O’Brien and his adventure during the Vietnam War
In the many stories in
Tim O’Brien's “The Things They Carried,” the author takes the reader down a road of war and the emotions carried within. Tim O’Brien being a retired war veteran and an author gives us, as a reader, a full feeling of what he encountered during the war. Throughout his book, he has many stories that express his thoughts on how to tell a true war story. In a couple of his stories such as, “The Things They Carried,” “On the Rainy River,” and “How to Tell a True War Story,” he explains the facts about the commitments and the amount of strength soldiers must have to make it through the war. His book helps the reader go deep inside the book to understand the details about the Vietnam War and the history behind it. Reflections of O’Brien’s Vietnam War stories may lead one to have different believes whether the war stories and the events within them helped a soldier throughout their life after the war. O’Brien stresses the importance of not telling a war story because of what can come out of the story in the end.
In 1968, during the draft, Tim O’Brien’s character had a big decision to make. Like many others during the draft of the Vietnam War, O’Brien felt that he should have had his choice whether he should go to war or not. As he begins, he tells a story that he has never told anyone before. In his story “
On a Rainy River,” the story shows a boy who has a planned life ahead of him, but then the draft letter for the Vietnam War comes in the mail and makes him rethink his life. O’Brien was a young man just living a normal life, getting ready to go to college. Because of that letter he had two different directions in mind, either go to the war, which he did not agree with, or run to the Canadian border. So in the mist of all the events in his mind, he decides to go towards
Canada. In a text about O’Brien the author states, “here, his protagonist, struggling with his moral dilemma over the war, comes close to fleeing to Canada and decides he’s a self-betraying coward for not doing so: Unwilling to risk disgrace and mockery, he sets aside his doubts about the war’s moral legitimacy” (Smith). He spends six days in a cabin with a gentleman and he spends those days, as he describes, as if being in a dream. He did many things while he was there and had plenty of time to think about where he should go with his life. This is where the beginning of his life really takes off. This choice of O’Brien’s was a difficult one, but he realized he needed to do it of his country.
The Vietnam War has had a great impact, not only on the different nations, but on the dreams of the many soldiers involved. As Timmerman states, “In a war fought according to statistics, and where ciphers are thrown against ciphers, who is left to tell a true war story” (Timmerman 10)? He is explaining that in the end who is really going to tell the real war stories. That is a big question to ponder when thinking about the war and what goes on. For civilians to listen to these stories and imagine what the soldiers went through, is something for hard for people to understand. That is something Tim O’Brien had trouble with as he lived after the war. In a specific statement in O’Brien’s “How to tell a
true war story,” he states, “A true story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done” (O’Brien 65). He believes that if you can avoid telling a story, avoid it. He goes on to explain that you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth; if you don’t care for the truth, watch how you vote. O’Brien also says, “be ready because if you send men to war, they will come home talking dirty” (O’Brien 66).
This explains that what goes on in war is a lot deeper and stronger than most people need to hear. Things are better left to the imagination than being told out right. In an essay by a critic, “Art of a true war story”, he states, “Is there a point where the imaginative life evokes a greater reality than the factual accounting, so that the reader understands not only what happened, but also why it happened and how it affected the soldier” (Timmerman 101)? He is relating the fact that the soldiers have many memories and emotions from experience that they have to hold on to for life. In O’Brien stories he states that you can choose to keep a story inside so the story doesn’t get twisted.
In the beginning of O’Brien’s stories he has a story about the
things the men carried and how they endured them. In “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien writes “they carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories” (O’Brien 20). He expresses that these men were carrying a lot more than just tangible objects to survive, but they had to carry many other things that were deep in the heart and mind. He goes on to say that “they carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained…..and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all” (O’Brien 20). This was something the soldiers were never able to put down or leave aside for later. This was something that was always apart of them. Being a soldier in the Vietnam War had a lot of responsibilities even after the war was over if you survived. The soldiers lived their lives in a different way than civilians because of all the things they experienced during the war. He also emphasizes on the strengths these men have during the hardest times of the war. Tim O’Brien and the soldiers that were in war with him spent day after day questioning themselves, but still having the strength to keep them going and standing tall for themselves and each other.
The Vietnam War has had strong impacts on the many soldiers and civilians in and out of the war. The men that fought in this war have to deal with the emotional stress and mind tricks that it plays on them. For many they want to be able to get the stories out to get closure and for others they feel that telling war stories will just bring back memories and the fears. In Tim O’Brien’s stories he expresses how soldiers see things that are heart breaking and gut wrenching. These men are exposed to things, that in the civilian world, an individual wouldn’t be able to handle. To some soldiers it may help to pass on his experiences then to hold it in, but to others it may just brings back horrible memories.
In Tim O’Brien’s final chapter, “The Lives of the dead”, O’Brien concludes stories can save us” (O’Brien). The final chapter of the book says, “A promise is not healing, but of redemption as well” (Blyn). The narrator implies, “stories can heal the traumatized veteran of the Vietnam War and provoke an amnesiac nation into “working through” its troubled past” (Blyn). The thoughts and stories lie in each person’s hands depending on if you were in the war, or whether you were on the outside looking in. There are many opinions and stories out there to ponder on the reasoning behind all the events that took place. He stresses the importance of keeping a war story inside and not trying to tell the story because of what can come out of the story. At the end of Tim O’Brien’s novel he states, “I’m young and happy. I’ll never die. I’m skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later. I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story” (O’Brien 233). Since this is the end of the novel, it leaves the reader in questioning whether Tim is able to save his younger self with a story
Works Cited
Blyn, Robin. "O'Brien's The Things They Carried." Heldref Publications 61.3 (2003): 189. ProQuest. Web. 1 Dec 2010.
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company, 1990. Print.
Smith, Jack. "The things he carries." Boston Kalmback Publishing Company. 123.7: (2010) 16,5. ProQuest. Web. 4 Nov 2010.
Timmermen, John "Tim O'Brien and the Art of the True War Story”: "Night March" and "Speaking of Courage". Hofstra University 46.1 (2000): 100-114. Web. 25 Oct 2010. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/441935>
