O\'Brien\'s the Things They Carried

O'Brien's the Things They Carried

Love, Death, Pathos and Irony within Tim O'Brien's Short Story "The Things They Carried"

It was in 1974, some 33 years ago now, that America finally pulled out of the Vietnam War, one we were then losing and would continue, inevitably, to lose. Still, it took almost until the late 1980's for the body that exists today of Vietnam-set short stories; novels; memoirs and films based on American soldiers' actual experiences of that war, to even begin to appear. Today, Tim O'Brien in particular is known for his various short stories and novels set in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, with American soldiers fighting the war as his most frequent main characters. In reading one of Tim O'Brien's first short stories, "The Things They Carried" (1986), one can begin also to guess at why ii took so long for works based on Vietnam experiences to emerge. Inchoate chaos and confusion that comes along with men's entwined thoughts of faraway love; fears of death; pathos of feelings, and recognitions of pathetic irony are all vividly, starkly conveyed within "The Things They Carried"; thus conveying, through that very pathos and irony, combined, that war itself (and stories about war including this one) nether makes clear sense or has a clear point, especially for those most closely involved in fighting it.

Further, as O'Brien also shows, also at times pathetically and at others ironically, in "The Things They Carried" (1986), a Vietnam-stationed American GI's thoughts and feelings within that dangerous, unpredictable, exotically foreign setting may range from those of sublime dreaminess to others of shame and self-incrimination, practically in a heartbeat. This story, which is mainly but not entirely about the death of a love-preoccupied First Lieutenant's subordinate, Ted Lavender (a casualty that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, had he been paying enough attention, would probably have been able to prevent) is soul-searing in its later pathetic depictions of Cross's unfathomable misery and guilt about that clear fact; and, especially, of Cross's lonely ashamedness of himself that night as, at the same time his men make casual chitchat about the various sights and sounds accompanying Lavender's fatal bullet wound to the head, e.g., as O'Brien states: "Like cement, Kiowa whispered... I swear to God - boom-down. Not a word" (p. 279). In war, as O'Brien implies, a man may feel competent one moment, but then useless and a quasi-murderer (or a murderer) the very next. Worst of all perhaps is each soldier's fundamental aloneness - whether he is in fact truly on his own or instead among comrades.

O'Brien's pathos within this story, however, is not just literal; it is quite often symbolic as well. For example the title "The Things They Carried" means on one level exactly that - i.e., the various items the Vietnam War soldiers would typically carry along with them, on their persons and/or to have inside their quarters, on a day-to-day basis throughout the war. For example, "The [T]hings [T]hey [C]arried," as O'Brien states near the beginning of this story "were largely determined by necessity... can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wrist watches, dog tags, mosquito repellant, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes" (p. 272). But various other Things They Carried are less necessary for daily life in the trenches, but instead more emblematic, or symbolic, of whom these men deeply are (or wish to be).

However, O'Brien's title "The Things They Carried" also refers, if more implicitly and inferentially, to the burdens, pre-existing or acquired, that these soldiers carry psychically within themselves throughout the war: uncertainty; fear for the future; guilt; shame; regret; anticipations of loss, and, worst of all, loss itself. In this same way, O'Brien also further implies men's individual concerns and attitudes about war and their participation in it, including, much more often than any heroic participation, the pain and anguish of emptiness or feared emptiness, e.g., the loss of a love back home, or perhaps a good friend, at any time, right here. As O'Brien further shows in the story, through pathos and irony combined and entwined, war is brutal, bloody, and senseless; in addition, most of what happens in war is neither glorious nor sublime; heroic nor inspiring; instead what takes place among men at war, and among enemies and friends alike, moreover - is simply, human - for better or (more often) for worse.

Within "The Things They Carried," Tim O'Brien also implicitly suggests the true essence of war stories themselves; that is, that there is not in general (and in reality, moreover) a main (or actual) point to any of them (or at least one that could possibly ring entirely true); just as the complex reasons for war itself may not ever be simply reduced to a single or even a few pithy rationalizations or explanations. In fact, a war story (as O'Brien himself later proves, in making this short story itself the (completely plausible) beginning, later, of a much longer novel) end within a dozen pages, as this one does; or that same story may just as easily continue on (e.g., as it does within O'Brien's novel the Things They Carried (1998) for hundreds more pages.

