Love in a War Story

The Things They Carried Critical Essay

“It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story” (O’Brien 81). Tim O’Brien writes stories about his experience in the war in his novel, The Things They Carried. This is a collection of his experiences based on his emotions and situations. The depiction of dead bodies and horrifying conditions they were living in creates the image of war but Tim O’Brien makes a point to say that this novel is not about war but instead about love, human interaction, and the relationships between the characters in his stories. It truly is a love story, they daydream about their girlfriends back home, they love their families, they love living, and they love their enemies, but most of all they love each other.

In the first chapter of the novel Tim describes what the men carried physically and emotionally; a common item in their rucksacks was an item from a girl back home. Jimmy Cross carried an image of a girl he liked, but he also carried the memory of her in his mind all the time, he was constantly thinking about her and daydreaming about the next time, if ever, he would see her again. Dobbins was another man in the group, he wore his ex girlfriend’s pantyhose around his neck for good luck. Despite the men not having actual girlfriends waiting for them when and if they returned, they used women in their lives to find hope in the war and as a way to escape in their thought. Their rucksacks were already heavy but they made room for these little signs of love. Jimmy Cross received a small pebble from the girl he liked in a letter, “It was a simple pebble, an ounce at most. Smooth to the touch, it was a milky white color with flecks of orange and violet, oval-shaped, like a miniature egg” (O’Brien 7). He examined this pebble in detail and used it to remind him of the love he had for this girl and his home.

Before Tim left for the war he was young and had no intention of fighting, he did not believe in the war. Despite that, when he was drafted he was afraid to standing up for his beliefs by escaping to Canada. O’Brien quotes, “I was afraid of walking away from my own life, my friends and my family, my whole history, everything that mattered to me. I feared losing the respect of my parents” (O’Brien 42). He loved his family, his friend, and his life. He loved it so much he was not willing to give it all up to escape the draft. This is clearly a war story showing the process of getting into the war but also highlights the love in Tim’s life, what he was not willing to give up to escape. at war home was an escape, they carried pieces of their ‘girlfriends’ to remind them of happiness back home. In the Alpha Company Kiowa was a happy man who was always laughing and kept the men going, Tim added this detail about their experience in his story “…Kiowa had just laughed it off and said they should concentrate on better things. And so for a long while they’d talked about their families and hometowns” (O’Brien 163). Kiowa knew how to change the subject and remind the men of the love in their lives. Home was a big subject for this feeling, despite being at war, the thoughts of  their families, friends, and homes demonstrated their love.

O’Brien claims his story is about love but he includes the death of a man he thinks he killed and the details of that body. Death may be the opposite of love, or maybe it is hate, but either way, this Vietnamese man that was killed is not hated by O’Brien. Maybe he should be because he is the enemy, whom the men are fighting, but really this dead man is just another human. O’Brien writes about him as if the death is on his hands, he creates a story for the man, a family, a life, a future, and a personality. These made up details create story truth that demonstrated O’Brien feelings. He does not hate the man, he did not want him to die. In reality he could not even look at the body because of his necessary emotionless and inhuman phase he had in order to remain sane. O’Brien’s description of the body create a human connection, it demonstrates the relationship between two people that are living though the same situation but are meant to be enemies.

The situation these men are living through has a binding part of it, it created bonds between the men because of the unique experience that only they will ever understand. They are the only ones who will ever know what the other went through. This bond created love between the men in the Alpha Company. As much as they were just soldiers sent to war from different backgrounds, with different beliefs and different opinions they were as close as anyone could possibly be. The most significant love in this story is the love between these men. When one is killed they are all hurt, when one is missing they all suffer the conditions to find the body. These men relied on each other through an experience few people on earth will fully understand. Kiowa was one of the most friendly men in O’Briens stories, he was loved, and the laughter he brought was extremely important.  O’Brien shows the truth of the men, his exposes Curt Lemon, admitting he was not that great while he was alive, yet everyone was still sad when he was killed, but Kiowa is the only one who was remembered with such fondness. O’Brien says, “Kiowa had been a splendid human being, the very best, intelligent and gentle and quiet spoken. Very brave, too. And decent” (O’Brien 157). With few words and incomplete sentences O’Brien tries to summarize Kiowa’s significance to the group. Instead of telling a story about Kiowa’s death, O’Brien wants this to be a story of the love the men had for him. At the end of the novel O’Brien brings us back to his childhood. He uses his imagination to bring him back to the ice he skated on as a child with the girl he loved before she died. Then as he dreamed he said, “I can see Kiowa, too, and Ted Lavender and Curt Lemon, and sometimes I can even see Timmy skating with Linda under the yellow floodlights” (O’Brien 232). Timmy and Linda were in love, this story ends with them on skates going in circles and with clear images of all his friends who died at war.

This story tells the events of Tim O’Brien’s experience before, during, and after the Vietnam War, but says it is not a war story. Tim O’Brien went to war despite his beliefs, he created a life for the Vietnamese man that was killed to make him more human, he waded through sewage to find his friends body, and he created bonds with the Alpha Company to the extent that he was sad when he was no longer at war. O’Brien is right, this is not a war story, it is about the relationships between humans and the love they had for each other.