Memories Carried Miles Away

A few years ago, the Vietnam War didn't mean anything to me. Then, I found out that while my Dad was an naval officer-in-training in 1970, Uncle Sam had an offered him a good job. Good wages and pension they said. In fact with his physical build and officer's intelligence, they'd train him to be a special forces Navy Seal, a high honour. One fact that they didn't talk about was that one out of three guys didn't come back; except in a body bag and the other two guys came back with close scrape of death, losing a limb and some of their sanity.1

Those Navy Seal commandos had the most hellish beach landings, sabotoge raids and deep into the most hostile territories on river patrol boats that were sitting duck to the enemy at night. I was pretty close to not being here had my Dad not been dating my Mom and more then a little skeptic of the good deal that the recruitment officer put forward. Since I found that out that he may have gone over (even my Mom hadn't known about this) I've been more interested in reading about the war for some innate reason. Even though it was one of the most frightening realities of modern times; where civilians were casualties, because the enemy was so well blended into the population and impossible to find. So this story was of interest describing emotions of those that did go overseas to fight.2

"The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien is a tale about the small details of a platoon of foot soldiers during the Vietnam War. In this short story, there are some of the crazy accounts of day-to-day life of "grunt" foot soldiers who carried out missions during the war. These events are told through the eyes and thoughts of the stoic platoon leader First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross about two things that keep flashing around his mind.3

At the beginning of the story, Cross uses the logic of weighing every item in his unit objectively; "The letters weighed ten ounces." (para 1) It is how he keeps order in chaos. "On their feet they carried jungle boots - 2.1lbs." black huge laced boots, not the most comfortable things) they wore the same socks day after day (Dave Jensen had three pairs) By the end, he is weighing "the things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do." (para 97) He comes to new realization about what he is really carrying and meant how fast one can die in war. "Boom-down, he said. Like cement."4

Lieutenant Cross is the main character and a dynamic one at that. Cross is his own antagonist as he battles himself to suppress emotions and appear a strong and respected leader to his men. At the beginning he desires a girl whom he met before he left "stateside." This college girl, Martha, is all he can think about during the blisters and boredom of long marches, the constant strain of fighting and loneliness of homesickness. "quote when he's fantasizing over her" Her letters and photos lead his mind away from the war zone he is in. "He would imagine romantic camping trips... she never spoke of the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself." (para 2)5

"...he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha was a virgin." (para 2) 6

His thoughts of Martha keeps Cross from thinking about how he might be killed in an instant. "...and now Ted Lavender was dead because he (Cross) loved her so much and could not stop thinking about her." (para 11)  His idea of love changes sharply. He really tore himself down for feeling love. "He felt shame. He hated himself. He loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead... (para 42) It helps him survive the insanity but then he decides it is the reason he slips up. "He would shut down the daydreams... it was a different world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of carelessness..." (para 94)7

The story is hinged around Cross's flashbacks to the climax at the turning point in his change of heart and mind. (about the beach in vermont) There is a bit of bitter irony in the term flashbacks here -- not that I can correctly interpret what O'Brien was thinking when he wrote the story -- as years later, veterans still experience the trauma events as if the event were still happening. I think O'Brien uses this approach as an effective technique of telling the story with continual references to the peak event of Lavender's death which are triggered by small things. " ...the poncho weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up..." (end of para 2)8

The dialogue in the story is also differently approached. There is rarely any reference to who is speaking. The conversation just flows from person to person without any he said or shouted. This reveled the character's attitudes and heightened the tension of arguments and discussions.9

The mood in the story comes across chillingly calm as the clinical description of events are merely stated as facts of life by Cross. "We ransacked the village and called in a fighter to napalm it afterwards and sat there smoking as we watched it reduced to smoking rubble." (para) A sense of unspoken fear of the unknown in the absence of the enemy and at the fall of night they dug into their fox holes and hoped to see daylight again. "We requested a med-evac for an American soldier down" yet they feared it could have been them just as easily and laughed it off to hide their fears. "quote about lack of courage, we forced ourselves to laugh." (para)10

I picked this short story because it was a challenge to comprehend and portrayal of feelings of a wartime soldier were universally presented; no matter what era of history he had been from. I had real troubles even finishing reading and analyzing the story. I refused to read it for several days from one subtle gory description in the climax that jumped out at me when I re-read it. The image refused to leave my mind. I was shocked and oddly relieved by my own reactions as I'd become a bit numb at times.11

Cultural numbness builds and desensitizes from playing violent video games and watching visually disturbing scenes in movies and photos. While a photograph or animation or movie intrigues the viewer not to turn away as much as it sickens, literature lingers much more in the imagination to paint a picture. O'Brien used descriptive imagery sparingly to heighten this effect on the imagination. "The cheekbone was gone..." (para. 27) A patient Viet-Com sniper nailed the poor guy.12

I was as disgusted as I was intrigued by how clinically the O'Brien told the story; hardly a mention or description of the enemy in the story. Also, never describing the setting beyond basics. "When darkness came, they would move out single file across the meadows and paddies to their ambush cooordinates..." (para 17) This lack of details made the story focus more on emotions and reflections of the characters, opposed to visual descriptions and judgements of their actions. "appropriate quote" The author barely describes even the main character besides once towards the end where he mentions Cross's age of twenty-two.13

The story was like a Greek tradegy in the sense that the action is contained to one event and one day and everything revolves around it. The endless days of the tour were all one and the same flowing together and could describe any day of Cross's journal. Even though the first month of their duties are mentioned, they are only in terms of the expectations and feelings they carried. "They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrarrassed not to." (para 47)14

Even the phrase "tour of duty" is a cruel joke of a term for their missions to be sounding like guided vacation. The infintary orders that Cross and his men carried out to search and destroy one village after the other. "They had sense of strategy or mission. They searched the villages without knowning what to look for....sometimes setting fires and sometimes not..." (para 39) Cross couldn't mental handle the immorality of it all and just slipped off to daydream about his woman, "carrying nothing" while they walked along the beach in his imagination. "He imagined bare feet. Martha was a poet... her feet would be brown and bare... His mind wandered. He had difficulty keeping his attention on the war." (para 13) There was no mention of his tasks of the day, just of his daydreams.15

As thoughts wandered from the war, he took no responsiblity for his actions. "No volition, no will, because it was automatic... dullness of desire and intellect and conscience." (para 39) This numbness was also true of Cross. His character is described in terms of emotions and reactions to Lavender's death. "He tried not to cry... hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men and as a consequence Lavender was now dead..." (para 43) But after Cross realizes that Martha is a world away and doesn't understand him at all, he burns her letters in attempt to rid himself of her even though the letters and photos are burned into his memory. "In those burned letters, Martha never mentioned the war, except to say Jimmy take care of yourself. She wasn't involved." That must have almost broken his entire being after having relied on her love for so long. "They were signed love. But he understood that "Love" was only a way of signing and did not mean what he pretended it meant." (para 88)16

He decides to become realistic about the whole matter of war and come to terms with his responsibilities. "He was now determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence." He wouldn't let the troops be so lax anymore. "It wouldn't help Lavender, he knew that, but from this point on he would comport himself as a soldier..." Instead of a civilian with feelings and emotions, mechanically going through his duties. "...he would call the men together and speak to them plainly. He would accept the blame... be a man about it... look them in the eyes." He took the blame for Lavender's death, even though it impossibly couldn't be his fault because of a hidden enemy sniper thirty yards away. "...they would get their shit together." (broken up as para 99) This revelation at the end of the story is his acceptance of obligation as a soldier to face death in the face and distance himself from that silly notion of love of a woman so far away.17

By Phil Rushton18