Death, Part II--As If One Wasn't Enough (Understatement)

“Death sucks.”

-The Things They Carried, p 230

Why yes, it does. This one two-word sentence is quite possibly the biggest understatement I have personally heard. Yet this is what the entire novel has been about. O’Brien does not trifle himself with grandiose or gruesome images of war, nor does he disregard the severity and brutality of battle. He simply yet powerfully describes war as he has experienced it, nothing more and nothing less. By doing so, though, O’Brien accomplishes his goal more successfully than many writers who attempt to write about war. The reader can sense the truth in his words. Even when the phrases are short and the accounts terse, the power of his writing remains.

In many ways, Vietnam cannot be described in grandiose terms; it simply was not a glorious war. A war of such vapidity should be described in a straightforward manner. That is what makes O’Brien’s writing so effective. This honest, abrupt style of writing in which the author can simply say, “Death sucks,” and actually have it carry immense weight and power, embodies the mood of the Vietnam War itself.

Death (Apostrophe)

“Right then I started to cry. After a moment Linda stopped and carried her water bucket over to the curb and asked why I was so sad. ‘Well, God,’ I said, ‘you’re dead.’

“Linda smiled. It was a secret smile, as if she knew things nobody could ever know, and she reached out and touched my wrist and said, ‘Timmy, stop crying. It doesn’t matter.’ ”

-The Things They Carried, p 225

In case we have not noticed, The Things They Carried, being a novel about war, is fraught with death. It seems that one cannot read more than twenty pages without another soldier and comrade being shot or blowing up or drowning in mud. It is this horrific pattern of death which gives O’Brien’s apostrophe in this passage so much power. In his imagined conversation with Linda, O’Brien does not talk to just her. He cries over all of his fallen comrades—Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, Kiowa, Norman Bowker, Monty Phillips—as well as Linda.

It is in this moment that the plot comes to its climax. After describing so many deaths, O’Brien finally is overcome with misery and grief. Yet in that moment, his perception is altered. He learns that in the end, “it doesn’t matter.” Yes, death happens. It happens for everyone, and that is why in the end, weeping over those in the past does nothing. The only thing to do is just to live life as best we can without those who have gone before us.

Shadows of the Night

“Squinting down at Jorgenson’s position, I felt a swell of immense power…It was cruel, I knew that, but right and wrong were somewhere else. I heard myself chuckle. And then presently I came unattached from the natural world. I felt the hinges go…I was the beast on their lips—I was Nam—the horror, the war.”

-The Things They Carried, p 198-199

This passage honestly sounds as though it could have come straight out of Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Up until now, O’Brien has recounted instances where other men had cracked under the reality of war; now he, too, succumbs to the madness. It seems that the night brings out our darkest selves, no? We may live our lives innocently and righteously during the day, but at night, a separate personality often emerges. It is no coincidence that the majority of crimes take place during the night, and the reason is not simply because fewer people are out. In the shadows of the night, we seem to be freer to indulge in our animalistic instincts, especially those of questionable morality.

In O’Brien’s case, the night unleashes all of the revenge and hatred that had brewed within him. In the blackness of the night, he becomes an embodiment of his revenge and lust for violence. Yet as he learns, revenge and violence does not make us feel better. It simply reveals how twisted and savage we truly are.

A Less Attractive Death (Anecdote)

“We sat quietly for a time. There was no need to talk, because we were thinking the same things: about Morty Phillips and the way luck worked and didn’t work and how it was impossible to calculate the odds. There were a million ways to die.”

-The Things They Carried, p 187

In reality, The Things They Carried is essentially a compilation of anecdotes. The anecdote about Morty Phillips is a prime example of the basic style of the entire novel. Like the other anecdotes, the tale carries a conversational air, as if O’Brien is talking directly to the reader. Yet the story discusses events that seldom would appear in any normal conversation. In describing Morty’s bizarre death, O’Brien simply emphasizes once more a harsh reality of the Vietnam War: death could come in countless ways. People often view death in combat as the only way that soldiers can actually die in a war. Yet in many cases, the deaths caused by other circumstances make up a substantial portion of overall war casualties. O’Brien utilizes this anecdote to illustrate how dangerous war in general is—not just the battles, but life within the war.

Actions Speak Louder

“Leaning forward, I reached in with the moccasins and wedged them into the soft bottom, letting them slide away. I tried to think of something decent to say, something meaningful and right, but nothing came to me…I wanted to tell Kiowa that he’d been a great friend, the very best, but all I could do was slap hands with the water.”

