VIETNAM WAR: REDRAWING OF LOADS THROUGH THE
WORKS OF TIM O’ BRIEN’S THE THINGS THEY CARRIED
Labani Sarkar, Researcher, Raijanj University,
Raiganj labanisarkarcob1991@gmail.com, Mobile No. 9679376794
Abstract
War and memory are interrelated and
it represents a verisimilitude approach through the presentation of distinction
among legitimate history, intellectual history, and the military histories of
the war (written history of armed forces, journalist). In the history of War, there are natural
tendencies of legitimate historians to hide the discursive history of war (from
ground zero) from the ordinary people. Most of time, the physical and
psychological pain of battalions during the war, their agony, trauma, and
frustrations are not penned down and people of the nations (defeated and
triumph nations) are unaware of the true history of ground zero. In this paper, I would like to analysis
American War on Vietnam through the work of Tim O’Brien. Vietnam War is also
known as “War against the Americans to save the Nation” or “American War in
Vietnam.” Tim O’Brien is an American novelist and he contributes in the war. He
has ranked as a sergeant in military. His semi-autobiographical novel, Things
They Carried points out his experiences in the Vietnam War. It is an
empathetic, as well as, fictional account of nonfictional story of American
soldiers through the jungles of Vietnam. It is a story of loss and love, guilt,
and fear. In War, soldiers carry their necessary things (physical objects) like
matches, Morphine, M-16 Rifles and Candy. After the War, they bring grief,
terror, guilt, confusion, and the brutality of War as a return gift. After life
of War, each soldiers’ physical loss underscores under emotional loss. In this
memoir, Tim O’Brien delineates how soldiers carry heavy physical and
psychological loads in the War.
Keywords: verisimilitude,
ground-zero, legitimate, battalions.
Introduction
“War is hell, but that is
not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and
holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty: war is fun.
War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.” (O’Brien,51 “How to Tell a True War Story”)
Tim O’Brien’s novel Things They Carried is a collection of interrelated short stories
about the experiences of soldiers who fights for American side in the Vietnam
War. It is the shared stories of soldiers of Alpha Company during and after the
Vietnam War. Each and every solder share experience, guilt, horror, anxiety and
confusion during and after the War. Lieutenant Jimmy shares his love for Martha
and his guilt for Ted Lavender’s death. O’Brien shares his own guilt over killing
a man. Bowkar shares his failure to save Kiowa who was killed in the war. In
his memoir, If I die in a Combat Zone,
Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, O’Brien writes, “Can the foot soldier teach
anything important about war, merely for heaving been there? I think not. He
can tell war stories.” About the death of high number of Vietnamese, as a true
war commentator, Tim O’Brien comments, “A perverse and outrageous double
standard what if things were reversed? What if the Vietnamese were to ask us,
or to locate and identify each of their own MIAS? Numbers alone make it
impossible…from my own Sliver of experience__ one year at war…I can test
anonymity of a great many Vietnamese dead.”
In War, obligation of soldiers and
obligation of ordinary people are not same. These loads of obligation are
confined in responsibility to join in the War as a citizen of Nation. In Things They Carried, we have seen that so many
soldiers are obliged to go but they have lack of love about war, they have only
joined in the war for reputation of their country. In “On the Rainy River,” O’Brien has shared
his own feelings and intention regarding the joining of War. War seems to him
wrong because its causes and effects are uncertain. His community pressures him
to join in the War. The fictional Tim O’Brien is the spokesperson of the author
Tim O’Brien. The author, Tim O’Brien comments on the confusion that soldiers
have experienced on the demands of their country, as well as, on the demands of
their community conflicted with the principles of their own. Jimmy Cross has an
obligation to lead the battalions and only for his responsibility as a
Lieutenant to save the lives of other fellow soldiers, he forgot his love for
Martha. His inability to save the lives of soldiers confesses his guilt till
the aftermath of war. When Lavender was shot, Jimmy was thinking about Martha,
whom he had a close relationship and once he dated with her in his college
life, left her for Vietnam War. Twenty years later of the War, he feels guilty
over Lavender’s death.
