Cameron Sullivan was one of the many returnees from the Vietnam conflict. Like many other former soldiers, Sullivan returned with what he and some other soldiers derisively referred to as spoils of war. In his case, they were a piece of a wooden trap removed from his body, a scar, and some both pleasant and traumatic memories. His hometown was the same as Norman Bowker, Des Moines (OBrien 143). Sullivan was aware of Bowker and had heard of his platoon and the tragedy of Kiowas death. However, these were of secondary importance to him, as the paradoxes and dualities of the American setting are what captured his mind right from the moment he returned to the United States.
Sullivans Initiation
Sullivan was an individual who preferred to adapt to lifes circumstances and follow the most visible path. He was not a pioneer, discoverer, or inventor in the philosophical sense. His high school and college male friends and peers responded boldly and positively to the Vietnam War draft, and so did he. Like many other American men, Sullivan was a believer in the American military and thought the conflict would not last long and with almost zero casualties on both sides. However, his eight months in Vietnam shattered those expectations and his learned viewpoint for life. His parents, high school, and school taught him that the reality and the situations involved could not be dual and straightforward; he learned that all things are multifaceted and nuanced. The Vietnamese guerrillas and the jungle showed him that life has only light and darkness.
Sullivans Vietnam Conflict
Sullivans Vietnam War experience was similar to what most American soldiers in that war had, which was survival in a tropical hell. He almost failed this physiological and mental endurance test when trapped with Punji sticks. Conrad Jackman managed to catch his body flying into the deadly pit in time so that Sullivan was only injured in the foot. Jackman also helped Sullivan get to an allied hospital where a Vietnamese doctor performed surgery and removed a piece of wood and splinters from Camerons foot. Jackman was another conscript who turned into a bully during military training, and Sullivan suffered from him a lot. When the American environment changed to a Vietnamese one, his demeanor turned around. These two were assigned to the same squad and gradually became best soldier friends. For Sullivan, it was among the many proofs that the world is radical and only had interchangeable light and darkness. His soldiers path consisted entirely of such encounters of American or Vietnamese brutality with American or Vietnamese humaneness.
Sullivans Post War Period
Now Sullivan lies on the bed sleepless in his room at his parents house, and it is nighttime. As in previous nights, he tries to understand the current environment, specifically, the American reality. The flow of thought is stronger and more intense than usual today as its raining heavily outside, and another catchy anti-war rock song is playing on the radio. Returning to his home country, Cameron witnessed social duality and division, the coexistence of a pro-war movement and an anti-war one. Politicians and television told him and other young adults that their patriotic duty must be fulfilled and the Vietnam War must be won.
In contrast, activists on the streets and the radio were making pacifist and government-criticizing statements daily. Sullivan has been in between these realms of light and darkness for months now because he did not know which side was true and which was compatible with his view. His introspection brought his mental state to the point where he ceased to perceive his thoughts and actions as manifestations of his intentions but as those generated by either the light or darkness of reality. Cameron craved the morning coming because his father promised him to assist in finding an occupation at his workplace. Cameron was rescued from the death trap but fell into the one of perception.
Work Cited
OBrien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Mariner Books, 2009.
Interpretation and understanding of truth is a very ambiguous thing. Everyone has their own unique opinion regarding what is true and what is false. The reason is that language is not a perfect instrument for communication. The language is limited because we can only hear the words. When people listen to something, they try to imagine or visualize, or even feel the event being told. But the problem is that a person can never truly understand or feel something unless he tries it. One can read about astronauts landing on Moon but will never know what it feels like to be on Moon. The same principle can be applied to war. It is almost impossible to truly describe how it feels to be a soldier in a real war. In his book The Things They Carried, Tim OBrien described the events during his times in Vietnam during the war. The author tries to reveal the truth about the war by creating a mixture of fictional stories and real facts.
Confusion regarding the real and fictional origins of the story shows the reader that it is impossible to fully understand and feel the wars reality. The author intentionally contradicts himself about the reality of the stories being told. When describing the death of Curt Lemon, the author highlights the storys reality by saying that its all exactly true (OBrien 77). However, when narrating the same story, the author mentions that he already told the story many times, many versions (OBrien 85). Also, some characters confess that they invented minor parts of their stories. Sanders says, I had to make up a few things, The glee club. There wasnt any glee club (OBrien 84). Such controversy makes the reader lose trust in the real origins of the stories by characters in the book. The difficulty in distinguishing the truth is the attempt of the author to show another truth about the war. The truth lies in the impossibility of knowing the reality of the war in absolute terms (Calloway 249). This way, the book opens for a reader one of the truths about the war.
How to Tell a True War Story is a hint for a reader saying that the stories in the book are true, even though not a fact. The chapter is an analysis of the relationship between the storytelling and the experience of the war. In any war story, but especially a true one, its difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen (OBrien 69). It gives readers a hint that some parts of the stories might not be true, but it changes the books truth. Also, the importance of the stories is that they are given in segments (Calloway 253). The stories of the chapter are interconnected with other chapters, showing that the message of How to Tell a True War Story is applied to other chapters as well. Hence, the author states that even though not all the stories are real throughout the book, it does not mean that the stories are not true.
The story is a better way of telling the truth about the war than the facts themselves. OBrien suggests that the proper treatment of the truth is storytelling (Wesley 7). In Speaking of Courage, Norman Bowker, telling the story about the smell of their camping place, realizes that this was not a story for Sally Kramer (Timmerman 109). It clearly shows that not everyone wants to listen to everything about war, and some things are better not to be told. Also, Norman Bowker thought that it was not a war for war stories& nobody in town wanted to know about the terrible stink (OBrien 145). These Bowkers thoughts indicate that not every story is the story to be told. Thus, facts about the war are not something that people want to listen to. The world is deaf to the real experience of Norman Bowker, while the stories are & art of telling a true war story (Timmerman 110). Hence, the story delivers much more of the truth about war, translating the war language, which is difficult to understand for a reader, into the peaceful language of a story.
The stories reveal the truth regarding the meaning of Vietnam by showing what Vietnam is not. Even though it is clear that Vietnam in American view is a war, no one knows what kind of war it was. According to Middleton, for OBrien, fiction is the means of conveying the truth about Vietnam (12). The stories show readers that the reality of the war is not as simple as just stating the facts about it. They also make the reader think about the difference between real Vietnam and its representation. Also, in Field Trip, OBrien writes, I wanted to show her Vietnam that kept me awake at night& (175). The author, thus, shows the reader that it is better to go and see Vietnam on your own. Also, a reader understands that Vietnam described in books about the war is not a real Vietnam. By demonstrating how the stories are constructed, the author reveals the fictional origins of the books reality. It allows readers to question and challenge the picture of Vietnam portrayed in the book, thus, narrowing the gap between a reader and a real Vietnam.
The storytellers experience of the war is much more important in shaping the true war than the factual events that happened. The narrator says that a true war story if truly told, makes the stomach believe, and the gut instinct is important in war storytelling (OBrien, 77). It indicates that simple facts or just pure descriptions of war events cannot deliver the true experience, emotions, and feelings that soldiers experienced. The true story should be very impressive so that the readers can feel the situation being described by their own guts. Also, OBrien stated that in a true war story, more important than the historical artifact of what occurred is the significance, or truth, of the experience (King 183). It shows that the real events and the stories based on the events are different. Unlike the factual event, the stories represent the real world full of a wide spectrum of emotions and experiences that a person has been through. Hence, the authors experience regarding the war, which can be better delivered via fictional stories, is much more important and worth writing than the real events.