-The Things They Carried, p 178

It is truly amazing how oddly emotions work. We can feel the deepest, rawest emotions within us—so pure we feel we could explode from the true emotion—but then when it comes time to express those emotions, we can barely say a word. Despite such strong feelings, we simply cannot seem to express our emotions verbally. There are nearly one million words in the English language; yet for some reason, there are no words to describe how we really feel. We may try to express emotions such as love and friendship and honor. We may use fancy adjectives or adverbs to modify impeccably chosen action verbs. Yet in truth, emotions simply cannot be rationalized. Feelings cannot be fettered down by words and descriptions. They can be hinted at, but the true best way to express our deepest emotions is simply to act upon them. Sometimes, words must be abandoned, and actions must take flight.

Getting By

“ ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Those dumb jokes—I didn’t mean anything.’
“ ‘We all say things.’
“ ‘Yeah, but when I saw the guy, it made me feel—I don’t know—like he was listening.’
“ ‘He wasn’t.’
“ ‘I guess not. But I felt sort of guilty almost, like if I’d kept my mouth shut none of it would’ve ever happened. Like it was my fault.’
“Norman Bowker looked out across the wet field. ‘Nobody’s fault,’ he said. ‘Everybody’s.’ ”

-The Things They Carried, p 168

It is interesting to observe the different coping mechanisms that each member of Alpha Company utilizes when faced with harsh realities of war. Some, such as Lt. Cross, feel immense guilt and resolve to become tougher to the cruelties of battle. Some, such as Rat Kiley, release their emotions violently and cathartically. Some, such as Henry Dobbins and Norman Bowker, keep their emotions within—in the case of Bowker, too much within.

Still others, such as Azar, employ perhaps the strangest coping mechanism: they turn traumatic experiences into humor. Instead of displaying grief and bitterness, Azar simply laughs and jokes death off. While most of the company view Azar as cold and unemotional because of this, in truth Azar could be viewed as the most affected by these events. He is so affected that is unable to bear it and is driven to create distractions through humor. Yet even Azar reaches a point where his humor is unable to distract him from the terror of war. In the end, few can escape the trauma of war.

No Hope

“Eight months later he hanged himself. In August of 1978 his mother sent me a brief note explaining what had happened…He used a jump rope; his friends found him hanging from a water pipe. There was no suicide note, no message of any kind. ‘Norman was a quiet boy,’ his mother wrote, ‘and I don’t suppose he wanted to bother anybody.’ ”

-The Things They Carried, p 154

It is a terrible tragedy that those who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are only now receiving substantial attention and diagnosis. For hundreds, even thousands, of years, soldiers would return home from war and be expected to move on from the bloodletting with grace and ease. If men were affected by the war, they were simply labeled cowards and were shunned, punished, and often even killed for their cowardice. Human emotion and normal response to senseless bloodshed, it seemed, were crimes punishable by death.

Even in recent times, the prevalent expectation of soldiers when they return home is to keep discussion of the war at a minimum and simply return to normal life as if they had never experienced the brutality of war. It has only been recently that soldiers are being examined for symptoms of PTSD, and even those who are medically diagnosed with the disorder often are forced to engage in legal battle with the military and government in order to receive pension for disabilities. Yet if PTSD is terrible enough to cause depression, violence, and even suicide, then why is the military not in the forefront of those researching and treating this disorder? If people really want soldiers to return home comfortably, the government must either further research PTSD or cease to send soldiers into such traumatic circumstances.

A Cycle of Despair (Motif)

“On his tenth turn around the lake he passed the hiking boys for the last time. The man in the stalled motorboat was gone; the mud hens were gone…The band shell was deserted…On his eleventh revolution he switched off the air-conditioning, opened up his window, and rested his elbow comfortably on the sill, driving with one hand. There was nothing to say.”

-The Things They Carried, p 146-147

In this chapter, O’Brien utilizes the image of Norman Bowker’s driving repeatedly around the lake as a motif throughout the tale. As O’Brien gradually reveals Bowker’s memory of Kiowa’s death, he weaves in the idea of Bowker driving along the town lake over and over again, disconnectedly observing the lives of the townspeople. After the war ends, Bowker returns home from Vietnam; yet in reality, Bowker has lost his home. The years have gone by, and the town has moved on without him. The war has affected him so that he is unable to share his experiences and emotions with others. Isolated in a town that does not understand his plight and simply does not care, Bowker is stuck in a rut, going in circles with no end in sight.

This circular motion is captured in the motif of Bowker driving around the lake. Even when he attempts to escape the circle by stopping at the town’s A&W, he is socially despondent and is unable and unwilling to open up to others. He returns to his circle around the lake, back into his cycle of withheld emotions and tortured reclusion. Just as the lake is constantly before Bowker, so are his memories constantly gnawing at Bowker, leaving him entrapped in a cycle of guilt and shame.

