Wartime Feelings

Writing about war can evoke many emotions in a person, and this remains true with Tim O’Brien and his novel, The Things They Carried. Throughout the story O’Brien tells the readers about stories, images, and feelings that people had while in Vietnam. Throughout the story direct as well as indirect characterization is used to formulate themes and morals. Three recurring themes in this book are guilt, superstition, and personal reputation.

Guilt plays a role in the emotions of some soldiers. One specific example of this comes when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross lets Ted Lavender die. O’Brien talk about how Cross feels afterwards: “He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war” (O’Brien 16). Martha is Jimmy Cross’ college lover and he lets his grasp on the past get the most of him. The terrible consequence of this is having one of his men die because of it. This feeling was ‘like a stone in his stomach’ because he will always have that lurching feeling in his stomach. It serves as a constant reminder to the guilt he felt when Ted Lavender dies because he, the Lieutenant of the squad, was not paying attention. Another example of guilt comes in the chapter “Friends.” In this chapter Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk make a pact. They agreed that if either one got a bad injury in battle, the other would kill them to save the other from suffering. Later in the chapter, Lee sets off a mortar and loses the lower half of his right leg. When Lee gets to the helicopter, “Jensen reached out and touched the good leg. “Go on now,” he said. Later we heard that Strunk died somewhere over Chu Lai, which seemed to relieve Dave Jensen of an enormous weight” (O’Brien 63). This ‘enormous weight’ that Dave felt was the guilt of not following through with his promise. Jensen made the decision not to kill his friend, but he was relieved of this because Lee died in the helicopter, ending his suffering. If Strunk had lived, Jenson would have felt more guilty that he already did. Another common theme in the many war stories is superstition.
The men in the war use superstition as hope and a way to stay upbeat during the war, In the opening chapter, “The Things They Carried” O’Brien tells the reader some of the different objects the soldiers carry. For example, “Lieutenant Cross carried his good-luck pebble, Dave Jensen carried a rabbit’s foot, Norman Bowker, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a thumb that had been resented to him as a gift by Mitchell Sanders” (O’Brien 12). With some objects being ones that are universally perceived as lucky like a rabbit foot, to a thumb that was cut off an enemy’s hand, these objects had a profound effect on the soldiers. It was almost a church-like experience. Those objects turned the soldiers into believers, putting their faith into them hoping they would come out of the war alive. Each object gave a certain soldier hope and trust that everything would be okay. Another example of this is Henry Dobbins and his girlfriend’s panty-hose that he carries. When O’Brien describes it, he says, “They kept him safe. They gave access to a spiritual world… Like many of us in Vietnam, Dobbins felt the pull of superstition, and he believed firmly and absolutely in the protective power of the stockings. They were like body armor… Dobbins was invulnerable. Never wounded, never a scratch” (O’Brien 112). To Henry Dobbins, those pantyhose were his god. He put all his faith into the superstition of wearing them to keep him safe, and it worked. One time Dobbins tripped a Bouncing Betty, but he was wearing the stockings. It did not even detonate. Another time Dobbins was in the middle of a firefight, and yet again he had them around his neck. He came out unscathed. Dobbins and the pantyhose also united the soldiers. It made them all believe in superstition. O’Brien later says, “It turned us into a platoon of believers. You don’t dispute facts” (O’Brien 112). The pantyhose literally “rallied the troops” and made them tighter as a unit. A third theme of this story is maintaining your reputation.
In Vietnam, your reputation is more important than your actions. As a soldier, your reputation is one of the things you “carried.” O’Brien said, “They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to” (O’Brien 20). By saying ‘the fear of blushing’ O’Brien means being scared or showing weakness. Manliness is so important to these men that their greatest fear was not death. It was showing weakness. They also killed the enemy not because it was their duty, but it was because they knew they would get hell for it if they did not. Another example of reputation coming into play is later in the chapter when O’Brien describes the people who shot themselves to get out of the war. He says, “They sneered at the sick call. They spoke bitterly about they guys who had found release by shooting off their own toes or fingers. Pussies, they’d say. Candy-asses. It was fierce mocking talk, with only a trace of envy or awe” (O’Brien 21). The soldiers called whoever purposely injured themselves to get out of the war zone a ‘pussy’ or a ‘candy-ass’ to show that they could not handle the pressure of war. The men whose reputations mattered so greatly to them, ‘sneered at the sick call’ because they thought they were tougher and more manly than the ones who hurt themselves to leave. The soldiers who stayed did want to leave, but they could not show it. That is why there was only ‘a trace’ of envy towards those who got to leave. The ones who remained had their reputations to worry about.
In summary, there are many themes explored throughout the book, but three stand out. Guilt, superstition, and personal reputation. We see guilt when Jimmy Cross lets Ted Lavender die, and we see personal reputation with the soldiers’ attitude towards the ‘sick call.’ Superstition is huge to Jimmy Cross since he uses his girlfriend’s panty-hose to protect himself in battle. These three themes helped shape the novel into what it is and helped the reader feel some of the emotions that went into being a soldier in Vietnam.