The interconnection of some facts in the story with facts from real-life convinces readers that the stories are real. The reader can notice that the protagonist and narrator are named Tim OBrien as the books author. Moreover, both fictional and real Tim OBrien are around forty and from Minnesota. Also, an epigraph that states: This book is lovingly dedicated to the men of Alpha Company& (OBrien). It makes supposedly fictional characters of the book sound real (Calloway 250). Throughout the book, a reader is confused and questioning if the characters and events are happening in the past. Even if the stories are not exactly from the authors past, the reader can sense some connection with the real world. The fact that the background of the protagonist and the author are perfectly identical makes the reader assume that the stories in the book are coming from the authors experience, which is very important for a reader to be aware of. Thus, similarities between the real world and the book make it easier for a reader to be convinced that the stories describe the war as it was in reality.
To sum up, Tim OBrien could successfully deliver the atmosphere of war. The authors manipulation of facts and fictional features of the stories allows a reader to sense the war truly. Contradiction about the reality of the stories that occur throughout the book gives a reader a thought that the truth about the war is impossible to understand. Also, the story with its fictional origin is a better way to deliver true war events rather than pure facts. Moreover, the perception of Vietnam from the American perspective is also questioned, giving a reader thinking about what real Vietnam is. In addition, it is more significant for the reader to try to understand the authors experience than just reading the factual events that occurred in his life. Finally, the connection of the books fictional word with a real-world makes readers understand that the stories are accurate in terms of the feeling and emotions, even if some of the parts of it are fictional. Hence, the mixture of fiction and facts makes the book The Things They Carried a true war story.
References
Calloway, Catherine. How to Tell a True War Story : Metafiction in The Things They Carried. Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 1995, pp. 249-257.
King, Rosemary. OBriens How to Tell a True War Story. The Explicator, 1999, pp. 182-184.
Middleton, Alexis Turley. A True War Story: Reality and Simulation in the American Literature and Film of the Vietnam War, 2008, Brigham Young U, MA dissertation.
OBrien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.
Timmerman, John H. Tim OBrien and the Art of the True War Story: Night March and Speaking of Courage . Twentieth Century Literature, 2000, pp. 100-114.
Wesley, Marilyn. Truth and Fiction in Tim OBriens If I Die in a Combat Zone and The Things They Carried . College Literature, 2002, pp. 1-18.
Generally acknowledged as one of the most preeminent pieces of Vietnam War Literature, Tim OBriens The Things They Carried portrays the raw and sincere image of war through short linked stories completely refrained from political aspects. Although there is no defined storyline in the book, it is compensated by the impact of moral dilemmas that the characters of each short story face. Furthermore, the stories are connected by a thread of characters small items that they carried to remind them about past life. This essay will analyze the theme of freedom in OBriens work.
The sequence that stands out the most for a reader is the freedom birds metaphor. Freedom birds, in this case, were the choppers that returned service members to the U.S. The author depicts how at night, the soldiers were thinking of a freedom bird, emphasizing how they were almost dreaming but could not let themselves do it due to the guilt for the comrades. Although the freedom bird is an aircraft, the author illustrates how the bird is a big, sleek silver bird with feathers and talons and high screeching; it almost looked real to the soldiers eyes (OBrien 22).
Just like birds that freely flew in the skies, the soldiers on board the choppers were free from burdens of war, from duties, from gravity and mortification and global entanglements (OBrien 22). Moreover, it might not be obvious, but the author subsequently reminds the reader how the birds of freedom take the servicemen back to the real freedom to the land of farms and great sleeping cities and highways and the golden arches of McDonalds America.
Since the freedom theme appears directly only once in the whole book, the reader is left by the author in a longing melancholic mood. It almost feels that just like the soldiers that felt guilty about dreaming about silver birds of freedom, the reader has to fully immerse in the atrocities of war. The birds of freedom connect readers to the real world outside of war and make the reader appreciate freedom and peace.
Work Cited
OBrien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.
The war in Vietnam&How much pain this short word combination incorporates. This war can be listed among the strangest and the most unsuccessful military campaigns ever held by the United Sates. The new commanding strategies limiting commanders out of their power and authority to control the process on a local level is one, but not the only reason of numerous loses which American troops suffered in this war. In his book The Things They Carried , Tim OBrien addresses numerous sad experiences which one of the American platoons had to suffer in this war. Tim OBrien as a Vietnam veteran well knows all the pain and sufferings which American soldiers had to face, and he shares his pain in this book. However, he also knows the truth about real courage and heroism shown by American soldiers in this war. In the following paper, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross one of the main characters of the book will be addressed in terms of his correspondence to the high standards of a proud title hero . With the duration of time and seeing such evil things as death, fear and shame, this young man comes to an understanding of what is really precious and how real heroism is important.
Speaking about the theme of heroism and the way it is addressed, the character of Jimmy Cross appears to be one of the main character through which the author reveals his attitude to this notion. It can be seen that the concept of what is courage, bravery and heroism changes throughout the book as Cross finds himself in a variety of difficult situations, and sees the most terrifying and striking thing for humans which is death. Initially the concept of heroism appears as some childish outlook with its idealism in particular areas and naivete in the other ones. Eventually, the reader finds Jimmy Cross along with the other comrades of his as a mature man with mature feelings, ideas and way of thinking; and, thus, a different approach to what heroism actually is.
Initially, we meet this young 24-year old man in the beginning of the book. He is obsessed with his love, and as a result is not very much concerned about the well-being of his subjects. We read in the book:
A dark theater, he remembered, and the movie was Bonnie and Clyde, and
Martha wore a tweed skirt, and during the final scene, when he touched her
knee, she turned and looked at him in a sad, sober way that made him pull his
hand back (OBrien 18).
This quotation shows what is on Cross mind initially. As a result he is not attentive to his obligations which leads to the death of one of his soldiers. This death strikes him a lot and that is where he really begins to think about the themes of heroism and his place in this war. Jimmy Cross realized that the only thing in this world hardly to be avoided and never to be changed is death. This understanding turned his idea on his position at the theatre of military actions and formed a new vision on such important values as courage and heroism for the well-being of his close ones.
Further, the next stage of the development of Cross character is seen through the feeling of shame which especially shows itself in the case of one of his soldiers as it is seen from the following quotation:
Before the chopper came, there was time for goodbyes. Lieutenant Cross went
over and said hed vouch that it was an accident. Henry Dobbins and Azar gave
him a stack of comic books for hospital reading. Everybody stood in a little circle,
feeling bad about it, trying to cheer him up with bullshit about the great night life
in Japan.
This experience shows the way Rat Kileys shameful example affects the lieutenant along with his friends. Kiley wants to avoid the sad fate of numerous of his comrades in this war, and arranges for a chance to escape from the military zone. Cross evaluates this act as cowardice and faintness. From this experience the lieutenant develops a mature attitude to the real values of courage and bravery.
Concluding on all the information related above, it should be stated that the theme of heroism and real courage is one of the main themes addressed in the book under consideration in this paper. This theme can be well examined through the experience of one of its main characters Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. Initially, the reader sees this young man to have a sort of an idealized vision of the above mentioned notions, but with the duration of time and a row of terrifying and striking events he comes to a new understanding of what real courage, bravery and heroism are. Jimmy Cross finds out that there is nothing more precious on this earth than the life of his close ones which is to be safeguarded by all means possible and to be cherished above everything. Facing such disgusting and evil things as death and cowardice, Jimmy Cross comes to revaluating his role in the war and decides to be a hero for his close ones dedicated to protecting them and fighting for each and every life of theirs.
Works Cited
OBrien, Tim. The Things They Carried, the United States: Broadway, 1998. Print.
