The Things they Carried-Analysis

I am not very familiar with war novels, but I have seen many war movies. The war movies usually focus on just one side. For example, a movie about World War II would only focus on the Allies and portray the Axis as evil killers. The battles are extensive and often glorified. The “heroes” often enjoy the kill and usually show no remorse. Then again, why would they, in these movies, the villain is the nameless and faceless cliché enemy. Other war movies show more about what makes the hero. The film “Full metal Jacket” gave us a keen insight into basic training for soldiers and how they become cold blooded killers themselves. That was a new thing at the time, calling US soldiers “cold blooded killers.”

My expectations of the war story is that they have to have action obviously, since it is a war and wars do involve fighting, drama, because we don’t have the rock hard heroes now, we have the reluctant ones that didn’t choose this fate, and, the war story would not be complete without comedy. Those three things, in that exact order, are the most important elements to a war story for me. The comedy helps bring the reader/audience back home.

Laughter reminds us that these soldiers are human. Most of the jokes in these war movies involve around the soldiers talking about life back home or goofing around. The comedy also makes the drama and action have a stronger impact. By luring us into a false sense of security by laughing we get blown away by the battle scenes and then of course the sad untimely death of that one soldier who just wanted to go home.

O’Brien’s “The things they carried” took the war story into a new direction. There are no battle scenes. They are battles, he speaks of them, but he describes the aftermath, rather than the actual battle. Mentioned in all three of the short stories, but mainly focused on in “The man I killed” was the frail Vietnamese soldier that was killed. O’Brien makes numerous mentions of the man’s appearance. “the slim young man lay with his legs in the shade. His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut and the other was a star-shaped hole”

There was no description of the battle or even if there were losses on O’Brien’s squad. We are given more information about the Vietnamese soldier. “he hoped in his heart that he would never be tested. He hoped the American’s would go away….”
Rather than humanizing the soldiers, like many others of the genre have done, O’Brien lets us into the mind of the enemy. The villains were no longer cold blooded killers, they were seen as people, just like the American soldiers. The character that we learned the most about was the dead Vietnamese soldier, albeit most, if not all, was from O’Brien’s assumptions, he still becomes the most developed character. He is the cliché soldier who dies during the war he never wanted to fight.

I believe that O’Brien wanted to make a War-Drama, not a War-Action. A simple shift between priorities makes this possible. He adds more drama and takes out action. Some wars weren’t about the battles. To O’Brien, each battle was the same, what mattered more was the struggle, the constant tension. Vietnam wasn’t a proud war, many soldiers didn’t want to be there. Keeping that in mind, it makes sense that O’Brien wouldn’t focus on the action side of it. To glorify each battle would imply that he enjoyed it.