This essay examines Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried as a symbolic exploration of the psychological consequences of military service in Vietnam. Rather than attributing soldiers' trauma solely to combat violence, the essay argues that the military's organizational framework — its apparent randomness and moral irrationality — is a primary source of psychological damage. Through close reading of key symbols, including the physical objects soldiers carry, O'Brien's narrative treatment of guilt and PTSD, and the role of fictional truth-telling, the paper demonstrates how O'Brien links individual suffering to collective and institutional responsibility. The analysis also considers characters such as Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and Henry Dobbins as embodiments of this symbolic method.
The psychological consequences of war — of fighting in a war, of eating and sleeping in a war zone — are not merely limited to the implications of witnessing and partaking in death. War deeply influences the mental attitudes of those involved because of the organizational framework of power and authority that soldiers are subject to. The common assumption is that soldiers' troubles coping with war are somehow linked to the extraordinary violence that conflict entails. However, significant trauma often stems from the apparently irrational framework soldiers are asked to operate under.
The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien reflects the fact that the lens through which soldiers view war — both while in it and afterwards — is necessarily attuned to the way in which the military is structured. Its seeming randomness and often nonsensical consequences are not overlooked by the individual soldier, and they contribute to his fundamental troubles coping with combat. The military's dogmas and norms express themselves in unique ways, contributing to the psychological maladies prevalent in ordinary soldiers. Fundamentally, this is what the symbolism within the novel aims to demonstrate: the intimate relationship between suffering and responsibility in war.
Tim O'Brien presents his very real interpretations of the Vietnam War through fictional processes. In attempting to explain his methods, O'Brien writes:
"For instance, I want to tell you this: twenty years ago I watched a man die on a trail near the village of My Khe. I did not kill him. But I was present, you see, and my presence was guilt enough. I remember his face, which was not a pretty face, because his jaw was in his throat, and I remember feeling the burden of responsibility and grief. I blamed myself. And rightly so, because I was present. But listen. Even that story is made up." (O'Brien, 179).
O'Brien's point is this: these fictional tales somehow capture more of the truth because they more accurately depict the truth of emotion, which is fundamentally different from the physical truth of events. O'Brien's intention is to accurately depict the psychological phenomena of soldiers in modern warfare — how young boys from the cities, towns, and countryside of America can be wrenched from their ordinary social conditions and dropped into a setting where nothing makes sense, not even their own actions. From this point of view, even the depiction of events must be presented in a symbolic manner; the mere recapitulation of actions, times, and events cannot accurately capture the truth of horror and accountability. The Things They Carried illustrates that, often, the most mentally damaging effects of war are caused by being unable to see the reasoning behind death — particularly when death is seen as an extension of a remotely operating organizational body, namely military policy.
O'Brien is haunted both by the man he killed and the men around him who died. The guilt he feels for killing the man with a grenade is unavoidably centered upon his disagreement with the principles of the war. The ordering of his novel imitates the symptoms of an individual suffering from PTSD. Had he not been drafted, suited up, shipped off, trained, and ordered to kill, would this man have died? On a conceptual level, it was the organization that killed the man, not O'Brien. However, this mere mind-play cannot separate O'Brien from the fact that he physically — or symbolically — pulled the pin and threw.
Because O'Brien disagreed with the war, his act of killing is that much more painful, that much more arbitrary, and that much more significant. He was the individual faced with the moral choice, and for the rest of his life, although he was compelled to act, the shadow of choice will forever follow him.
"Daughter as symbol bridging storyteller and audience"
"Soldiers' carried items as emotional metaphors"
"Enduring trauma and society's shared moral burden"
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