Literature as art aims at retrieving readers emotions by conveying accurately created characters, plots, and symbols. In such a way, those who read a literary work obtain an opportunity not only to receive information but also to relive it through the authors experience. In its essence, therefore, literature cannot be a mere retelling of reality because it would fail to serve the esthetic role. In his book entitled The Things They Carried, Tim OBrien has created a unique type of fiction, where truth and myth about the Vietnam War and Americas participation in it are meticulously intertwined. The very ambiguity of the historical events related to the conflict in Vietnam imposes the blurred distinction between reality and fiction.
Here, it is argued that in The Things They Carried, Tim OBrien uses the concepts of myth and truth to modify the readers perception of actual reality to enhance the empathic influence of the stories. He achieves a literary effect by mixing and poetizing the scattered images, stories, and characters as experienced while in the army into a work of fiction. The essay will provide an overview of OBriens war biography as a core of his writing inspiration, the history of the creation of The Things They Carried, and the analysis of truth in the book.
Tim OBriens Participation in the Vietnam War
The question under investigation concerning whether The Things They Carried is truth or myth should start with the understanding of the facts around the creation of the book. According to the narration style chosen by the author, the events presented in the stories are rendered as first-hand experience, implying that the creator of the plots was a witness of the war. This assumption is validated by the biographical facts from the life of Tim OBrien.
Tim OBrien was a direct participant of the Vietnam War as he joined the American army service. The experience of participating in securing Vietnamese villages, shooting, killing, as well as the observation of destructed morality and loss of the feeling of what is right and what is wrong made its influence. By the end of his service in the army, Tim OBrien had gained several rewards and a military promotion to sergeant (Vernon 4). He also worked as a journalist and wrote articles for the military newsletter. The reality of the experience the writer obtained throughout his service in Vietnam created a myriad of characters, stories, and emotions, which found their creative implementation in his writing. In this regard, the OBrien is a mere representative of his epoch because all of his contemporaries were impacted by Vietnam.
The Things They Carried as a Literary Work
The impact of the Vietnam War on the national identity of the American people was omnipresent and very significant. The very involvement of the USA in the Vietnamese conflict was marked by moral ambiguity and the lack of clear justification (Chen 77). Such an elusive role of the truth in regards to everything that concerned the war imposed the active portrayal of Vietnam in the American literature, in particular, and cultural domain, in general. As a direct participant of those historical events, Tim OBrien could not stay aside from the discussion and had to tell his true story about Vietnam.
The book The Things They Carried was published in 1990. It consists of twenty-two separate short stories connected by the theme of the Vietnam War. In these stories, the author describes the lives of soldiers at the front, as in The Things They Carried or presents his experience in the first-person perspective, as in Ambush. In some stories, the writer directly addresses the readers and tries to explain the distinction between truth and lie in a work of fiction, as he does in the story entitled How to Tell a True War Story (OBrien 64). Overall, the collection represents the combination of multiple lives and events intertwined by the war, which are a combination of true experience and specifically created literary elements.
Relative Meaning of Truth in The Things They Carried
The author tries to bring together a scattered system of stories, events, terror, and fear that were everywhere in Vietnam during the war. The majority of the details presented in the short stories of the book are fictional, created by the writer to draw a realistic background. Also, the intensity, lyricism, and a novel-like development of the plot, which are not necessarily true, bring life to the narrations, making them prominent examples of literature. Everything in the book, including thoughts, fears, expectations, and sceneries, is real, although fictionally rearranged so that the literary form of a short story reaches the reader and conveys a targeted message. As Chen states, OBrien renders the indescribable experiences of Vietnam as moments one may gesture to but never fully represent (77). Therefore, the authors aim is to make the audience feel the same emotions the writer felt by interpreting his own truth gained through his immediate experience.
Indeed, the fact of the authors presence at the scenes depicted in his book contributes to the truthfulness of his writing; however, at the same time, it adds an extent of subjectivity. Truth changes depending on the passing time and on people. When it comes to the issue of war, the notion of truth becomes blurred (Chen 78). In the severe conditions where politics, morality, perception of life and death are too complicated to comprehend, it is very difficult to judge what is true and what is false. The narration in the book starts with the stories describing the lives and worries of the soldiers in Vietnam.
Such history-related plot delivery is suddenly interrupted by the story entitled How to Tell a True War Story, directly addressing to the reader and telling that the exact events presented earlier are a myth (Volkmer 246). Here, OBrien does not create any character or plot but rather explains the writing mechanics of creating literature. The author states that often in a true war story there is not even a point, implying that the dullness of factual history does not necessarily convey any meaning (OBrien 78). Fiction, on the other hand, allows for retrieving the essence from the facts and events and placing them in the emotional setting. Such an approach helps to transform the truth, at the same time, not making the story a lie. However, the reader becomes confused and more actively involved in the process of finding out.
This confusion might occur even at the very beginning of the collection of short stories. One who opens the book and reads its first pages finds out that all events and characters are imaginary. However, the names of real people, to whom the book is dedicated, coincide with the characters names (Volkmer 246). The author intentionally mixes truth and fiction to create a state of never coming to a conclusion, which provides a truer sense of the experience of Vietnam than a consistent narrative could do (Volkmer 245). Although the details might be a myth, the emotions that Tim OBrien delivers are very true and are formed by the realities of war.
One such reality deals with the things necessary for a soldier to survive in warfare and their moral sense. The deadly weapons the soldiers brought everywhere across Vietnam made them think about the terrible power of the things they carried (OBrien 7). However, the unbearable burden is caused not only by the material things but by the heavy load of emotions of fear, hope, love, despair, morality, and loss. In this regard, what stories can do & is make things present (Chen 78). They help unload the weight of vivid memories, feelings of guilt, and responsibility for what has been done. The author adds myth to his narration of the truth to render such a meaning through his stories.
Indeed, when there is no correct answer that could explain the driving forces and the moral justification of such a horrible thing as war, the notion of truth becomes very relative. It depends on the time when the story is told, a person who tells it, and the recipient who experiences in with the author. Therefore, the collection of stories about the Vietnam War, as presented by Tim OBrien, is the subjective truth that draws the realistic image of war, allowing the readers to perceive its inside reality.
Conclusion
In summary, the book The Things They Carried, written by Tim OBrien, is a reminiscence of his time in the American troops participating in the Vietnam War is a work of art. However, the masterfully created characters, plot, and setting are an accurate collective representation of the reality of that time and place. The author justifies his position of using the notions of truth and myth by stating that truth is elusive and changeable. Nonetheless, the hardships that the American people went through physically, emotionally, and culturally are relevant to US history and play a significant role in the peoples perception of the past and the future.
Works Cited
Chen, Tina. Unraveling the Deeper Meaning: Exile and the Embodied Poetics of Displacement in Tim OBriens The Things They Carried. Contemporary Literature, vol. 39, no. 1, 1998, pp. 77-83.
OBrien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.
Vernon, Alex. Field Notes on The Things They Carried. War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities, vol. 28, 2016, pp. 1-20.
Volkmer, Jon. Telling the Truth about Vietnam: Episteme and Narrative Structure in The Green Berets and The Things They Carried. WLA: War, Literature & the Arts, vol. 11, no. 1, 1999, pp. 240-55.
Most know that bullies bully because of insecurity– but why? The narrators of The Things They Carried, The Color Of Water, The Woman Warrior, and This Boy’s Life use cruelty as a way to create personas that are accepted and stereotypical in society. Domination and inhumanity are used as coping mechanisms to develop a sense of security and identity when one feels powerless. Having control over another people fabricates internal power and respect, allowing oneself to avoid being an outcast. In these memoirs, characters use terror as a way to mask and cope with their identities and insecurities.
