The things they carried: analysis and themes

Myths, Truths, And Lies in the Things They Carried

In his novel, The Things They Carried, the fiction writer Tim O'Brien deals with the real-life drama of America's involvement in Vietnam. O'Brien suggests that in any war, even in a historical drama of conflict, there is just as much myth-telling as truth in the retelling of what occurred on the battlefield. "If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie." (68) The good old war stories of soldiers of the past, of bravery and defiance, states the author, are all lies.

The storyline of The Things They Carried is told in a series of flashbacks, as the narrator reconnects with his old wartime comrades. All the soldiers interviewed by the narrator, named Tim, share stories about what the war was like, some of which contradict one another. The narrator has a young daughter named Kathleen, and he says wants her to understand what war was 'really' like. This is the reason for his project of reconstructing the war in a series of tales.

Tim's obsession with truth comes from his desire to make war seem ugly and unglamorous. For example, in one of the small tales retold in the book, Tim's old friend Rat Kiley tells Tim how he wrote a letter to the sister of the dead soldier Kurt Lemon, telling her about his friend and his brave death. Because she never wrote back, Kiley has carried a grudge against this woman his entire life. He has not been uplifted by his wartime experiences into nobility and tolerance from what he has seen. Rather Rat has become embittered by war. Later, in another flashback Rat kills a water buffalo for no reason, simply because it is there. "Well, that's Nam. Garden of Evil. Over here, man, every sin's fresh and original." (80)

Tim says that he sees the face of Kurt Lemon's sister whenever he tells the stories of Vietnam, because people do not want to hear about meaningless death. She must not have wanted to hear the fact, for instance, that Kurt did not die in a glorious battle, but was killed in a random fashion, much like the water buffalo Kiley injures. Tim says he realizes that it is not that Lemon's sister had no consideration for her brother's bravery. Rather, having not suffered through Vietnam, she could not cope with its truth. Of course, in retelling the story in this fashion, Tim creates his own 'truth' out of the myth of Kurt.

When Tim retells the tale of Kurt's death, it gradually becomes clear that Tim did not like Kurt at all. Rather than the fine brave soldier that Rat saw, Tim believed that Kurt was foolish and arrogant, and to some extent, deserved what he 'got' in terms of what was meted out to him by the justice of the jungle. Kurt was seeking glory and destruction, and even when he did not experience it, he inflicted it upon himself. For example, when Kurt was afraid to go to the dentist for a routine check-up, he forced the dentist to pull a tooth, even though it was healthy. Kurt insisted the tooth was bothering him, so he would have a venue to prove his bravery. This foolishness becomes emblematic of the entire Vietnam experience -- situations are created to display violence and bravery that have tremendous significance to the soldiers, but serve no real purpose. Just as Rat mythologizes Kurt's willingness to face death, and uses the body of an animal to vent his fury as a kind of sacrifice, Kurt himself tried to live up to a foolish ideal of what it meant to be a solider.

The lies, or the myths and symbols these individuals created about themselves almost have a stronger force than the truth. Rat believes really angry with Kurt's sister, not the war. Tim suggests that Rat is angry with Kurt's sister because she refused to believe Rat's version of her brother's character, not about how he died. At the end of the novel, Rat attempts to recapitulate Kurt's violence against himself with his tooth by blowing off his own foot with a gun, as if he wants a share of his friend's glory.

However, even this telling and the retellings of the stories about Rat and Kurt's self-maiming and furies are lies. Tim admits to the reader that like his fictional creation Rat, he is unable to tell civilians like his daughter the full truth of what transpired in Vietnam. Rat's anger against Kurt's civilian sister is really emblematic of Tim's own frustration and being unable to tell the story of the war, even though he is a writer. Tim is a fiction writer, and a writer tells tales. But although he actually fought in Vietnam, he still writes fiction, and cannot write purely as a soldier, but must be a storyteller, even of his own personal experience. Tim admits he attributes stories to himself, like throwing a grenade at a Vietnamese man, that others committed, and stories that are true about his own experience he formulates into the lives of others. He does this because "I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth." (179) In other words, sometimes a myth can convey truth more vividly than a biography or a real history.