Truth-Telling in O\'Brien\'s the Things

Truth-telling in O'Brien's the Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien's novel, the Things They Carried may be categorized under fiction in libraries but aspects of the novel reach into areas of non-fiction as O'Brien attempts to express what happened to him in Viet Nam. The novel is unique because of O'Brien's writing style, which is straightforward and precise. A collection of stories, the novel manages to expose raw nerves regarding war with each tale. From murder to the loss of innocence, O'Brien convinces us the stories are true and their messages are real enough to remember. From Jimmy's obsession with letters and love to the experiences we learn to accept as soldier Tim's, we see the truth in the fiction. O'Brien uncovers the delicate sensibility of the human psyche -- especially under some of the most stressful of situations and helps us realize the power of war.

The novel is a compilation of reality and fiction, beautifully delivered. Storytelling becomes therapeutic for O'Brien as well as it becomes good fiction for others. Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton writes O'Brien merges the "mundane and the metaphorical, O'Brien creates a dizzying sense of unreality" (Piedmont-Marton). The ordinary things seem ordinary until O'Brien connects them to the metaphorical things in the novel. After this connection, they become things we almost do not want to know. This connection introduces us to the "weight of memory" (O'Brien 14) around which O'Brien works the entire novel. Memory is a symbol that carries a particular weight that is significant to the novel's meaning because O'Brien attempts to tell a true story without telling a completely true story. Memory keeps all images of Vietnam alive and there is little O'Brien can do to stop his memories. The weight never seems to lessen regardless of how many years pass by and the "spell of memory and imagination" (245), the act of storytelling, becomes his release. Jay Parini states that while O'Brien is known for writing war stories, "he is fundamentally a moralist - a moralist who refuses to provide any single, simple morals. He believes in storytelling, but in storytelling as a way to confront the ethical complexity of the real modern world" (Parini). The complexity of the situation emerges as O'Brien reveals what war did to him and those with whom he deserved. He says:

Something had gone wrong . . . I'd come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person . . . But after seven months in the bush I realized that those high civilized trappings had somehow been crushed under the weight of simple daily realities . . . I now felt a deep coldness inside me, something dark and beyond reason. It is a hard thing to admit, even to myself that I was capable of evil. (O'Brien 200)

Here we see O'Brien explaining the therapeutic aspect of writing and how the talent of storytelling was the beginning of the Things They Carried. He says:

When I'm talking about a happening, it seems essayish, but that stuff is invented and imagined; it isn't true in a literal sense. I don't, for example, believe that war is beautiful in any aesthetic way whatsoever. Even though the character sounds like me . . . It isn't really me. I never felt or thought that war's pretty . . . My personal feeling is that it's pretty ugly. What I'm saying is that even with that nonfiction-sounding element in the story, everything in the story is fiction, beginning to end. To try to classify different elements of the story as fact or fiction seems to me artificial. Literature should be looked at not for its literal truths but for its emotional qualities. (O'Brien qtd. In Naparsteck)

Here O'Brien explains how a true war story is ever completely true.

In the short story, "The Things They Carried," Jimmy Cross experiences a love for Martha that is not completely real or romantic. Jimmy is more in love with the idea of being in love and, on some emotional level, he knows this as much as he knows she does not love him but he does not care. Jimmy would rather pretend about his relationship with Martha than face the reality that he had no one back in the states that loved him. He carries her letters in his backpack and reads them every night. This was a nice escape for him; it gave him relief from the pressures of war. We read he would "slip away in to daydreams, just pretending" (O'Brien 9). While he pretended, she was "elusive on the matter of love" (1). While she might have signed her letters with love, Jimmy "knew better" (2) but the idea made him feel better so he allowed himself the luxury of living in the fantasy. Jimmy's guilt for Ted's death was "like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war" (16). Jimmy must work through this emotion, which is like "both love and hate" (17) and something he cannot escape. The "heavy-duty hurt" (17) he felt helped the others see how he cared for them.

Viet Nam is one of the worst nightmares in American history. Never has the country been so divided over issues no one clearly understood. Without a clear enough reason for war, the government had to deal with growing concerns of faulty leadership. The war was long and painful with answers no arriving soon enough. Soldiers were simply emotionally drained. Meanwhile, American citizens were weary of losing sons and daughters to a seemingly worthless war. With no end in sight and negotiations leading nowhere fast, the country found itself fighting two battles. The most significant of these was what took place in the mind of the soldiers. The Things They Carried reinforces a painful mindset, asking us to consider our viewpoints about war, especially when it comes to the glory of war. O'Brien states that this war had "no sense of strategy or mission," which negates anything glorious or brave. Horror and fear seem to be words more compatible with the Viet Nam war more than anything else. O'Brien says, "I was drafted to fight a war I hated . . . The American war seemed to me wrong" and "I was a liberal, for Christ's sake: if they needed fresh bodies, why not draft some back-to-the-stone-age-hawk?" (44). He admits embarrassment is associated with why he went to Vietnam and he confesses his unstoppable sense of fear kept him from crossing the border. He writes, "I couldn't risk the embarrassment . . . I couldn't endure the mockery, or the disgrace, or the patriotic ridicule . . . I was a coward. I went to the war" (58). O'Brien sprinkles such truths throughout the novel and asks us to reconsider our beliefs about war and fighting with tales of real men in real situations. When we read about Norman Bowker, who blames himself Kiowa's death, O'Brien is quick to states that Bowker had "been braver than he ever thought possible, but . . . he had not been so brave as he wanted to be" (142). This idea captures the constant struggle of soldiers fighting in any war. The need to be brave is overshadowed by the reality of never seeming to be brave enough.