In The Woman Warrior, Maxine struggles to create her selfhood, specifically how to balance her Chinese and American identity. She torments two students who mirror her insecurities, the ‘quiet girl’ and the ‘mentally retarded boy’ (173, 194). Maxine hates the girl for everything she is; her haircut, neatness, even footsteps, but mostly for her inability to speak. In an earlier portion of this chapter, Maxine recollects ‘becom[ing]silent,’ to speak English in kindergarten (167). This is the start of her shame around language. Maxine feels her voice ‘spoils [her] day with self-disgust’ and is a ‘crippled animal running on broken legs’ (169). Speaking is an act of performance for her; words don’t come out naturally, she has to create an American-feminine voice that will be accepted by those around her. One would imagine that Maxine would sympathize and connect with the quiet girl; however, because she has developed such a hate for her own voice, she hates the quietness of this girl that is a mirror image of herself. The girl is the physical representation of Maxine’s fear of speaking and the secretive life of her family. Even though she overtly repeats her hatred towards the quiet girl, Maxine is ‘talking to the familiar’ as she torments the girl and believes ‘that [they] are the same’ (172). This confirms that Kingston sees herself within this girl, however, her self-hate is so immense that she wants the quiet girl to physically experience the same pain. Maxine speaks about ‘push[ing]’ ‘pok[ing]’ and ‘indent[ing]’ the girls face, calling her a ‘sissy-girl’ when she won’t speak (178). Maxine is afraid of passivity and mocks the girl’s fragility and weakness even though those are things that Maxine deals with. This directly relates to her cultural background––Maxine feels this girl is enforcing the Chinese-feminine stereotypes instead of aligning with American norms. During kindergarten, her class performed a play, ‘except the Chinese girls,’ whose voices were ‘too soft or nonexistent’ (167). Maxine constantly feels excluded by her American identity; by tormenting the ‘quiet girl,’ she is also torturing her own insecurities, allowing her to think that she is in control of herself.
Maxine’s reaction is similar when she speaks about the ‘mentally retarded boy’ who ‘followed’ her around as if they were ‘two of a kind’ (192). She describes him as a ‘monster,’ who ‘growls’ and has Frankenstein’s legs (194, 195). Maxine cruelly shuns the boy because of her fear that her parents want her to marry him. Kingston is projecting her feelings of mistrust towards her parents and their customs. Like with the quiet girl, Maxine diminishes the boy while lifting her own qualities – she sees herself as superior. Again, Maxine doesn’t acknowledge their commonalities around speech and feels no sympathy. She is suppressing the truth and pretending to be someone she is not, in order to feel that she is nothing like the other kids with speech insecurities. A few pages later, Maxine states that ‘perhaps [she] made him up’ (205). The boy may have just been an allusion, a physicalization of her insecurities.
In The Color Of Water, James deals with his questioning identity similarly. He tries to align himself with stereotypical images of black masculinity in order to feel in control. James begins sneaking out and not going to school––after his mother’s second husband dies––taking advantage of her emotional state. He starts shoplifting, breaking into cars and mugging old ladies. James sees this as the beginning of his own ‘process of running,’ (much like what Ruth does throughout the book,) in order to emotionally disconnect from his mother (138). James is amused and entertained as he starts mugging women for their purses. Although he feels ‘sorry for them,’ James justifies his actions by stating that he is ‘getting back at the world for injustices [he] had suffered’ (141). However, because Ruth ignores James’ questions about race and promotes color-blind ideologies, he says he ‘wouldn’t have been able to name’ the injustices he has experienced (141-142). James feels a sense of control as steals purses. Perhaps he still feels guilty about not being able to protect Ruth when she was mugged. James also participates in these acts because he has a limited view of what it means to be black. As the man that mugged Ruth was black, James seems to be taking on the societal stereotype of a black man. James can gain power and status through his actions within his friend group and feels he is fulfilling the ‘duties’ of being a man.
Just like with Maxine and James, Tim and his soldiers in The Things They Carried constantly use cruel humor to divorce themselves from the realities of the war. In order to separate themselves they must “perform” and put forth a specific traditional identity. They kick dead children, burn villages without reasons, and frisk old men as they have to fill the social pressures of being a ‘hero,’ pretending they are not afraid of death––even when that is what unites them. Tim expresses that ‘there were times of panic,’ where they discharged weapons blindly and begged for their lives. (20). At some points, it seems as if there is a sense of empathy towards others, such as when Ted Lavender adopts a puppy and ‘feeds it from a plastic spoon’ (21). But these moments are brief; one of the other soldiers steals the puppy and blows it up, justifying his actions by saying he is ‘just a boy’ (21). This theme of war as play, and struggling with masculinity is apparent through these actions. The day Curt Lemon dies, Rat Kiley cruelty shoots a baby water buffalo over and over again, never ‘to kill; it was to hurt’ (75). The images are quite gruesome, he shot ‘the mouth away’ and ‘chunks of meat,’ yet, in between we get (somewhat) tender moments, as he offers the buffalo some of his rations and ‘whispered something as if talking to a pet’ (75). Instead of the soldiers coming together to mourn, Rat must feel a sense of control over death, now that his best friend has died. Much like how Maxine cries as she torments the ‘quiet girl,’ Rat is crying as he tortures the animal. The water buffalo serves as a symbol for his insecurities and the need for power. For Rat and Maxine to cope with the realities of their lives and identities, they must feel a sense of control over another; the water buffalo can’t speak or defend itself just like the ‘quiet girl.’
As Maxine projects her own insecurities onto those she torments, Tim creates an embellished backstory for the man he killed during the war. While this way of coping stems from his extreme guilt, Tim is mostly projecting his own insecurities and fear onto this man he doesn’t know. The dead man is described as having been bullied because of the feminine qualities of his appearance. He ‘had no stomach of violence’ and only ‘pretended to look forward to doing his patriotic duty’ (121). The word ‘pretend’ emphasizes that Tim and his other soldiers are performing––they are acting in ways that match with societal expectations. Although Tim feels sympathetic towards the man he killed, he still is inflicted with the power of dominance and control. He can create this man to be whomever he wants, to make himself feel less alone, and that has been able to survive even though he doesn’t feel heroic. By killing off both the man’s (and Tim’s) ‘worst’ or most unmasculine traits, he can feel secure in his being––that he is not like this feminine coward, but that he is a manly hero. This mirror image or reflection echoes throughout the book and highlights the soldiers’ social obligation in war. Tim is a masquerade of a soldier; he fears humiliation––just like what he believes the dead man felt too.
This mirror effect happens similarly when Tim gets revenge on Bobby Jorgenson for almost causing him to die. He starts to feel extreme ‘hate’ for Bobby, specifically after he tries to apologize for what happened (182). Tim decides that he will ‘spook’ and ‘mess with’ Bobby in order to get revenge. While Tim contemplates his decision to shame him, he sees Bobby sitting with fellow soldiers where he ‘fit in nicely’ and was full of ‘chumminess’ (193). Tim is provoked by the fact that despite his cowardliness, Bobby is still accepted as a ‘man,’ something that Tim constantly feels he must prove. On the night that Bobby is on night guard duty, Tim becomes ‘someone else’ and ‘begins acting’ as he sets up flares and noisemakers to scare him. As Tim watches Bobby set up for the night, he describes him as ‘a little boy’ who ‘cradled’ his rifle ‘like a teddy bear’ (195). By making Bobby seem childlike and unmasculine, Tim is able to feel he is in control has power over him. Despite how cruel this scene is, Tim admits that he ‘wasn’t himself’ and that he ‘wanted to stop [himself]’ (198). Of course, Tim continues because of the immense power and the joy he has seeing Bobby suffer and expose his fears. In this way, Tim can control Bobby’s emotions, thus making him feel like a man. Just like Maxine and Toby, Tim feels ‘close’ to his victim, Bobby, as the fear of death ‘was something [they] shared’ (201). Their victimizers are simply the mirror images of themselves, and by having the feeling of control over insecurities, one seems to have succeeded.
