Love and War in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried Essay

In The Things They Carried, as the title indicates author and Vietnam contend veteran Tim OBrien cargonfully describes all of the necessities of fightf aref atomic number 18 carried by the men with whom he divided the war. In addition to the weapons and gear necessary for survival they carried within themselves the images and memories of home. OBrien describes the sundry(a) articles carried by individuals as well as the heavier items they would take turns carrying. The heaviest were the things men carried interior (25). Because of the heaviness it was often too much for one man and they shared the weight of remembrance. They took up w chapeau others could no long-lived bear (14). OBrien indicates the heaviest memories were of lamb ones, particularly wives and filles. Obrien describes the characteristics of the memories of passionateness in a engagement zone, memories that could be a saving grace or a dangerous self-destructive weapon. Women engulf a very special place f or the men of OBriens platoon as they do for combat spends everywhere. The women they know and love, mothers, sisters, wives and young ladys, are tens of thousands of miles out. At measure they are as mentally and emotionally distant as they are in geographic terms. When firefights rage the soldiers ideals by necessity become resolved and focused on the chaos of combat surrounding them and the thought of women send word be fleeting or distracting. It may be a thought of the love one they hope to see if they survive, or the thought may distract them and cost them their life or the life of a nonher soldier.Women are as real as their vivid dreams yet upon awakening thither is the doubt they ever existed. The space they occupy is the anxious and unnerving foundation mixed with hope and doubt, happiness and depression. With their letters they provide a get in touch to the real solid ground once occupied by the soldiers who may interview if the women will be there for them if and when they return. The soldier may hope their girl partner will be there and doubt she will understand. The thought of the girlfriend may provide a solid foundation on which to give-up the ghost on another day, or with a businesslike John letter inadvertently provide a seemingly hopeless depression. The women occupy a space unlike any other space in the thoughts of the combat soldier. For Lieutenant Jimmy Cross the thought of Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in unsanded Jersey was a constant engrossment (1). She was a daily part of his life, and he had a ritualistic fealty to viewing photographs of her. She was in many ways the embodiment of the contradictions women occupied in soldiers thoughts. She was not quite a serious girlfriend and lover who was given up to him and would be waiting for him. In fact their relationship before the war was one-sided And then suddenly, without willing it, he was thinking of Marthawhy so alone? Not lonely, just aloneand it was he r aloneness that filled him with love. He remembered telling her that one evening. How she n mirthfuled and looked away. And how, later, when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it (11-12). as yet Cross would not let go of his attachment to her. He goddam it for the death of one of his soldiers now Ted Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and could not stop thinking about her (7). He felt that because of his preoccupation with her he failed to supervise his men and as a result Lavender was shot. As a result Cross decides to enkindle her photos and letters. Now he hated her. Yes, he did. He hated her. Love, too, merely it was a hard, hating kind of love (24). His feelings for her were just one of the many contradictions of the war. In some ways women became al virtually magical, and occupied the superstitious and surreal world of the thoughts and actions of men in combat. Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriends pantyhose wrapped more or less his neck a s a comforter. They all carried ghosts (10). The stockings gave Dobbins the memories that comforted him. Later he became convinced it truly was a good-luck charm as a boobytrap failed to throw a fit after he tripped it and then survived a vicious firefight (117-118). For Dobbins and others the pantyhose gave access to a spiritual world and even after he receives a dear John letter he retains the pantyhose stating the magic doesnt go away (118). Other women, real or imagined came into the mens lives through their stories. The most dramatic stories are those that swirl stick out and for the across the border amid trivia and bedlam, the mad and the mundane (89). OBrien recounts the theme of the Sweetheart of the song Tra Bong, the girlfriend of a soldier who manages to have her visit him at his medical-aid base (89-91).Mary Ann is however seventeen years old, but rapidly adapts to the blood and gore of her boyfriends job and becomes a invaluable assistant treating the wounded. But then she