Tim O'Brien
American
Published 1990

Introduction
Here we begin a look at a different genre -- the novel. And The Things They Carried is a great introduction to this genre because it will seem very familiar after short stories. It's constructed from interconnected stories that cumulatively pack the emotional punch and sustenance of a novel.

We'll be looking at the title rather closely: one of the "things" we'll be working is to figure out just what this novel is "about" -- and it isn't just "about" the war.

The Times
Political
Given the contentious nature of American involvement in the war, it's especially important to understand the political background surrounding the war chapters.

In the 50s, the lines between good and evil were clear: America=democracy=good -- Russia/China= communism=evil.  The Cold War was at the sub-zero mark, with kids practicing the desk protection system (ducking under their desks for protection when they saw the flash of an explosion), people building bomb shelters in their back yards, and by the early 60s, enemy nukes on our shores (Cuba).  This led to an undercurrent of malaise disturbing the seemingly placid facade of the 50s: fear is a powerful drug, often rendering things like reason and morality powerless -- and for all the country-clubs and drive-ins and days at the beach with Biff and Barb, we were very fearful in the fifties.

When Vietnam seemed headed towards communism in the 50s, American political and military leaders grew worried that all of Southeast Asia would gradually succumb to the lure of communism (the Domino Theory).  This would mean that the subcontinent of Asia would be, in the "us v. them" vernacular of the time, "lost."  While the Geneva Accord (1956) stipulated that free elections were to be held throughout Vietnam to determine its fate, the leader of South Vietnam, Diem, blocked the elections, with the support of the US (both Diem and the US knew that in free elections, the Vietnamese people would vote for unification under a communist rule).  The North Vietnamese, tired of waiting for a political solution to the country's division, opted for a military one.

Two years earlier, in 1954 (after the French lost their war [called the Indochina War] in a decisive defeat in Dien Bien Phu), the CIA had begun funding covert operations against North Vietnam (see Gulf of Tonkin above for how we became more directly involved).  Since the US had just defended (and tentatively won) a war to defend an Asian country from the evil of communism (South Korea), we were primed to act again to support "national security interests."  Of course, one nation's "national security" is another's "war of independence," and we found out rather quickly that not everyone in Vietnam was ready to welcome the smiling face of American democracy with open arms.  Our response to this equivocation by Vietnam was simple: as one US military official said regarding a Vietnamese hamlet that had been reduced to charred, smoking ruins by a napalm strike: "we had to destroy the village in order to save it."

The narrator's induction and service in the army occur in 1968, a year which marks a turning point in American politics.  Four major events occurred that year: the Tet Offensive; the assassination of Martin Luther King; the assassination of Robert Kennedy; and the Democratic Convention in Chicago.  The Tet Offensive, attacks by the North Vietnamese throughout South Vietnam (including the American Embassy in Saigon) during the Vietnamese New Year (Tet) celebrations, weakened support for the war among citizens at home.   Our officials had been framing the war as a "wrap up" operation with the enemy on the run.  When film of the attacks, including summary executions (see below) and US soldiers cowering behind walls within the embassy in Saigon, was beamed into living rooms in full color, many Americans finally began to see that there was a disjunct between what the military said about the war, and what was actually occurring on the ground.  And this interpretation is not just idle peacenik speculation:  as the publication of the Pentagon Papers revealed in 1971 and as then Secretary of War Robert McNamara has more recently revealed in a self-serving mea culpa memoir (In Retrospect, 1996), much of what the government reported to the American people about the war were, to be blunt, lies.

South Vietnamese National Police Chief Brig Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon at the height of Tet (1968). This photo and the film of the execution considerably weakened American support for the war. (AP Photo/Eddie Adams)

The assassination of Martin Luther King touched off rioting in most major US cities, and (sadly -- why is it that someone has to be martyred to move people?) probably ensured the success (such as it was/is) of the civil rights movement.  The rioting led to an increased police/military presence -- a student of mine recalled going to work every morning in Northern Jersey with armored personnel carriers rumbling in the streets -- which fed the general feeling of unease started by the Tet Offensive. 

Still, there was the hope of "doveish" political leaders, like Bobby Kennedy, who had changed from a "hawkish" view of the war in his brother's administration, to a more reconciliatory approach towards the conflict.  Sirhan Bishara Sirhan ended this faint ray of hope with a handgun in a Los Angeles hotel.

 

Robert Kennedy being comforted by a busboy.

The brutal police suppression of demonstrations outside the Democratic Convention in Chicago -- broadcast to the nation at large -- showed a nation at war with itself, and the violence unwittingly became associated with the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, insuring Nixon's election as president.

The cumulative effect of these events meant that O'Brien and, of course, the nation faced a society in flux, a time when accepted political values and beliefs were being challenged; we had moved from the paternalism of Eisenhower to the "what you can do for your country" of Kennedy, but had yet to agree on what to "do."

The aftermath of the war, which help shape the narrator's thoughts, included a curtailment of the enlightened ideals of President's Johnson's "Great Society" (circa 1964-68) -- freedom from poverty, illiteracy, etc. -- which were compromised by the costs of the war effort.   Money that could/should have been used to counter social ills was spent financing the war (final cost, 1 trillion dollars).  And of course, the political backlash against military actions and fear of causalities has changed America's foreign and military policy.  We're more wary of incursions into other territories for fear of body bags (notice how quickly we exited Somalia after "Black Hawk Down"), and rely now on "Smart Bombs" and other ordnance instead of soldiers on the ground.   Unfortunately, one of the main "lessons" our government has learned from the war is to control information and to spread misinformation (no more reporters tagging along in helicopters to send compromising footage back home to the folks in Peoria).