Just like in all the memoirs, in This Boy’s Life, Toby continually manipulates and torments others in order to feel control and power. When Toby is introduced to his first weapon, he believes that the rifle ‘complet(s)’ him (23). Having ownership of a lethal item is not only ‘proof’ that he is a man but also introduces him to the ‘ecstasy of [his power]’ (27). As he spends time in the apartment alone, Toby takes out the gun and started pointing it at people through the window. As he continually feels the immense control and power he has holding the rifle and pointing it at people––but it simply isn’t enough––so he shoots a squirrel. Toby doesn’t react at all when he does this, signifying that he is hopelessly unsure about his identity, thus influenced by the men around him. In the images he sees of himself, he is always armed, and his reality becomes distorted because of the constant violence he experiences. Growing up around abusive men has made him apathetic towards violence, and sees it as the framework for his identity. He lies to his friends, telling them that he killed a turkey and ‘blew his fucking head right off’ (76). Toby believes that through violence and derogatory language, he will be seen as ‘cool’ and masculine––a way to ‘prove’ to himself that he has an identity.
When Toby meets Arthur, who is called the ‘uncoolest boy in the sixth grade,’ they have an unspoken expectancy that they are supposed to be friends (107). However, because Arthur is a more feminine boy who is deemed a ‘sissy,’ Toby decides to continue calling him names, even starting a physical fight with him as he doesn’t want them to be seen as equals. Toby wants to be viewed as a “cool” masculine boy, and Arthur wouldn’t give him that appearance. Toby confesses that he ‘likes him,’ but continues to taunt him (108). Arthur brings out the insecurities in Toby––knowing that if they spent time together, he too would be thought of as a ‘sissy’ and be laughed at. While Rosemary, of course, disapproves of what happened, Dwight praises Toby thus continuing the cycle of using violence and cruelty as a coping mechanism. Toby only uses violence and manipulation to deal with these conflicting feelings. As Arthur and Toby develop their relationship with one another, they kiss, which causes a series of fights between them. Whenever they felt close to one another, they ‘turned on each other.’ As Toby is figuring out boyhood and his identity, he can’t cope with the experiences he has, and thus suppresses them through violence.
By using cruelty and domination, all four narrators can fit into societal expectations (often stereotypical), and manipulate their identities, which gives them a sense of control and power. Because of the complicated environments they grew up in, the narrators are only able to connect and cope with their lives through violence. Perhaps it is not that we are receiving control, but rather that we are being controlled by overwhelming power to manipulate others for our own benefit. It seems that these memoirs are trying to show how human cruelty and domination are the crust of our society––it’s simply so embedded in our lives that we are all participating, no matter what form. We must find new ways to cope with our emotions in order to end the cycle of violence and domination.
The book “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien reflects on the relationship between Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who is in Vietnam and a lady referred to as Martha from New Jersey. This reflective treatise explores the setting and situation in the book “The Things They Carried” about the main characters. Also, the paper identifies the elements of the setting that help predict the outcome of the story.
The setting and situation of the story
The story begins with Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who happens to be in Vietnam working for the Alpha Company as a war solder. Jimmy has an undying love for a lady called Martha, who doesn’t reciprocate his feelings (O’Brien, 2009). He clings to her pictures and even signed for the war to earn extra credits to win Martha’s love. From the beginning, it is apparent that Jimmy has emotional imbalances and not rational in decision making.
The Character of Jimmy is painted as an example of the consequences of being unable to handle the responsibilities due to immaturity and warped mental judgment. Jimmy has to make a series of sacrifices such as going to war, leaving Martha behind, and living with the truth of a love that is not meant to be. From the above introduction, sacrifice is suggested in the setting and situation of the story.
The plot is set with main character Jimmy having to make several sacrifices. Thus, this is expected to build until the climax when Jimmy has to decide on how to deal with the war situation, the love situation, and the personal drive to match the standards set by his mates. Jimmy is expected to either defeat his fears or be a victim of his fears as the story develops (Colella, 2011).
The setting and the main characters
The setting of this story creates different pictures of the personal traits of the characters. To begin with, the character of Jimmy is the setting is that of a victim of a person with more responsibilities than he can handle. Jimmy is introduced as a confused person who is at a crossroad in balancing undying love for a ‘strange’ girl and his duties as a soldier in the Vietnam War (O’Brien, 2009).
On the other hand, Tim O’Brien, who doubles up as the main protagonist, is introduced as a fast learner and a narrator who matures up in the course of the war. O’Brien is a sober solder and has a clear memory of the horrors of the war in Vietnam. However, he is secretive since he only concentrates in a narrative about the experiences of his mates and reveals very little about himself (O’Brien, 2009).
Mitchell Sanders is a loyal, principled, and cunning soldier. For instance, he backs down on O’Brien’s revenge quest to fix Medic Bobby based on ideological differences. Besides, Mitchell displays loyalty to Bobby (O’Brien, 2009).
Events that predict the outcome
In the beginning, Jimmy is painted as an indecisive person who has to deal with the pressure of war in Vietnam and nonreciprocating love from Martha. From this event, it is expected that Jimmy will eventually make a sacrifice of letting go of Martha and sacrificing his life for the platoon to minimize the guilt he is feeling for not being committed to the war (Colella, 2011). This is what happens as Jimmy finally burn Martha’s letters to get over her.
Also, Jimmy sacrifices himself for the sake of his fellow soldiers to free them from the dungeon of guilt and grief.
References
Colella, J. (2011). Cliffsnotes on O’Brien’s the things they carried. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
O’Brien, T. (2009). The things they carried. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Society at any time is represented as a single system consisting of many spheres. The system, as a rule, is in a state of quasi-stable equilibrium with the environment, with the transformation from one state to another occurring cyclically and permanently through some limit states of the system. Primary sign of achievement of such states are internal reaction manifested in the form of protest. Opposition can look differently affecting cultural aspects as well. In this vein, protest literature appeared aimed at criticizing or destroying the source of problematic situation for the society. Nevertheless, we should note the versatility of the genre, which allows it to be interpreted differently. It is necessary to analyze what is meant by such literature and whether Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried belong to such a genre.
The Protest Literature
To begin with, the literary current of angry young men originated in England. This current included several authors who were similar in their style of describing English society, the realistic manner of depicting reality and characters. The key criterion that united the books into a separate genre was the presence of socio-political protest in the works. Later such literature was isolated into a separate genre, called the social novel. It should be pointed out that the social novel itself is a work with a social problem established by the author. In turn, the characters must necessarily be affected by an established theme, such as gender prejudice or social injustice. The theme does not always have to be broad, so it often boils down to a narrower issue, such as working conditions in a mine or child labor. So what emerges from such novels is a work that does not necessarily advocate, but emphasizes the obvious need for change. Because of this, such literature can be considered one of the mechanisms for protesting against existing realities.
Thus, protest literature is that which portrays social problems and injustice. And one of the founders of scientific sociology, Emile Durkheim, considered the main feature of social fact to be its coerciveness. If a person took off his hat to escape the heat, it is a fact of his personal biography; if he took it off to enter a church, that is, to obey a custom, a ritual, it is a social fact. Thus, in the liberal paradigm, only literature in which the hero struggles against the power of the state or custom can be called social literature. All other literature deals only with the private lives of private individuals. Therefore, in a liberal society where only the law rules, social literature will sooner or later have to focus on the conflicts of personality and law, and of personality and war. This is largely what happens in Hollywood productions: the noble gangster wanders from film to film.
Criteria for Protest Literature
Although protest novels may differ greatly from one another, at the very least by the problem in question, it is worth identifying certain criteria for such literature. In the first place, the main criterion is the presence of a struggle, one state against another, an interclass race or interpersonal conflict. This is explained by the fact that it is only through a harsh and complex environment that the shortcomings of the system being criticized become maximally evident. From this follows a second criterion, namely the presence of criticism or realism in the book. This implies that the main problems of the novel are presented by the writer in a harsh and realistic manner, but in a more grayish tone.
