caring” and this showed how soldiers pretty much ran around like a chicken with its head cut off. The soldiers lost track of what was the purpose of this war. They simply just followed orders to survive and make the days go by. So they carried these diseases, ringworms, infections and for what? What kept them from giving up? I believe the answers came from the “intangibles.” According to O’Brien, these intangibles were things such as love, terror, grief, reputation, and pride. Cross’s platoon could’ve easily bailed themselves out of their situation intentionally by means of self-inflicted pain, yet there pride kept them going. “They were too frightened to be cowards.” Their pride stopped them from quitting, and the thoughts of them flying/being home kept them fighting. This gave the soldiers a purpose to all the madness. Lieutenant Cross’s love for Martha is a good example, although her love for him was questionable. The thought of her being on the beach, or being a virgin, or playing volleyball were vivid images to Cross, which kept his will strong enough for another day. O’Brien explained the burden of war and the things that kept men ground during those harsh times, to paint a picture of what it took to survive.
Fourth Response to “The Things They Carried”
The main focus of the story that is prominent in my interpretation of the
story, is the intense responsibility that the men of war go through. The view of war that
the author wants us to ponder about the most, are the side effects that come with
participating in such traumatizing events: Being there for one another and having ones
that love and care for you. To me, all of the soldiers in this story are scared of the
future events that could occur while being in Than Khe. What it all comes down to, is how
people internalize such traumatizing events. These men have to kill people, destroy
villages, and see their own men die before them. All of these actions are not normal
activities. Human kind was not made to be able to deal with these types of actions
happening. We all have hearts, and minds that guide us through life. The only flaws are, how we each individually deal with such traumatizing events.
The author wants us to see how each individual man in this war deals with the
events going on around him. Throughout the story we see all of the items that each
soldier carried with them. There are so many things that men carry that save their lives,
such as: weapons, food, water, clothing, etc., but other supplies they bring are their
own personal somewhat “superstitious” items. Throughout this story, I felt that a lot of
these men put on fronts about being the machismo, tough men that can go through any
traumatic event, and be perfectly okay. By the author stating the small things that each
man carried, made it more personal and showed the soldiers soft sides. A major part of
the story that confirms my point about the men being sentimental and playing down their
machismo roles is a part of a paragraph towards the end. “They carried all the emotional
baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing---these were intangibles, but
the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They
carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained,
the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden
of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture”
(Page 81). This quote shows how the men hid their fears, and put on fronts that nothing
could phase them. “By and large they carried these things inside, maintaining the masks
of composure” (Page 81).
In the end of it all, men of war are not ever going to be the same internally.
Many will put on fronts, but always psychologically they will have these flashbacks of
indecent human acts. As long as they have something special waiting at home for them,
they will continually feel that little memorabilia from home will help them get through
these tough times of traumatic events. If men have nothing to look forward to when
returning home, they will continually hide their true feelings, and these deep issues
will continue to pile up in their hearts, never truly getting over traumatic instances.
“It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt
they had to do” (Page 82). Lieutenant Cross felt that he was lying to himself, thinking
that Martha loved him. This was only weighing him down physically, and emotionally, so he
disposed of the unnecessary items Martha was sending him. He felt that she was holding
him back from doing his job, when really; I feel that Martha was keeping him sane, and
able to have something to look forward to when he returned home. Because human beings are
such emotional and mysterious creatures, the author focuses on these specific qualities.
Even though this war is a traumatic experience for anyone, he lets the readers know that
being there for each other is what life is all about. Never get too caught up in your own
life, when others around you are in need of your guidance.
The Burdens of War
In “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien shares with the reader his view of war as a heavy and constant weight pushing down on soldiers. His story describes numerous tangible burdens that soldiers must bear, culminating with a vivid picture of the greatest burden of war, the assault on human emotions. Through his technical writing style, specific examples, and linear plot, O’Brien depicts soldiers’ daily lives in war and the horrific consequences of war on the human psyche.
One way O’Brien paints the tragedy of war is through his technical writing style. He uses the repetition of words to represent the monotony of the soldiers’ lives, particularly “carry” and “weight”. Carry is repeated over two dozen times symbolizing the multiple burdens a soldier has – everything from supplies that are necessary to their physical survival to inner emotional burdens. Each item is described by its purpose and weight. They carried the weight of their jungle boots of “2.1 pounds,” their M-79 grenade launcher of “5.9 pounds,” and their necessities of “between fifteen and twenty pounds” (74-75).
