Hi everyone! So I know I haven't written for awhile, but since I am done with first semester of this school year, I have a bit of a break. Hopefully, I can spend this time catching you guys up on all of the books I have read. So today I will be reviewing "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. Here we go!
Characters: Tim O'Brien: protagonist of the story/ member of the Alpha Company/ budding writer
Lt. Jimmy Cross: commanding officer of the Alpha Company/ haunted by the casualties that have been results of his own poor decision making/ in love with a girl named Martha
Norman Bowker: soldier who tried to save Kiowa from drowning in a waste field/ haunted by the death of Kiowa/ commits suicide
Kiowa: native American who is the spiritual leader of the Alpha Company/ is very close to Tim O'Brien/ helps comfort O'Brien after he kills his first soldier
Rat Kiley: doctor of the Alpha Company/ begins to succumb to the gore of the war/ shoots himself in the foot in order to leave the war
The Plot: "The Things They Carried" has no distinct plot that can be followed. It does not really flow chronologically or logically. Instead, "The Things They Carried" is a series of short stories that detail experiences Tim O'Brien has had during the war. However, all of these stories are made up, and the characters are entirely fictional. While the stories may have some basis in reality, O'Brien himself has insisted that these stories are fictional. Each story is used to illustrate a particular lesson or aspect of war that O'Brien wants the general public to understand. This can be confusing because the author is named "Tim O'Brien" and there is a character in the story, also a writer, named "Tim O'Brien". Confusing right? However, Tim O'Brien insists that the character Tim O'Brien is not him. The stories deal mainly with the transformation of the main characters and how war has changed them as people and how they view the society that put them there. "The Things They Carried" provides an in depth, clear look at what these men went through in Vietnam and how they were fundamentally changed and damaged beyond repair.
Okay, I am going to do something a little bit different with this blog. I am going to do the "Things I Disliked" section first, because there is something I just really want to say and then move into the "Things I Liked" section.
What I Didn't Like: I had a really hard time with one of the central ideas of "The Things The Carried". O'Brien says time and time again, that it doesn't matter if the stories are true, what only matters is how they make you feel. I understand that sometimes a story can not really live up to the emotion that you felt in that moment, and that it cannot encompass all you want to say. My grandfather served in the Vietnam War, and I love hearing his war stories when he tells them or lets me read his personal accounts of what happened in Vietnam. Part of what I love is that I know these things happened. I know that these soldiers showed real courage, real love and real compassion in a place where there is just war and death. The pin points of light that you see in all the dark are what remind you that there is good in humanity. But when O'Brien says that the truth doesn't matter, I disagree. The truth is all that matters. You could be portraying something that isn't real, giving us a vision that doesn't exist. His point was to create a novel that showed us all of the complexities of war, and made us a feel a certain way. I understand that he created stories, based in fact, that made the reader understand what these men went through. But to say that the truth is totally irrelevant is a dishonor to the men who fought there. Their stories, their true stories, deserve to be told even if the feeling they evoke is not the particular one O'Brien chose.
What I Liked: Even though based on the previous section, it may seem as if I didn't like the novel, I really did enjoy it. I understood O'Brien's purpose in creating his own stories which could trigger the exact emotion he intended, I just had a hard time with the idea that the truth is not important. However, there were several other stories that I found particularly moving. The first, was the story of Norman Bowker. He has returned from Vietnam and cannot find a job. He finds himself, literally traveling in circles as he thinks about the death of Kiowa whom he was unable to save from drowning in a field of waste. Bowker cannot move on from the death and cannot deal with the grief of seeing his friends die in his arms. He eventually kills himself. This story illustrates all of the problems soldiers faced after the war. No one could understand them, they were alienated from friends and family and could not deal with their grief. They were driven into madness by the deaths of their friends and they lived with their pain alone. This idea can also be seen in the injury of Tim O'Brien. O'Brien is shot, and is taken to a hospital to rest up. However, he feels this awful disjoint where he cannot even live a peaceful life because he actually misses the war. He can no longer fit into regular life and finds himself constantly trying to find his way back to the Company. I asked my grandfather about this, seeing as he served in the war, and he said it was different for him. He was what they call a "career soldier" meaning that he continued to serve even after Vietnam. He says it helped him deal with no longer being part of war, while still having his company to understand his pain and grief. One of my favorite stories is when O'Brien goes back to the field where Kiowa died, and he cannot find any trace of the field where the horror occurred. Instead, he finds a clean river, and he swims in and put an item of Kiowa's in the water. O'Brien's daughter who is with him, cannot understand what he is doing and cannot comprehend the extent of the demons which are still haunting her father. This reminds us all that no matter how much we think we know, no matter how much we think we understand, we cannot ever understand the horrors that these men went through. As O'Brien is leaving he looks across the river and sees a Vietnamese man and the two nod at each other. The daughter comments that the man looks angry, and O'Brien corrects her saying "It's all over now". These stories just stay with you. I don't know how, I don't know why, but I remember these stories very clearly. O'Brien has created this story that touches you as a reader with every story. I found myself often thinking of my grandfather and wondering if he went through the same things these characters went through. I loved this story because these soldiers, even though fictional, were so real. They were not perfect, and often terrible soldiers. They were not super human. They were men who were thrown into a world they didn't really understand. I related to these men and cried as they cried, mourned their struggles, and saw the transformation that they underwent. Each of these characters were capable of real cruelty as they had to adapt to a world that distorted all they knew. We discussed this book in class, and some of my classmates thought that by O'Brien showing this cruelty he was saying that the soldiers became totally broken and could no longer feel the suffering of others. I couldn't disagree more. I thought O'Brien was showing that these men couldn't afford kindness, or compassion and had to lock those parts away or they would succumb to the pain. This book was very dark and at times, so depressing that I had a hard time reading. However, just like real soldiers, this book had moments of humor that brought light to this dark world. One of the soldiers is so terrified of the dentist he faints on the spot. In order to prove his own bravery, he sneaks into the dentist's tent in the middle of the night and forces the dentist to remove a perfectly good tooth to prove his own bravery. It is stories like these that remind us that these men are human who didn't lose their humanity or their compassion.
Overall: 9 out of 10. I still find the truth to be important, but I understand why it is not always necessary. O'Brien was concerned with what we felt, not what was true.