Since the aim of such literature is considered not to draw the public’s attention to the problem, but to show the conflict from the worst side at once, these tools are essential. Finally, another main criterion is the presence of a sociopolitical agenda. Most often the acute issues of society are addressed, but nevertheless other aspects of life, such as war, religion or self-knowledge may also be touched upon. In any case, the work is an active or passive critique of an established problem, putting it in a worse, but real, light. Authors of works may try to arouse different feelings in readers from pity to anger, the main goal is considered to be the creation of sufficiently strong emotions. In turn, such feelings should help to change humanity’s opinion about a particular sphere, which is considered one of the ways to solve the analyzed problem. There is a direct correlation between strong negative or sad emotions and condemnation, so such novels can be considered an effective means of protest.
Analysis of Novels
In order to understand more deeply the essence and methods of social novels, it is necessary to analyze two works to determine whether they belong to this genre. The first book is Slaughterhouse-five, which has an anti-war character. The novel Slaughterhouse-five, or the Children’s Crusade is a milestone work for Vonnegut, primarily because it represents his creative autobiography. The space of the novel is a detailed symbol of the artistic consciousness of the writer himself, who is trying to make sense of himself. And it’s not only because in “The Boyne” the figure of a reflecting author appears as a character in his own right; we can also see the hidden image of the writer himself in the other characters. Discussing the vicissitudes of Billy Pilgrim, Kilgore Trout, Roland Viry and Edgar Darby, Vonnegut is really just talking about how he became a true artist and learned to write. In this way, the ethical pathos of the novel, its external eventuality, and its poetics are tied together by the author into a coherent whole.
Vonnegut, however, clearly shows that war is an inevitable and important product of the mind. Reason places man above the world, forcing the individual to regard himself as the supreme goal of evolution. This provides the right to power over the world, the right to reshape it according to one’s own purposes. In this case, reality is subjected to violence, “The body of the world cannot fit into the Procrustean bed of human ideas and concepts, so it is subjected to torture, to violent dismemberment” (Vonnegut 62). He who starts a war, always aims to throw a scheme on the world, identifying the main thing for himself and destroying everything unnecessary that does not fit the project.
War as a realized project of reason demonstrates the absurdity of reality, the incoherence of its components. The conception of war, claiming to return order, meaning, and truth to reality, leads to the opposite: chaos is brought to the surface and the original foreignness is revealed. The author offers possible variants of the ideological justification of the need for military operations – attempts to present the Dresden massacre as an event that restored meaning to the world. But all we see before us is an attempt to regain lost power over the world. The sense of life denies any hierarchy, recognizing the equivalence of each phenomenon.
The book opens with a story about the author himself, about his postwar prosperous life. This story takes a short first chapter and precedes the main narrative. Vonnegut writes directly how long he went to his “main”, as he calls it, the book – about the war and the bombing of Dresden, how he hatched plans, but could not write it until he was “old”. The end of this chapter is very important for understanding the intent of the novel as a whole and the author’s attitude to the events described. Vonnegut reproduces the Biblical story of the destruction of the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah: “But she looked back, which is why I love her, because it was so human. And she turned into a pillar of salt” (Vonnegut 70). And further through the discharge: “Now I’ve finished my war book. The next book will be very funny. And this book failed because it was written by a pillar of salt” (Vonnegut 130). What follows is the main narrative, in which the author himself appears only two or three times as an episodic character.
The main character is Vonnegut’s peer Billy Pilgrim, who, as a result of the shock of the war, begins to travel through time, and, after a plane crash in peacetime, begins in addition to visit the remote planet of Tralfamador. Such a state of the hero can be rationally motivated by his mental disorder, the influence of immoderate reading of science fiction novels. It can also be accepted as a conditional sci-fi reality. Most likely, however, it is both, and a third, and also a philosophical allegory. In terms of the poetics of the novel, it is a metaphor that organizes its artistic construction.
As Billy jerks from one period of his life to another, the action unfolds in several time strata at once. Separate fragments of different temporal realities and “Tralfamadorian” episodes are mounted together and shed additional light on each other. The reader unwittingly begins to compare America of the mid-sixties with its disgrace – Vietnam, the Dresden disaster and the dystopian Tralfamador with its wise and happy inhabitants of their sanity, who simply do not take into account the living human life, indeed full of mistakes and errors.
At the same time, the simultaneity of the existence of the hero’s entire life experience allows Vonnegut to abandon the chronological and plot sequence and highlight in this experience the main thing to which Billy Pilgrim returns again and again. And again and again he returns to World War II, which he got into as a boy of twenty-one (as does the author), and especially often to the most terrible and also completely incomprehensible, as unnecessary, bombing by Allied forces of Dresden, a city with no strategic or defense facilities (Wicks 330). It happened on February 13, 1945, when the war was already at an end. The city was practically wiped off the face of the earth; over 130 thousand civilians were killed.
So the word “massacre” in the title refers to Dresden, to the war in general, not only to Slaughterhouse-Five where American prisoner of war Vonnegut worked underground in the freezing chamber which saved his life. The second part of the title emphasizes the very terrible moral aspect of what was going on: on both sides the war was fought by the hands of children-Billy, who was twenty-one. Other characters are eighteen-year-old Ronald Vieri, who died of gangrene, a lovely angelic fifteen-year-old German soldier boy, and other “babies,” as one character, a captive English colonel, calls them. “When I saw those faces,” he says, “I was shocked. My God, I thought. – This is a children’s crusade!” (Vonnegut 30). That’s what Vonnegut, not just the fictional Billy Pilgrim, experienced and understood, wanted to tell us about in his fantasy novel, with the strange, at first glance, but figuratively accurate title Slaughterhouse No. 5, or The Children’s Crusade.
The novel uses an unusual and composite time that includes both the past and certain elements of the present. In this way, the main character’s consciousness is built on a constant journey through consciousness, where it is difficult to distinguish between memories and what is happening now. These temporal plans combine in Billy’s consciousness through associations. For example, in 1967, Billy goes to breakfast at the club through a neighborhood that was burned down in the Negro riots. It is important to note that the work is built on metaphors: “Look! Billy Pilgrim has passed out of time.” This metaphor unfolds consistently as the action progresses. Billy “travels” through different periods of his life and memories. The important point here is that his travels are uncontrolled, so the novel’s script is extremely inconsistent, jumping to different points in time (Brown 103). The reader is confronted with the juxtaposition of the past, present, and future arising in Billy’s memory. The connection between all sorts of places, from nonexistent planets to Dresden itself, shows the character’s mental instability. Moreover, embedded in this type of narrative is the idea of a skeptical rationalism that presents itself to the reader in absolutes.
In addition, there is a noticeable mental change in the protagonist. He has turned into a violent and resigned man who believes that war is the way out. In the hero’s memoirs, the team looks like it’s making its way through “lunar surface” of what used to be a large city a few hours ago. “Only one thing was clear: the entire population of the city, without exception, was supposed to be wiped out, and anyone who dared to stay alive was spoiling the cause” (Vonnegut 59). Among other things, the hero analyzes the planes emerging in the sky, producing the destruction of everything on the ground, but his reaction is absurd: “It was all designed to end the war sooner” (Vonnegut 62). The same fate affects the rest of the American soldiers, with whom it has become impossible to talk about the war – “this bombing didn’t seem like something outstanding at all.” The fictional planet of Tralfamador is terrifying in its utter callousness (Barrows 393). The secret of Tralfamadorians is very simple: There is a direct correlation between insensibility and peace, and in order to experience any satisfaction one must give up humanity. This idea sits tightly in the mind of the hero, which clearly demonstrates the rigidity and pernicious effect of military action on the average man.
