Two people meet, overcome obstacles, and fall in love, a traditional love story. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is also a love story, but it is not a traditional one. Like war, it is not, and cannot be that simple. There is no linear story, the outcome is not favorable, and everything is unpredictable. Despite these differences, O’Brien’s novel still stands as a strong love story. To love something, simply means to be fully devoted to it, and put it above everything else. Love makes a person do unthinkable things, and so does war, and when it is lost, you are also lost. These elements radiate strong in the novel and shape it into the love story that it truly is. But let’s not forget, this is not a traditional love story, there is not even love between two people, but rather between the soldiers and the war, a war which interrupts all other loves.
The true sense of love in the novel is observed between the soldiers and the war. Although, originally, the soldiers did not want to participate in the pointless war, they grew to become obsessed with it. At the age of only seventeen, the soldiers lost their innocence and became victims to the harsh environment of war. They all changed and became entrapped in their alternate world, their war lives. This obsession and devotion can be demonstrated by O’Brien after he has been injured and can no longer participate in the war. O’Brien notes: “That’s how I felt-like a civilian-and it made me sad” (O’Brien 185). O’Brien could not live without the war, as like someone who is away from their true love would feel. He missed the bonds between his fellow soldiers that had become his life, and missed the intense action of the war; he could not handle seeing his once platoon mates loving the war that he was no longer apart of. To help reminisce this love, O’Brien wrote The Things They Carried, a love story, but one with no happy ending. A similar instance can also be seen with O’Brien’s fellow platoon mate, Norman Bowker. O’Brien comments about Bowker after the war: “The war was over and there was no place in particular to go” (O’Brien 131). Like a person who just lost a traditional love, Bowker found no point in life and was lost. He saw no purpose to his existence, and would not be able to gain it back until he was reunited with his love, the war. But Bowker would never find his love again, leading to his death. Only the absence of a true love can cause such a death, and Bowker feel victim to it. The soldiers loved the war, and the love became their lives.
Like in any other love story, their can only be one true love. For the soldiers, the war was their true love, and it overpowered and destroyed all others. It created a sense of unbreakable brotherly love between the soldiers, but broke it away just as quickly. In the relationship between Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk, that was brought together by the war, they loved each other so much that they created a daring pact with one another: “In late August, they made a pact that if one of them should ever get totally fucked up-a wheelchair wound-the other guy would automatically find a way to end it” (O’Brien 62). The two had such a deep love and admiration for one another that they were willing to go as far as to kill each other. No other environment but war can create that amount of love and devotion. Soon after, Strunk received an injury during the war, a wheelchair injury, but neither was willing to follow the pact they had created, and with the breaking of the pact, came a breaking of their brotherly love, destroyed by the war that had written it. Additional examples of brotherly love can also be seen between Bowker and Kiowa who gained a sense of love between each other throughout the war. They relied and understood one another the way no one else could. But the war took away this love as fast as it created it, after all, a love story can only contain one love. Kiowa was killed in the war and Bowker left with nothing except the love that persisted between him and the war. A Similar circumstance is also seen between Mark Fossie and Mary Anne Bell. Mark was so absorbed with Bell, that he invited her to join him during the war. At first, the relationship was untouched by the war, but over time, the war would win out. The war had absorbed Bell, and she began to love it as much as everyone else. She could not get enough of it and slowly fell away from the grasp of Fossie’s love. In a love story, their can only be a single love, and O’Brien’s novel is no exception to this.
Although The Things They Carried is, in no sense, traditional, it cannot be overlook as what it truly is, a love story. The soldier’s entire lives revolve around the war. They are lost without it and can not handle being away from it. Like all love does, it drives people to do the unthinkable, even killing people, like it had killed Bowker. With love, their can only be one, and there is no shortage of this in O’Brien’s novel. It kills and absorbs everything until it is the only thing left that can be loved. The soldiers love the war, but the war loves none.