“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.
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