becomes more and more fixated to the war, the culture and the milieu of Vietnam. She becomes friendly with, and then a part of a contingent of the grotesque and isolated greenies, Special Forces soldiers stationed at the base. She eventually becomes a part of them. curtly she cannot be found despite her boyfriends search. According to the story she began going out with the parkland Berets on combat missions. When she returned she was no longer what she had been.He had a hard time recognizing her. She wore a bush hat and filthy green fatigues she carried the standard M-16 automatic assault undress her face was black with charcoal. Mary Ann handed (her boyfriend) the weapon. Im exhausted, she said. Well lecturing later. (102)Despite her boyfriends effort to get her away from the Green Berets and send her home she is hooked Vietnam had the effect of a powerful medicine (114). Soon, the story goes, Mary Ann disappears into the jungle, never to be heard from again, on ly once in a while spotted as a ghostly figure in the jungle. It is as though she served as a metaphor for the space occupied by women in the war. They were far away in a land so remote it no longer seemed to exist. Then against all odds the soldier is able to literally import the woman he loves. Then the war changes everything and destroys the relationship. For OBrien women also occupy a dual yet mutually exclusive space in his life. His starting line young love is also his first collision with death. Although he and his girlfriend are only nine, OBrien know(s) for a fact that what we felt for each other was as deep and lively as love can ever get (228). Tragically she is woe from a fatal disease and dies. For OBrien the computer memory of her, like his memory of fallen comrades, is and of all time will be sharp and vivid.For OBrien the unconnected friends and lost girlfriend are united in death and brought back to life in the memories and stories of those who survive. It is t he vivid image of a casualty of the war that inexplicably reminds him of his young girlfriend Linda all day long Id been picturing Lindas face, the way she smiled (228). For OBrien the dead will always be in a sense alive. The fallen troops and Linda are all dead. But in a story, which is kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world (225). If OBriens lost girlfriend is a link to the departed his daughter Kathleen is the mountain of life. He brings her to Vietnam when she is only ten, and seems to serve as the woman who will encourage him break his link to the deaths of Vietnam. She is too young to understand why her preceptor has journeyed off the normal tourist sites to find the spot where a friend was killed and the body lost in the mire of a swampy river.She witnesses him as he performs a ritual burial of his late friends moccasins in the spot they found his body. It is though she is his tether back to reality, the leave and life itself. Child like she chastises him for his actions and cannot understand the importance of the places she visits. She tells him he is weird for sexual climax back to Vietnam, innocently proclaiming Like coming over here. Some bleak thing happens a long time ago and you cant ever forget it (183). She presents the counterpoint of his life in Vietnam and it had to be an odd sensation for OBrien to see his daughter in an area of Vietnam that is drastically different than the Vietnam of OBriens death. It brings up the idea and question of whether OBrien, in his wildest thoughts during his combat in that location that his daughter would stand in the same spot years later. Unlike the other women of memories and dreams Kathleen is able to be in Vietnam with him and help close that chapter of his life. As she notices a Vietnamese granger staring at her father Kathleen asks if the old man is mad at her father. No, replies OBrien, All thats finished (188). For OBrien it seems as though he needs the fem ale characters to make the connection between love and war and life and death. It is not always a successful link. His beau soldier Norman Bowker had carried a picture of his girlfriend with him during his days and Vietnam but she had married. He saw her on his return, but while he could not bring himself to approach her and talk, he also could not pull himself from the memory and went past her house time and time (146). He later move suicide. Women seemed to occupy the same space and provide the same ironic and contradictory thoughts as Vietnam itself. They were vital to the combat soldiers, but not present with them, or present as a mysterious Mary Ann. They could give a soldier a reason to stay alive or a reason to care less about living. They could be a amazement to take a soldiers mind off of the war or a distraction which could contribute to the horror of war. Like Martha they could be loved and hated at the same time. Like combat itself the women in the soldiers thoughts were both intensely private and yet communal.Works CitedOBrien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York Broadway Books, 1990.