War Stories or Love Stories?

Essay about the novel The Things They Carried

Love, even in times that there seems there is none, is all around. Love is not just a romantic connection either. It’s a feeling of brotherhood or sisterhood, a familial feeling shared between those who aren’t blood relatives. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a compilation of not war stories and examples, but ones of love and brotherhood between the men of Lt. Jimmy Cross’s men, and more specifically between Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen, Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley, and most importantly the love shown between Kiowa and all the men of the Alpha Company.

Starting with Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen’s relationship, it was begun more on a negative tone due to Strunk stealing Jensen’s jack knife. Though after they fought, and ‘got even’ with one another, they formed a connection and eventually made a pact that basically said if one of them was critically injured, the other would take them out of their pain and kill them. This was a pact that proved this bond between these two men, though the brotherhood aspect of it was proven in a conversation between Strunk and Jensen after Strunk had been injured, and the pact was activated. During an interaction after Strunk’s leg had been blown off the two had a conversation where they said “‘Don’t kill me’ ‘I won’t,’ Jensen said … ‘But you got to promise. Swear it to me—swear you won’t kill me’ Jensen nodded and said, ‘I swear,’” (63). Though these two men had made this pact, they still had love between them, and there was enough that Jensen couldn’t follow through with what he was supposed to do. It was not the strongest bond within the Alpha Company, but it was one of brotherhood and love because of the fact that Jensen loved Strunk to a point that made it impossible for Jensen to carry out the pact, and kill basically who is now Jensen’s brother, and someone who was now one with Jensen.

Jensen and Strunk were a ‘tough love’ sort of connection that was not very open and expressive of their love, whereas Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley served as a contrast with the openness of their love for one another. Lemon was killed by stepping on a landmine while playing catch with Kiley. It is after this event that the reader to can see the true bond between these men. Shortly after Lemon’s shocking death, Rat Kiley started to show the effect that the death had on him by shooting a baby buffalo  “through the right front knee. The animal did not make a sound. It went down hard, then got up again, and Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear. He shot it in the hindquarters and in the little hump at its back. He shot it twice in the flanks. It wasn’t to kill; it was to hurt” (75). O’Brien also wrote that “Curt Lemon was dead. Rat Kiley had lost his best friend in the world” (75). Kiley loved Lemon very much, and he could not cope with Lemon’s death. Kiley wanted someone or something else to feel the pain that he felt after losing someone he loved so much. The pain and hurt afflicted onto the baby buffalo is equal to what Kiley is feeling internally.

As strong as Lemon and Kiley’s love for one another was, the collective love of the men of Alpha company and Kiowa is much stronger. Kiowa was a character who impacted almost every other character in the novel, and was a character that was loved by everyone. His death was a loss that every man in the Alpha Company felt guilty for, with Norman Bowker constantly “remembered how he had taken hold of Kiowa’s boot and pulled hard, but how the smell was simply too much, and how he’d backed off and in that way had lost the Silver Star” (147), or when Jimmy Cross said “What he should’ve done, he told himself, was follow his first impulse. In the late afternoon yesterday, when they reached the night coordinates, he should’ve taken one look and headed for higher ground. He should’ve known. No excuses” (160), or most impactfully when Azar “moved to the dike and sat holding his stomach. His face was pale” (167). These men, and many more within the group felt like it was their fault for the death of Kiowa. These men had loved him so much that when he was actually gone, each and every one felt the impact. This feeling of guilt ties to their love for Kiowa because none of these men were the same after losing Kiowa, and some would remember the feeling of brotherhood between themselves and Kiowa for the rest of their lives.

Many instances of love are shown throughout the novel The Things They Carried even though it is seen as instances of war, and these moments of love are shown between Strunk and Jensen; who could not carry on a pact that asked one of them to kill the other, Lemon and Kiley; who when the pain of lost love from Lemon’s death hurt Kiley so badly that he had to take it out on something else so that it felt the pain like he did, or Kiowa and the men of Alpha Company; who after Kiowa’s death, each man felt a sole guilt and responsibility for ‘killing’ Kiowa. These examples are all ones that stem from a deeply rooted sense of love for one another. Like said before, love is not just a romantic connection, it is a bond formed with the people that you deeply care for, it is brotherhood and sisterhood. There is always love all around, and you sometimes just have to look past the surface to see it.