Bridging the Gap

“A while later, when we moved out of the hamlet, she was still dancing. ‘Probably some weird ritual,’ Azar said, but Henry Dobbins looked back and said no, the girl just liked to dance. That night, after we’d marched away from the smoking village, Azar mocked the girl’s dancing.”

-The Things They Carried, p 130

This passage essentially sums up what, in my mind, is wrong with this world. There simply is a sad amount of miscommunication and misunderstanding between different cultures, different nations, even between two neighbors. Yes, our cultures are different. Yes, we may not see eye to eye. Yet we are all human beings, with the same basic rights and abilities as the next man.

Now I will admit that I am incredibly stubborn—probably too much so for my own good. Yet I can admit that in the long run, differences are not worth arguing over, and certainly not worth killing over. What the people of this planet truly need is to learn to respect their fellow brothers and sisters. If we can at least gain respect for all people, who knows what could happen? Yes, this may be idealistic, even unattainable; yet the only way to bring about change is to change ourselves and change others by example. If we want to change the world, we must change ourselves.

A Load to Bear

“This is why I keep writing war stories: He was a short, slender young man of about twenty. I was afraid of him—afraid of something—and as he passed me on the trail I threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him.”

-The Things They Carried, p 125

Well, this passage certainly produces ethos to the max, eh? In these two chapters (12-13), O’Brien unloads a tremendous emotional burden. There a couple ways by which he confesses to the reader his actions in an almost cathartic manner. In the first chapter, he repeats gruesome details about the corpse nearly to the point of exhaustion. His repetition indicates that he clearly is still affected by the memory to this day.

In between these details, though, O’Brien does something that is remarkably haunting. He vividly describes the young man’s appearance and goes on to meticulously describe an imagined life for this man. Truthfully, O’Brien describes this man more vividly and personally than he does any of his comrades. By giving this corpse a life full of emotions, of love and fear and duty, he humanizes this young man more than the Americans. By the time O’Brien actually describes the man’s death in the second chapter, the reader almost sympathizes more with the man than with Alpha Company. O’Brien unloads his guilt and shame on the ready, and, by doing so, shares it with us all.

America the Roll of Fat (Figurative Language)

“In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor. Like his country, too, Dobbins was drawn toward sentimentality.”

-The Things They Carried, p 111

This passage contains two types of figurative language combined to create an extended comparison between Henry Dobbins and America. First, O’Brien employs a simile (in orange) to set the initial comparison. He follows this with an extended personification of America that also serves to describe Dobbins. What is interesting is the difference between the written style and the implied style of this passage. In the way it is written, the entire description pertains to Henry Dobbins. Yet when read, it is evident that the description is primarily meant to depict America. While the entire analogy is created by the simile, it is the personification that carries the full power of the comparison. In describing Dobbins, O’Brien indirectly reflects upon American ideology.

Succumbing to the Beast

“I feel close to myself. When I’m out there at night, I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and my fingernails, everything, it’s like I’m full of electricity and I’m glowing in the dark—I’m on fire almost—I’m burning away into nothing—but it doesn’t matter because I know exactly who I am. You can’t feel like that anywhere else.”

-The Things They Carried, p 106

Thanks to Mrs. Miles, I read this passage and could think of nothing but the boys in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. In Lord of the Flies, the band of schoolboys suffers a descent into animalistic savagery that is uncannily similar to the on Mary Anne experiences. These boys are so affected and terrified of an imagined Beast in the wild that they essentially become the Beast themselves. By succumbing and indulging in the exotic and wild, the boys become part of that same wild.

The same goes for Mary Anne. She becomes so immersed in the jungle of Vietnam that in the end, she becomes part of Vietnam. It is a bit frightening, really, to think that man (and woman) can be so altered by an encounter with a lack of civilization. It begs the question: are we the same way? If faced with a similar situation, would we become intoxicated by the wild? Would we become our own Beast? After reading about Mary Anne, it would be difficult to definitively say no.

Whether Pink or Blue, They All Bleed Red

“At times, in fact, she seemed fascinated by it. Not the gore so much, but the adrenaline buzz that went with the job…In times of action her face took on a sudden new composure, almost serene…A different person, it seemed, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it.”

-The Things They Carried, p 93-94

Isn’t it nice to know that war traumatizes and alters women, too? This passage accurately reflects the societal views which still hindered women in the sixties and seventies. Yet it points out that war does not discriminate. It does not lessen the brutality which women experience. Nor do women respond to war differently than men do. The true difference is the expected reaction to war. Mary Anne, however, is proof that this expectation is grossly inaccurate. Women are brutalized and transformed by war in the same way as men. If countries want to protect women from the savagery of war, they should not discriminate and bar women from fighting in the front lines. They should simply cease war altogether.

A Twisted Garden (Allusion)

“Garden of Evil. Over here, man, every sin’s real fresh and original.”