For the Tralfamadorians, time is a purely physical concept. It is as devoid of all human reality as the chain of peaks of a mountain range: a moment follows a moment, as a peak is replaced by a peak, and man is simply frozen “in the amber of this moment” (like an insect). It makes no sense to teach good and confront evil (Barrows 395). Every moment in time has a definite structure and no one can change it. So it is pointless to try to stop a test pilot from pushing a button and thereby blowing up a galaxy. “No beginning, no end, no plot tension, no morality, no cause and effect” is a characteristic of the novels read on Tralfamador (Vonnegut 89). This characteristic also applies to life itself on a planet where technocratic rationality has won the ultimate victory.
Thus, through the protagonist and the reference to mental disorders and syndromes received by soldiers because of the war, a protest is expressed. Its essence is that war does not show winners or losers. The main problem is that all soldiers of any country are people who have their own destinies and lives, often healthy (Brown 103). But warfare affects everyone negatively, even the victors, by burdening them with mental disabilities. In this sense, the protest goes against the war, which gives mankind only losses, without perceiving any heroism or worldview.
The Things They Carried, a collection of short stories by the American writer Tim O’Brien, published in 1990, solves several difficult creative problems. It builds a coherent narrative about the Vietnam War and its participants that combines documentary and fiction – while insisting that they are inextricably linked (Buchanan 637). O’Brien’s characters (and among them himself) find themselves at the center of a horror that is created solely from an inability to question the “heroic ideals” of army service.
The book literally screams that war is filthy at its maximum. At the same time, it is presented both as mud, clay and streams of earth, and as spiritual mud – in the form of contrived bravado, attempts to ironize and laugh at death, withering of feelings and exasperation. All of the characters in the book carried something personal with them – whether it was a picture of someone dear to my heart, a Bible, or a girl’s stockings. The idea is that no one was helped by this value to leave a person. Personal possessions, almost weightless, are a fragile bridge between the reality of war surrounding yesterday’s children. More than once or twice the novel emphasizes their unreality and, therefore, their importance.
The content suggests that the numerous fighters are, in fact, weak people and will not face what they need, in case it affects them, all showing signs of quitting smoking. Examining O’Brien’s character, one finds both fearlessness and weakness in his journey. At first it is seen that O’Brien portrays valor; if his project sees that he would not want to go to war, it would be wrong, “I was too good for this war. It couldn’t have been. I was above it” (O’Brien 39). His departure for Canada demonstrated that he had courage as he stood firmly against the war and did his best to maintain a strategic distance from it, especially when everyone else did the opposite.
Thus, the book also stands in the genre of anti-war literature. Although the war is portrayed in a slightly different way than in the previous example, the main aim of the work is still to criticize the war effort (O’Brien 13). Again we touch on the psychological aspect of the soldiers, and it is expressed even more vividly. Here the author is not trying to tell the reader that the soldiers are people, he makes it sound like an axiom. Meanwhile, the emphasis is on the fact that war makes a man a cruel and immoral creature. Again, this idea leads to the idea that war does not recognize winners or benefits, but only brings destruction, above all psychological destruction (Jarraway 700). Thus, for example, O’Brien shows the valuable things for each hero that they brought with them as part of their memory or what allows them to retain their former personality. At the same time, such values are powerless against the harshness and relentlessness of war and the reader sees that people invariably change in a negative direction.
Finally, a separate key to both works is a serious critique of the institution of heroism. In the first work, the writer notes that heroism in general is a vague notion, and each individual interprets it in his own way. And, as a rule, what is brave and heroic for one person is absurd for another. In the second work, there is a conflict between heroism and compassion, humanity. The author draws a parallel between how one tries to preserve the goodness and sense of nobility and how cruelty and bloodthirstiness are justified by bravery.
One striking example of moral failure is characterized by the story The Things They Carried. Love appears to be a very pure, carefree and high-minded feeling that should motivate many soldiers, but a change is taking place. Very soon such reflections cease to be acute as the modernization to the hard side begins. In such a truth, unrequited emotion or acceptance of ordinary love leaves men dependent on love unresolved and invalid, searching for meaning (Jarraway 700). The first mention of love is in The Things They Carried, when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s intense infatuation with Martha is revealed (Genzale 509.) His attitude seems innocent enough as he wants Martha to love him as he loved her.
The situation of the hero’s relentless desire to spend the night with the girl against her will most vividly and climactically describes the demonization of personality. The man has an unhealthy excitement, which is noticeable even from the structure of the letter, reinforced by a number of lapses. If we analyze wartime, the act is not akin to being scary or dangerous, but from a moral and human point of view it remains atrocious. It is at this point that one senses the complete loss of human feelings by the individual, his pre-talent and withdrawal from the love that in the beginning was all.
Conclusion
As a result of the analysis of the genre of protest literature, it becomes clear that it is an extremely effective tool for changing the worldview in society. The social novel appears in the nineteenth century with a specific genre content. Inherent in the novel as a whole, the desire to present the private fate as a product of public life determines the interest in social problems. Genre specificity of the social novel in all its aspects is a product of the New Age. First of all, the problematics is connected with the development of the civilization of industrial capitalism. Second, type of thinking forces us to look for cause-and-effect connections in the relations of man and society, the regularities of social development and to assume a positive progressive movement of history. The priority of scientific knowledge in the dynamic social development predetermines the special place of intellectuals in the life of society. A negative consequence of the “end of history” is the loss of the future. The traditional understanding of history, which takes into account the lessons of the past and builds the perspective of movement, is irreversibly disappearing.
The examples of the works analyzed show that war leads to the transformation of the individual and his detachment from the human past. One way or another, the individual changes for the worse as a result of the psychological burden. In the end, man surrenders and modernizes into a rigid insensitive being. The point of this is to draw attention to the fact that war brings sacrifice not only on the battlefield, and destruction not only in material terms. Humanity never gains from aggression, but only loses people. The soldier’s duty, patriotism, and heroism turn out to be nothing but dangerous delusions. The man at war is first of all a violent body, involved in the absurd reality of war, he is deromanticized and deprived of a heroic halo.
Brown, Kevin. “The Psychiatrists Were Right: Anomic Alienation in Kurt Vonnegut’sSlaughterhouse-Five.” South Central Review, vol. 28, no. 2, 2011, pp. 101–109. Project MUSE, doi: 10.1353/scr.2011.0022.
Buchanan, David. “Reporting Is Not a Holy Word: Tim O’Brien’s Edits in If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home and The Things They Carried.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 65, no. 4, 2019, pp. 618–642. Project MUSE, doi: 10.1353/mfs.2019.0047.
Genzale, Ann M. “Joining the Past to the Future: The Autobiographical Self in The Things They Carried.” Philosophy and Literature, vol. 40, no. 2, 2016, pp. 495-510. Project MUSE, doi: 10.1353/phl.2016.0033.
Jarraway, David. “Excremental Assault in Tim O’Brien: Trauma and Recovery in Vietnam War Literature.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 44, no. 3, 1998, pp. 695–711. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/mfs.1998.0063.
O’Brien, Tim. (2009). The Things They Carried. Hounghton Miffin Harcourt.
Vonnegut, Kurt. (2009). Slaughterhouse-Five. Random House Publishing Group.
Wicks, Amanda. “All This Happened, More or Less: The Science Fiction of Trauma in Slaughterhouse-Five.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2014, pp. 329 –340. EBSCOhost, doi: 10.1080/00111619.2013.783786.
Tim O’Brien conveys various messages concerning the experiences of soldiers in the Vietnam War through storytelling. He brings out the aspect of emotional burdens that the soldiers draw from the war. Soldiers who survive the war bear confusion, grief, and guilt.