In The
Things They Carried, there are several collective short stories; “Love”,
“Spin”, “On the Rainy River”, “Enemies “Friends”, “How to Tell a True War
Story”, “The Dentist”, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, “Stockings”, “The Man
I killed”, “Ambush”, “Notes”, The Lives of the Dead” etc. Each story carries
the burden of the Vietnam War through the experience of soldiers as a
recollection of memory. In “How to Tell a True War Story,” O’Brien writes,
“A true war story is never about war. It is about sunlight.
It is about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you
must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid
to do. It is about love and memory. It is about sorrow. It is about sisters who
never write back and people who never listen” (O’Brien,54).
In
“Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,”
“Vietnam
was full of strange stories, some improbable, some well beyond that, but the
stories that will last forever are those that swirl back and forth across the
border between trivia and bedlam, the mad and the mundane” (O’Brien,56).
In
the story “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien consoles for the death of the man whom he
killed in the War and the man is the replica of him. The brutality of the war
is different from the fantasy about War. Nature and the creatures are not
afraid of War; they have faced the brutality of the war. O’Brien points out the
ambiguity and complexity of Vietnam War through the death of his victim. After
the death of his fellow Vietnam soldiers, the tiny blue flowers and butterfly
have found their home amid the tragedy of death,
“His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth
were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his
eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman’s, his nose was damaged, there was a
lobe of one ear…. there was a butterfly on his chin, his neck was open to the
spinal cord and the blood there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that
had killed him.” (O’Brien,79).
The atrocities of the brutality of War
remain alive in the heart of the soldiers after the end of the War. It is a
memory of horror, brutality and valor, guilt, and confusion. These memories
come back invisibly from the war and placed in the hearts of the soldiers. Tim
O’Brien tells, “You can tell a true war story by its absolute and
uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (Brien,46). Bao Ninh is
similar with Tim O’Brien in this respect. Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War is a
true contrapuntal war story of Vietnam in American literature. Ninh writes,
“The ones who loved war were not the young men but the others like the
politicians, middle aged men with fat bellies and short legs” (Ninh,75). The
documentary on war or true war history delineates the uncompromising suffering
of both sides of war. The Things They
Carried and The Sorrow of War repeatedly redraw the suffering of
Vietnam
Conclusion
War is unnatural and disturbing, as well as hellish object. The
contrapuntal reading of Tim O’Brien’s The
Things They Carried ironically retells the true history of War. The textual
and historical references about Vietnam War delineate the atrocities of human
being, as well as, the twisted morality of war. Soldiers try to find out the
actual solution of the problem of war aftermath of the War. Joseph Heller’s
novel Catch-22 describes the twisted
morality of war. The guilt of soldiers finds the problem. If the guilty of
soldier avoids, they would not feel guilt and shame of War. The physical loads
of soldiers become emotional loads during and after Vietnam War.
References
·
O’Brien, Tim. (2009). Things They Carried. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
·
Heller, Joseph. (1961). Catch-2022.New York: The Modern Library.
·
Ninh, Bao. (1993). The Sorrow of War.
New York: Riverhead Books.
·
Ninh, Bao, and Phan T. Hao. (1993). The Sorrow of War a Novel of North Vietnam.
New York: Pantheon.
·
O’Brien, Tim. (1973). If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home. New York: Delatorre Press.
Selected Web
·
“Comparing O’Brien’s, The Things They
Carried and Ninh’s The Sorrow of War” BARTLEBY research. Accessed on 20
November, 2021. https://www.bartleby.com/essay/Comparing-O-Briens-The-Things-They-Carried-FKJ6HRSYVC
·
“The Things They Carried” Spark notes, Accessed on 20 November,
2021. https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/thingscarried/.