-The Things They Carried, p 76

The Biblical story of the Garden of Eden is known throughout the world and by people of all religions. What people seldom realize, though, is that the tale is not about creation; it is about sin. True, the story gives an ancient explanation for the creation of the universe. Yet the chief purpose of the Garden of Eden myth is to rationalize why sin and calamity exist in the world. Sin exists because man creates it.

After the inhumane torture and slaughter of the water buffalo, it is difficult for O’Brein and the company to reflect on anything but sin. The death of his friend pushes Rat Kiley past the brink of madness into a haze of brutality, hatred, and murder. The treatment of the water buffalo can only be described as sinful; cathartic, yes—but still brutal. When Mitchell Sanders alludes to the Garden of Eden and evokes a twisted image of that mythical locale, he does so not conjure a picture of paradise, but of hell.

Music of the Night

“Follow me? The rock—it’s talking. And the fog, too, and the grass and the goddamn mongooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, the monkeys talk religion. The whole country. Vietnam. The place talks. It talks. Understand? Nam—it truly talks.”

-The Things They Carried, p 71

Well, this is a rather interesting passage, no? To be honest, I don’t really know what to make of it. Whether or not the tale is true, though, is rather irrelevant. Thye purpose of the tale is not to make the reader believe that Vietnam is haunted or anything similar to that. In fact, it is not really even to illustrate the effects of Vietnam on the soldiers. Truthfully, this story is included to depict the effect of war in general. Yes, Vietnam was extremely traumatizing, yet it could easily be argued that the main reason modern wars are viewed as more traumatic is that trauma is better documented in recent times. History books give the facts and figures of war, but they don’t capture the humanity—or lack thereof—of battle and death. That is the true message of Mitchell Sanders’ story: the savagery and brutality of war in principle.

Holding Out for a Hero? (Antihero)

“I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.”

-The Things They Carried, p 58

When one imagines a literary war hero, one can imagine a few different types of heroes. There is the valiant hero, the brawny, honorable soldier who vanquishes the Nazis singlehandedly while sparing a town of women and old people. There is the righteous hero, the upright, moralistic pacifist who refuses to kowtow to bloodthirsty minds and instead convinces others not to engage in battle as well. There is even the fallen hero, the simple, innocent participant who succumbs to bloodlust and transforms into a savage monster in the face of war.

O’Brien is none of these. He is not a man who saves the United States from a horrible war. He is not able to stand by his morals and escape violence. He is not changed into a serial killer who slaughters puppies for fun. No, O’Brien is simply an average man: not courageous enough to make a large impact on the war, nor brave enough to hold to his ideals. He is, in significant ways, a war antihero. Yet by admitting this, O’Brien points out a revealing truth about Vietnam: few of the soldiers were, in fact, heroes. They were average men, thrust into a savage war for which none were ready. Vietnam was, in truth, a war of antiheroes.

A Change in Perception (Point of View)

“Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for.”

-The Things They Carried, p 36

One noteworthy point which I forgot to discuss earlier was O’Brien’s switch to the first person point of view. The first chapter was entirely in third person, giving the chapter an impersonal touch. This was supported by the author’s decision not to use quotation marks to indicate dialogue. By doing this, O’Brien deliberately stripped the writing even more of any character, giving war a cold and disconnected feel.

After the first chapter, however, O’Brien does a complete volte face, now writing in first person and revealing that he also was a member of the company. By changing the point of view, O’Brien shifts the style of the book from simple historical fiction to a much deeper anecdotal reflection on a war which he experienced. He further expands this by now utilizing quotation marks, giving life and personality to his comrades. By establishing his ethos, O’Brien also explains why he is writing this tale: to preserve his experiences so that future generations may learn from them.

Peace amid War (Juxtaposition)

“I remember Norman Bowker and Henry Dobbins playing checkers every evening before dark. There was something restful about it, something orderly and reassuring…You knew where you stood. You knew the score. The pieces were out on the board, the enemy was visible, you could watch the tactics unfolding into larger strategies. There was a winner and a loser. There were rules.”

-The Things They Carried, p 31

This passage struck me for its contrast with the passages around it. Before and after this anecdote, O’Brien recounts terrible instances of the war and its consequences. He writes of Mitchell Sanders mailing lice to his draft board in cold retaliation. He describes Ted Lavender’s desperate addiction to tranquilizers as a coping mechanism. He writes of witnessing the horrific deaths of his friends and comrades. Yet in the middle of this, he includes an account of two friends peacefully playing checkers each night. He juxtaposes these disparate ideas even further by pointing out the differences between a game and the war. In doing so, O’Brien emphasizes even morsel the brutality of the Vietnam War, where you didn’t know “where you stood,” there was no “winner and a loser,” and there were no “rules.”