Confusion and grief engulf Norman Bowker that he drives pointlessly around his hometown lake to write a letter to O’Brien explicating how the war took away his life (150). Bowker hangs himself in a YMCA. Bowker grapples with the emotional burdens on his own that he ends up committing suicide. O’Brien feels that sharing his stories through writing keeps him from suffering emotional torture (151).
O’Brien also conveys the message of social obligation. The author shows that the men went to war majorly because of social obligation. This obligation arose from assumed pressures from the broader society and nuclear relations. Norman, for example, states in a letter to O’Brien that he, like other soldiers, went to fight because of his obligation to society.
Although he won seven medals, Norman felt guilty after the war that he did not receive the Silver Star (147). He perceives the failure to receive the Silver Star as a disappointment to his hometown and his father.
The motifs in the story include loneliness and isolation, vague morality, and storytelling. The author repeatedly stresses the effect of isolation and loneliness on the soldiers by showing that insecurity and worries can be more precarious than the real war. Loneliness continues to engulf in the lives of the soldiers long after the end of the war.
O’Brien regrets his earlier decision to join what he now refers to as the “wrong war” (152). Norman Bowker is totally isolated because there is no one to console him (147). O’Brien observes that he would have had a similar ending to that of Norman if he had not been writing to keep busy (191).
The author demonstrates that war marginalizes moral boundaries. War makes it impossible to explain the harsh killing of innocent souls on both sides. The men fail to apprehend the basis for these brutal encounters. Thus, they point out the irony as a way of confronting their emotional pain. Mitchell Saunders and O’Brien use irony to stress the real immorality of the killings. The exposure of the soldiers to these horrors affects their perceptions of right and wrong.
Jimmy Cross blames himself for the death of Kiowa and writes to Kiowa’s father to apologize (161). O’Brien is also utterly affected by the war that he substitutes his peace-loving character with a hard and callous willingness to cause harm to others (191).
Azar tries to confront the emotional pain that Kiowa’s death causes him by joking that the dead man is only eating shit (158). The paradoxical lesson that the soldiers draw from their encounters is that war is immoral. O’Brien feels Warfare is capricious and vague because it drives human beings into severe challenges without clear solutions.
The author also views stories as the best way for listeners and tellers to grapple with the past collectively and share otherwise incomprehensible encounters. He demonstrates that storytelling is not only a survival tool for soldiers experiencing confusing emotions as a result of the war but also a communication mechanism throughout life. The different storytellers in the book, such as Norman Bowker, in addition to O’Brien, use stories to bring out the profound horrible truths of war.
The essay analyzes “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. This collection of short stories is devoted to a platoon of American soldiers who fight in the Vietnam War. The book is a powerful blend of fact and fiction that leaves the reader with a lasting impression of fear, love, and gratitude for the novel’s components. When describing the tangibles, O’Brien incorporates weight and number to force the pressures of the soldiers onto the reader.
As the plot unfolds, O’Brien moves the reader through scenes of war, telling multiple stories of love, death, and friendships combining with a narrative. More specifically, O’Brien incorporates interruptions of himself talking to us like the reader is watching a movie, and he keeps pressing pause to explain a scene that we might not have fully grasped. In this paper, a literary analysis of “The Things They Carried” will be presented to reveal the significance of the act of “listening” to its reader.
The Things They Carried: Critical Analysis and Impressions
O’Brien takes the reader through a series of repeated utterances as depicted through cyclic stories of love, war, and death vividly, engaging the reader into an active session of a movie-like scene. More importantly, several pauses are encountered throughout the story, as the author tries to explain some examples which the reader may not have otherwise understood.
Throughout the book, O’Brien tells the audience about war stories, in which some instances remain doubtful about their validity. As seen from the following quote, Tim’s war story makes the reader to render it invalid when he says the stories are mere imaginations: “The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you…..memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head….. There is the illusion of aliveness…” (O’Brien 230).
As O’Brien reveals to the reader various scenarios telling stories of death and friendship, warfare conditions, and love relationships, he incorporates disruption of himself talking to the audience as if they are watching a film. It is the author’s complex blend of fact and fiction, which takes the reader into an in-depth understanding of the underlying implication of “The Things They Carried” short stories. The analysis shows that the novel sounds more to a narrative than the story, where every twinge is factual beyond reality.
Particularly, O’Brien engrosses the reader into an active listening-like session through his utterances of vivid description of war scenarios, making the novel more involving than just mere storytelling. As seen from the quote, “If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste…then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie…” (O’Brien 68).
As has been noted, O’Brien presents severe events in fiction as a strategy to emphasize how dangerous the situation was during the time of the war. Concerning the novel’s title, the soldiers are brought out having a variety of objects and practices they carried in a foreign land they went for battle. As O’ Brien (82) utters “… It’s safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true… Sometimes war is beautiful, sometimes it’s horrible…” there appears to be pain and happiness in war.
Though this theme may seem confusing, it takes the reader into the inner revelation of how the soldiers were undergoing a blend of experiences in which some made them happy while others saddened them. As a result, most of the unfolding in this novel ends up engaging the reader into active listening scenarios, which facilitate a deeper understanding of the underlying issues.
As it is noted, O’Brien takes the readers through a story of his current self, which seems more a story than real experience. His frequent questioning of the definition of a “true story” and what truth implies in any story engages the reader into active sessions of listening to his utterances. At the same time, the author engages the reader into a description of the numerous deaths of his champions in a repetition manner.
For instance, O’Brien (129) describes the shape of the dead man’s eye more than five times in the previous chapters. A vivid account of the author’s remarks on various events through his repetition tendency to engage the reader into the active unfolding of his intentions to write the novel emerges as a film like presentation since it requires the close attention of his utterances. By so doing, O’Brien succeeds in engaging his audience into active sessions through his blend of literary devices to present various ideas.
Also, O’Brien seems to exaggerate in his vivid accounts of the experience the soldiers in the war. Through describing the war in various dimensions, the author leaves the readers feeling burdened with hardships and turmoil that his soldiers were undergoing, though some doubt about its actual existence remains an imminent issue to his audience.
As O’Brien (75) reveals, “…and the whole war is right there in that stare. It says everything you can’t ever say…” the warfare situation seems harsh and unbearable among the soldiers, since some end up being killed with others brutalized in various ways. Notably, the act of listening in most of the author’s utterances seems quite crucial in the sense that it provides the reader with a vivid account of the happenings presented in this novel.
While describing the tangibles, O’Brien describes the entire scenario of how each character was armed with a variety of objects as they set for the war. It is the force and the weight of the flamboyant explanation of the setting to the war by the soldiers that engage the reader into more active participation in the entire scene.
For instance, “…every third or fourth person carried a Claymore antipersonnel mine – 3.5 pounds with its firing device…they carried fragmentation of grenades – 14 ounces each…they all carried at least one M-18 colored smoke grenade – 24 ounces…” (O’Brien 7).
Quite significantly, the use of repetition in this extract seems to engross the reader into a more precise account of the actual setting of the soldiers into the war. This leaves the reader into active listening of the utterances of the author as he tries to bring into attention how much the soldiers were prepared for the war.
Conclusion
This essay analyzes Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” This collection of short stories is devoted to a platoon of American soldiers who fight in the Vietnam War. In summary, the act of listening in this book is quite crucial in the sense that it provides the reader with a more profound revelation of the utterances presented by O’Brien. More so, close following of the stories told by the author through the act of listening unveils the real nature of the scenes despite seeming like a blend of fiction and reality. On this basis, therefore, O’Brien succeeds in facilitating activeness among his audience through his use of language and various rhetorical devices to present his ideas uniquely.