The Things They Carried

“But this too is true: stories can save us” (213). Stories depict a moment, a life, and a feeling at one particular instant in time that can never be lived again. In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, stories are used as an insight into the lives and soldiers of the Vietnam War. Their bodies forever changed by the physical war and their lives forever changed by the storytelling of the war. Tim O’Brien shows the physical and emotional burdens of war specifically the Vietnam War through stories.
O’Brien begins to describe the physical things each member of his platoon carry to slowly reveal to the reader who each man is. The weight of each additional personal item shows more than just the strength of the man but rather the value each man puts on that item. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters that weighed 4 ounces. “Rat Kiley carried brandy and M&M’s candy” (9). “Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriend’s pantyhose” (9). Dave Jensen carried a rabbit’s foot. They all carried various weapons of necessity that weighted anything from 14 ounces to 20 pounds. The most important thing they carried was themselves and the stories they came and left with. And “for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry”(15).
The stories they carried can give us a peak into a war that was grotesque and unimaginable to those who were in country, and incomprehensible to those who were from the outside looking in. The story about Curt Lemon’s death, Rat Kiley’s destruction of the baby buffalo, and the new wrinkle discovered by Dave Jensen shows just a glimpse into a soldier’s death and a man’s life. Curt Lemon was playing catch with Rat when he stepped on a booby-trapped 105 round. Curt Lemon was dead. Simply put in a story, a man died, but it is the death of one man and the story of many. The platoon captured a baby buffalo and Rat Kiley shot it first in the knee, then the ear, the hindquarters, the flanks, the tail, and so on until the baby buffalo could no longer stand. “Curt Lemon was dead. Rat Kiley had lost his best friend in the world”(75). Death cannot be explained especially in war. Every man copes with death in his own way and Rat Kiley was out to hurt the buffalo not kill him. In this story, the reader gains an appreciation for the friendships and trust of one another that these men have for one another. It also shows that in an instant this can all be dead, just like Curt Lemon.
These stories are stories, but are stories true? Are stories lies? Or are they both? Tim O’Brien says that “in war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it’s safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true”(78). But are we ever absolutely certain about anything in this world war or not? Tim O’Brien best answers this question when his daughter asks him if he has ever killed anybody and his answer is “I can say honestly, ‘Of course not.’ Or I can say, honestly, ‘Yes’” (172). The truth to a story lies within the answer you get out of it and not the moral or the factual evidence behind the story. Stories make things present as O’Brien says. Stories bring those times from your past to now and into the future as those who listen to the stories will continue to tell them. This is exactly what O’Brien has done with this novel, bring to life the members of his platoon, the war they lived through, and most importantly the reader could feel the emotions of the men even when it seemed they did not know how to feel themselves.
The final chapter of this book is the perfect ending or rather connection between the past and the present, and it is presented in the only appropriate way, a story. It tells the story of his fourth grade love and how this feeling of once love has transcended into a story that brings the nine year old girl back to life in a way that is more lively then the time she was living. “They are all dead. But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world” (213). Tim O’Brien brings his stories to life; he pulls the reader into the war, a war that was unwanted by both the men in country and those watching it. Through stories, the reader is able to be a part of the Vietnam War.