O’Brien illustrates the loneliness of soldiers through the relationship of one soldier with a young woman back home. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross “carried letters from. . . Martha . . . [that] weighed ten ounces” (74). The lieutenant’s relationship with Martha sets up a stark contrast between Martha’s simple world of school and midterms to Lt. Cross’ life of death and violence. The difference between their worlds is obvious when Martha does not even mention the war to Lt. Cross in her letters because it is not directly affecting her. Lt. Cross uses Martha’s letters to grasp onto “normal life” as hard as he can to forget the reality of his life. In the end, he has to choose to let go of the letters for the sake of his men’s safety. He burns the letters to divorce himself from normal human emotions of hope and love, so he and his men can survive. The reader senses the desperation of the soldiers to feel as though there is something better left in the world. Lt. Cross, like the other soldiers, must exist in the moment and the mission because any day could be his last. Lt. Cross and Martha’s relationship evokes sympathy and lets the reader feel the loneliness and separation caused by war.
Although the soldiers may be proud of their accomplishments in war, each recognizes that their only escape is death. Ted Lavender’s death provides an example of the disconnect soldiers in battle develop from their emotions when facing a fellow soldier’s death. Each soldier has difficulty coping with Lavender’s death, knowing they are relieved to be alive and not dead like him. The men feel guilty to be alive, and turn to various strategies to deal with the raw emotions that will hamper their chances for survival. They must remain tough and free from any feeling that might make them weak fighters. Both the lieutenant’s relationship to Martha and Lavender’s death offer the reader a sense of the harsh emotional trauma war forces upon each soldier.
O’Brien’s story develops dramatically in a very short amount of time. Initially, the items carried by the soldiers are of “necessity” (74). As the story continues, the items they carry become more abstract. “They carried each other, the wounded or the weak. . . they carried diseases. . . they carried the sky. . . they carried gravity” (79). O’Brien shifts yet again to inner emotional burdens that the soldiers bear, “the burden of being alive. . .the emotional baggage of men who might die. . . and the things men did or felt they had to do” (82). These crushing burdens slowly destroy the soldiers. They weigh more than any problem people may experience in a normal environment. O’Brien hammers the magnitude of war into the reader by repetition, building from concrete to painful inner burdens, and describing the harsh battle just to survive another day. It is easy to understand the physical items the soldiers carry like guns and clothes. As the story progresses, O’Brien turns from the tangible things that although they literally weigh more, are weightless compared to the horrific intangible burdens carried by soldiers in war. The reader can understand that war takes a huge toll on an individual.
In his short story, O’Brien is clear about his beliefs of war. He feels war is devastating and painful for the soldiers. Although the author suggests that no one can truly understand the difficulty of being a soldier, O’Brien gives the reader a real sense of the soldier’s loneliness and sadness. O’Brien hopes the reader will empathize with what these men have to endure.
Tim O’Brien portrays to the readers the reality of war through the eyes of young teenage boys in their early twenties. O’Brien shows how these young boys are fighting against their enemies as well as their youth. By this I mean these boys are not able to enjoy their teenage years in America having fun. Instead they are living in filthy conditions fighting for their country. O’Brien wants us to see war through their eyes and see how they develop into young men through war.
I think O’Brien wants the readers to think about why Lieutenant Cross lets Martha and the death of Ted Lavender get to him. O’Brien opens the novel with Cross’ obsession of Martha and how “more than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her” (O’Brien 74). I know when I first read the introduction I thought to myself, “Why on earth is this lover-boy fighting in war” and I think the narrator wants the readers to ask this. We don’t know the incentive of why any of these young boys are fighting in war. It may be to escape problems at home or maybe they were forced to by their parents or drafted. O’Brien also makes readers curious about Lieutenant Cross’ reaction to the death of Ted Lavender. It is ironic how Cross’ seems to suffer more than Kiowa, the person who actually witnessed the explosion. O’Brien shows the readers the connection between Ted Lavender’s death and the love for Martha. Because Martha was always on Cross’ mind, he was not able to full concentrate, which eventually led to the loss of one of his men. When realizing the truth, Cross burns Martha’s pictures and decides to be realistic about war. “No more fantasies, he told himself” (O’Brien 82). As a reader, I think this shows Cross transforming from a careless boy to a responsible man.
O’Brien shows the readers how every soldier in the platoon was both a young boy at heart and a responsible man fighting for their country. As a boy, they are portrayed as being irresponsible and goofing off, as a man, they are serious and think only of their country. In times of loneliness, they would get together and make each other laugh by telling jokes or by saying funny things like “I’m goofed, I’m on a space cruise, and I’m gone” (O’Brien 82). But as a solider in the platoon they could not show they were scared. As O’Brien states, “Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to” (O’Brien 81). The narrator explains the quote by saying how they endured the hard conditions and never “went limp” in order to go home. Most importantly, they stuck it out and as men they put their families’ protections and needs above their own.
In the end, Lieutenant Cross realizes that as commander of his platoon, he can no longer be aimless and daydream about some woman he knows doesn’t love him. His is admired especially when he goes through with burning Martha’s pictures and thinking of where he will drop her good-luck pebble. Most importantly, Lieutenant Cross is looked highly upon by O’Brien when the narrator writes, “H would accept the blame for what had happened to Ted Lavender. He would be a man about it” (O’Brien 83). By doing this, Cross becomes a true leader in the story and can set an example for the men belonging to his platoon.