In this same way (and again, a clear reason for this is equally difficult to discern) the very men fighting and risking their lives in a war are among the most confounded: war itself is inherently mysterious; unpredictable; chaotic, cruel.

The latter is, moreover, a key realization that O'Brien's main character in "The Things They Carried," Jimmy Cross, in particular within this story comes (heavily) to "carry." In particular, within the scenes where First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross first realizes the stark reality of Ted Lavender's death and his own role in it, O'Brien offers clear; stark; pathetic, and at times even ironically humorous (in dark ways) depictions of humanity at its most destructive and universally self-damaging, but also at its most vulnerable. These are the human side-effects of war, none of them sublime, much less inspiring or glorious.

Within this story, O'Brien's narrator Tim is overall more an observer than a participant, placing him in a position to describe brutal; sometimes gruesome; at times deeply ironic, and occasionally humorous details of events that happen not just to him, but to other soldiers. Also, unlike the war stories and novels of, say, a Hemingway, Crane, or Remarque, O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" (1986) is filled of examples of situations in which soldiers are neither heroes nor cowards, but instead just deeply, at times sadly and at times comically, human.

One example of a situation O'Brien describes, that seems a combination of irony and pathos, and from which no one emerges either a hero or a coward, is when the love-struck, preoccupied, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, pining away for his girl, Martha, inadvertently causes the death of Ted Lavender, another soldier in his unit because he is daydreaming about her instead of paying enough attention to his surroundings.

This happens because one day First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross (and he in fact is always, continuously, not just on this day) so busy thinking, dreamily about Martha, the girl back home he loves but who he fears does not love him back, that he is not properly doing his job of guarding an area. As a consequence, one of his own men, Ted Lavender, is shot in the head and killed instantly. The stark reality of Lavender's sudden death, and the fact that Jimmy himself could have prevented it, had he been doing his job of paying attention to the men's surroundings instead of just gazing hypnotically at the tunnel from which Lee Strunk has just emerged. But since Cross has not truly been paying attention (even to that), and instead daydreaming fruitlessly about the insides, outsides, likes and dislikes of Martha (pp. 276-277) he does not at first even realize at first that he has just lost a man to an enemy bullet, a casualty his paying more attention to the surroundings, and less to his visions of Martha, might well have prevented.

The medic Rat Kiley must in fact repeat this bad news again and again for it to finally sink fully into Jimmy's consciousness that a man for whom he should have watched out, beyond the tunnel (which in fact Jimmy is hardly observing, either), Ted Lavender, who went off to relieve himself a few minutes ago: "...was shot in the head on his way back from peeing. He lay with his mouth open. The teeth were broken. There was a swollen bruise under his left eye. The cheekbone was gone" ("The Things They Carried," p.277). Medic Rat Kiley then says, bluntly: "Oh *****, the guy's dead. The guy's dead, he kept saying, which seemed profound -- the guy's dead. I mean really" (O'Brien).

As O'Brien shows us here, only the reality of one of his own men's unnecessary deaths, and one that happened as this man was doing something entirely mundane, manages (slowly) to cut completely through Jimmy Cross's continuous reverie about Martha. Later, however, Jimmy cannot forgive himself for Lavender's death, and his own day-dreamy negligence that he knows had caused it. By now Cross has ordered his men to burn the area where Lavender died, and they have moved elsewhere. But none of that erases the images in Jimmy Cross's mind of Ted Lavender's corpse.

As O'Brien depicts the aftermath, during that same evening, of Ted Lavender's preventable death from Jimmy Cross's now-pathetic perspective:

while Kiowa explained how Lavender had died, Lieutenant Cross found himself trembling.

He tried not to cry.

He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war. ("The

Things They Carried," p. 279)

Later on, with Cross's men now having burned down the area in which Lavender has died, and then been marched by their lieutenant to a new location, the reality, for the clearly culpable First Lieutenant Cross himself, of the true cause of Lavender's death earlier that day - one he himself most likely could and should have prevented - sinks in even more painfully. That night, once Cross is again alone with his thoughts, and also can have the protective camouflage of darkness, Jimmy Cross:.".. sat at the bottom of his foxhole and wept. It went on for a long while" (O'Brien, "The Things They Carried," p. 279).

And today's events, further, have produced within Cross's tortured mind the realization of yet another most unhappy truth. As O'Brien further tells us, within this same scene: