(Boring Title) Blog 3: The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is a work of fiction, which may or may not contain strong elements of truth. While this sounds a little crazy at first, it becomes clear by novel's end. The reasoning for the novel's title is gleaned upon completion of the first chapter. The things the soldiers of Vietnam carried ranged from the tangible things--their weaponry, equipment, good luck charms--to the intangibles--the burden of their war memories, the permanent scar upon their emotional capacities. A respect for memories is a central theme to the book, and it is O'Brien's goal to show that memories through storytelling have a quality to deliver real truth, with little or no basis in truth at all.

The book is a work of fiction--that is indisputable. But that doesn't make the struggles and burdens of the war any less true. The truth of a particular story doesn't lie in the facts--the truth of a story relies on what it represents. So while O'Brien may or may not have killed that Vietnamese boy near My Khe, O'Brien's feelings towards death and killing and the war are no less true. And while Mitchell Sanders made up much of the facts presented when he told the story of the soldiers scarred out of their wits on a night mission by such subjective claims as hearing Vietnamese music in the hills, the story was only embellished to make the point of the story resonate all the more clearly. A further example is Rat Kiley's story in the chapter "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong." While it is quite possible nothing in the story--about a soldier's girlfriend smuggled into Vietnam, only to be seduced by the land and the war--no less depicts the war's effect on a person's sense of innocence. Upon her arrival to Vietnam, Mary Anne is just a girl of 17, but becomes enraptured by the beauty of the countryside and the feeling she gets from the night missions and from the war environment. The truth of the story is that war, and Vietnam, change a person fundamentally, to a point of no return.

Heroics are not a common occurrence in the stories of the novel, as they may be in other stories of war. Traditional heroics like the sacrificing of one's life to save others is not what makes a hero. A hero to O'Brien is one that has the courage to stand by their convictions and have the capacity to make the hard choices. O'Brien fails this test when he fails to make it into Canada: every part of his being told him to flee, that it was the right and courageous thing to do. Shame and embarrassment, however, inhibit his ability to do so, and he thus ends up enlisting for a war he had no reason to believe in.

O'Brien concludes his novel with a story of his childhood, and of his late childhood sweetheart, Linda. O'Brien ends the novel in this way because Linda represents so much for him. Linda's death exposes O'Brien to death and an indifference to death at an early age, foreshadowing the kind of death and indifference to death he and the other soldiers experience throughout the novel in Vietnam. O'Brien tells the readers that it is through the story and memory of Linda that he is able to keep her alive to him, and through memories and storytelling, important truths are able to live on for eternity.