War is one of the hardest topics to not only write but as well as talk about. When reading “The Things They Carried” the author does not portray them as soldiers, but as individuals with feelings. Throughout the story one thing is shown and this is that they are in fact human that feel and are not only there to kill. Though at times throughout the story, it was hard to tell because when they killed the dog it didn’t seem like they did care. We see the young Lieutenant Cross go through many hard times because he is putting to much emotion into things. He is in love with Martha and we are confused whether it is just that he wants her because he is away or if it is that he really cares. Whichever, he shows the soft side of a soldier. Martha in her letters ends in with love and he is lost in its meaning. When a soldier is on the field, it is those letters that his loved ones send that help them get through the hard times. He not only kept her letters but also her pictures to help remember her face in a place where men are the ones you are always with.
The soldiers all vary in age and Lieutenant Cross was young himself must have had a hard time with such an arduous task. This task was leading his platoon and being the one strong enough to encourage the others to keep going. Also interesting is that thought they are soldiers, they have their own superstitions in the ‘things they carried’ whether it be a rabbits foot, a good-luck pebble or a thumb. They look to these things as for comfort and to know that they will be ok.
We see more emotion when the chopper took Lavender, a fellow soldier off after he got killed. When told of how Lavender died, Cross began to tremble and wanted to cry. As a leader, you want him to be strong and keep the moral of the soldiers up if not it will be a domino effect of everyone falling apart. When this happened he felt like he let him down and that’s why his soldier is dead. He said that he loved Martha too much and would carry the burden with him for the rest of the war.
We can also see with Kiowa, he did not feel what they other soldiers felt. He just wanted a small pleasure and this was just to take off his boots, and the Bible smell. He could not feel grief, but not everyone is going to have the same emotions because they are in fact there own person.
The author also makes it a point to tell what any soldier feels during a time of war. They carry, “grief, terror, love, longing”. He even says they carry a soldier’s greatest fear and that is of blushing. This is a reason or why they killed and died. A soldier must not think of just himself, but also others during a time a war. They did everything so they would not be called “cowards”. In this, the story makes you feel for the soldiers and makes you understand the hard times they go through not only of being a soldier but also trying to be themselves. Being yourself in a time of war can be hard to do because you are taught to think one way and follow a structure. This story shows the courage and strength they must have to be on the field of war. It also makes them human, not robots that are there merely to kill. Not only did they carry guns and materials, they carried there own emotions.
Through countless clever metaphors and inflections, Tim O’Brian pushes his view of war as it being pointless, ill-thought-out mess. Distracted soldiers given very little direction or a general purpose run rampant through “The Things they Carried.”
O’Brian mentions specifically that the soldiers went into Than Khe with no direction. They killed animals, burned villages, and “kicked over jars and pots” with no real idea of what they were there for. This happened in every village they went to, and the end product was usually an empty town that was burned to the ground more often than not. Why? The soldiers had no idea. They were doing what they were told. Were they really getting anything accomplished? O’Brian seems to exude this theme throughout this short excerpt from his novel.
The soldiers, Lieutenant Cross in particular, were so distracted with their material possessions that their duty as a military regime seemed almost second string to their personal lives. Many of Lieutenant Cross’s regiment died because of his preoccupation with his wishful-thinking love interest Martha. The letters he received from her were on his mind 24-7, and as such he felt responsible for the death of Lavender. Was Cross’s obsession with Martha really to blame for Lavender’s death? Most likely not. Tim Lavender took a tranquilizer and went to alleviate his bladder and upon his return was shot in the face. His dependence upon the drugs more than likely was his cause of death. Had he not been “doped up” on pain killers, he might have noticed that he was about to die, and he could have avoided the trouble.
Emotional instability of the soldiers was also a major factor in their daily lives. Their dependence on material things taken from home, from Kiowa’s New Testament to Lee Strucks insatiable appetite for tanning lotion made their focus on the war at hand even more unstable. The fact that they carried these useless items when they should have been more worried about weapons and rations was trivial. They “humped” more than was necessary to ensure that they maintained some semblance of sanity as they journeyed through some of the most dangerous parts of Vietnam every day.
The fact that they had little guidance from those in charge made their journey even more difficult. What was the point of focusing on wartime troubles when they felt they had no real purpose in life other than pillaging villages that were probably chock full of innocent bystanders?
In the end, I believe O’Brian wanted us to believe that the war in Vietnam was an unorganized mess that wasted the lives of countless soldiers who seemed to have more important things going on in their personal lives than killing innocent people and “burning bridges.” In conclusion, through the mind of Lieutenant Cross and his regime I am convinced that Tim O’Brian wanted us to believe one thing: war is a mess and unnecessary, especially when unguided and ill-advised.
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