The Things They Carried: Guilt, Blame, and the Burden of War
This essay examines two chapters of Tim O'Brien's episodic novel The Things They Carried — "The Things They Carried" and "In the Field" — the only two chapters narrated from an omniscient point of view. The analysis traces how O'Brien uses physical and emotional burdens to convey the chaos and psychological toll of the Vietnam War, focusing on characters such as Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, Kiowa, and Norman Bowker. The essay pays particular attention to the theme of guilt and the assignment of blame following combat deaths, and concludes by connecting O'Brien's portrayal of war's absurdity to contemporary conflicts in the Middle East.
- Overview of the Novel and Its Narrative Approach: Introduces the novel, its structure, and omniscient narration
- Physical and Emotional Burdens in 'The Things They Carried': Examines soldiers' physical and emotional burdens
- Death, Guilt, and the Loss of Hope: Cross's guilt over Lavender's death and lost hope
- Kiowa's Death and the Question of Blame in 'In the Field': Kiowa's death and diffuse assignment of blame
- Relevance to Contemporary Conflict: Connects O'Brien's themes to modern Middle East wars
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay grounds its analysis in specific textual evidence, quoting directly from O'Brien's novel with page references to support each interpretive claim.
- It identifies a meaningful structural feature — the omniscient point of view shared by both chapters — and uses it as an organizing principle for comparison.
- The conclusion connects literary themes to real-world political events, demonstrating the essay's awareness of the text's contemporary relevance.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates close reading: it moves systematically through the two chapters, pausing at specific passages to draw inferences about character psychology (e.g., Cross's burning of Martha's letters as symbolic loss of hope) and thematic significance (the extended blame passage as a meditation on war's absurdity). This technique shows how localized textual details can carry large interpretive weight.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with context about the novel, then works chronologically through the two chapters. The first half analyzes burdens and the death of Lavender. The second half shifts to "In the Field" and the death of Kiowa, centering on guilt and blame. A final paragraph broadens the scope to contemporary geopolitics before a single-source Works Cited entry closes the paper.
Overview of the Novel and Its Narrative Approach
The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, is an episodic novel following Alpha Company, a platoon of American soldiers and their experiences during the Vietnam conflict. This essay focuses on two chapters of the book: "The Things They Carried" and "In the Field." These are the only chapters told from an omniscient point of view. Both chapters evoke the horrendous fear, sadness, stress, chaos, loneliness, and uncertainty about one's future that are brought on by active combat.
Physical and Emotional Burdens in 'The Things They Carried'
In the first chapter, "The Things They Carried," O'Brien works to bring order and comprehension to a chaotic and incomprehensible situation by spotlighting the burdens the soldiers carry — both physical ones, such as photographs, rations, weapons, and their weights, and less tangible ones, such as memories, hopes, guilt, and stories. This device effectively gives the reader an understanding of what the men endured and how they coped.
The opening lines — "First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded at the bottom of his rucksack" (p. 3) — suggest that Cross harbors an optimism about his future that helps him endure the realities of war.
The chapter also describes the senseless death of Lavender, a gentle soul who carries tranquilizers and premium marijuana, who is shot in the head after "going off to pee" (p. 12). It is a stark reminder of the absurdity of the Vietnam War and the ever-present possibility of death. Norman Bowker carries the human thumb of a dead young Vietnamese soldier to remind him of the "moral" of the story (p. 14). Of course, there is no logical moral to war — Bowker eventually kills himself.
Kiowa, an American Indian who carries a copy of the New Testament and is the most spiritual member of the company, repeatedly returns to the moment of Lavender's death: "Like cement…I swear to God — boom, down. Not a word…A pisser, you know? Still zipping himself up. Zapped while zipping" (p. 17). It is significant that Kiowa "wanted to share the man's pain, wanted to care as Jimmy Cross cared" (p. 18) but found he could not.
Death, Guilt, and the Loss of Hope
Lieutenant Cross bears the weight of guilt for Lavender's death because he was thinking about Martha when it happened. He carries the responsibility for his men's well-being, and as an act of atonement he burns the letters and photographs she sent him, resolving to be a better leader. There was "a new hardness in his stomach" (p. 22–23). This detail is symbolic of his loss of hope — an inevitable consequence of the daily grind of war.
O'Brien's treatment of survivor guilt throughout these early chapters establishes it as one of the novel's central psychological themes, one that intensifies considerably in "In the Field."
Works Cited
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Penguin Books, 1990. Print.
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