Social/Cultural
The events in the novel occur against a background of liberation: Women's Rights, Civil Rights, youth rights . . . in other words, a time of change.   The various constituencies agitating for change were responding to the 50s (cf. Modernist's response to the repression of the 19th century), a time of drive-ins, stay-at-home moms, and a conservative government embodied by Dwight Eisenhower.  In the 50s, if you were different, you were a beatnik and your opinions were marginalized.   If you protested too strongly, you could find yourself labeled a communist (remember, the temperature of the Cold War was around zero at this time), and find yourself out of a job (McCarthyism).  This was a time when God, Guns and Guts ruled the land: the words "under God" were inserted in the Pledge of Allegiance in the 50s, and Westerns (white man with a revolver and courage saves the world) were all the rage.  But the war years of the novel takes place in the interim period, when America was making the change from Leave it to Beaver to Laugh-In (which was, if you aren't familiar with it, a politicized Saturday Night Live).

Yet while many agitated for change, there were some -- who Nixon mistakenly labeled "the silent majority" -- who wanted things to remain the same.  Think of it as Levitt town v. Haight Asbury -- hard hats v. egg heads (note that the segregationist George Wallace was a candidate for president in 1968).  And that last contrast gets at an essential part of the debate of the war -- and of American culture in general: anti-intellectualism.  Consider the loci of the protests: college campuses.  For those in favor of the war, the problem with the protesters was that they thought too much.   Joseph E. Sintoni, a soldier who later died in the war, wrote to his fiancée' "The press, the television screen, the magazines are filled with the images of young men burning their draft cards to demonstrate their courage. Their rejection is of the ancient law that a male fights to protect his own people and his own land" (252).   He adds "We must do the job God set down for us.  It's up to every American to fight for the freedom we hold so dear.  We must instruct the young in the ways of these great United States"(252). Joseph represents the Levitt town approach to war -- God, Guns and Guts.  The ideals of the Haight can be found in Mark Rudd's open letter to his college president, Grayson Kirk, of Columbia University: "We do have a vision of the way things could be: how the tremendous resources of our economy could be used to eliminate want, how people in other countries could be free from your domination, how a university could produce knowledge for progress, not waste, consumption, and destruction . . . . how men could be free to keep what they produce, to enjoy peaceful lives, to create" (248).  These two competing visions were at the root of American views of the war and its causes -- and the catalyst for much of the internal strife.

Of course, I'm painting a rather rigid dichotomy.  Many Americans rejected Sintoni's jingoism just as they objected to Rudd's idealism.  And there were many who, I'm sure, really could care less as long as the Dodgers still played and the Milwaukee's' Best still flowed.  Sad, isn't it, how some things never change.

For a "you are there" perspective, read Don Duncan's "The Whole Thing Was a Lie!," a serviceman and participant's take on the Vietnam war.

The Arts
Two broad movements form the aesthetic background to this novel: the surrealism of the 60s, and the post-modernism of contemporary literature.   Surrealism adds a hallucinatory quality to a work of fiction, the prose equivalent of the swirling washes of color and stream of consciousness imagery of the psychedelic posters (and those mind-bending Grateful Dead and Allman Brother's album covers) from the 60s and 70s.  Yet the surrealism on display in the novel isn't merely a period piece; it's our old friend the unconscious, the Id, showing up again to topple the existing order.  It's a method of conveying the often tortured and tortuous mental landscape of a mind in conflict with itself.

The Post-modern aspect of the novel appears in its self-referential quality -- more particularly labeled metafiction, which means fiction about the nature of fiction itself.   While this has a long history (Tom Jones by Henry Fielding is an 18th century example), the emphasis on form in Modern literature led to an exposure of the same (i.e. illustrating the artifice of fiction) in much of contemporary literature. Literary movements usually move in reactionary cycles: authors grow frustrated with established conventions and have to reinvent the art of literature to fit the new age.   Thus, in Things They Carry, you'll find a writer who ironically discusses the act of writing itself: he both tells a great story -- and tells us he's telling a great story.   And watch for references to the "author" himself -- and be aware that post-modern writers love to play around with the idea of the narrator/author.

Shakespear's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" is relevant here and will be discussed in class

XVIII (765 in Textbook
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
  So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
  So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The Life
Tim O'Brien grew up in small-town Minnesota (where he experienced first-hand the clash of small-town morals with the outside world).  He credits his mother, a first grade teacher, with investing in him the importance of paying attention to details when writing.  Attending a state college in Minnesota, he majored in Political Science and was elected the student body president.  Upon graduation, he was drafted in August of 1968, and served seven months as a radio operator in Chu Lai.  Wounded twice, he spent the last five months of his Vietnam tour as a clerk, away from combat duty.  After his tour of duty, he attended graduate school at Harvard, and completed (but did not defend) his dissertation, and began writing for the Washington Post in 1972 (Kaplan 1-9).  His first book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, a memoir of his service in Vietnam, established him as a writer of talent, and his novel Going After Cacciato (which is also set in Vietnam), after winning the National Book Award in 1979, vaulted him into the upper ranks of American authors.

He has a very generous spirit as a writer, regularly appearing at workshops (my office mate worked with him years ago and found him refreshingly unpretentious and "down to earth") and giving copious interviews on his craft. On his penchant for writing about Vietnam, he noted "[my] concerns as a human being and . . . as an artist have at some point intersected in Vietnam -- not just in the physical place, but in the spiritual and moral terrain of Vietnam" (qt. in Kaplan 4-5).  And as this novel makes clear, this is a terrain well worth exploring.

"I'll Take You There"

Photos below ©AP click to enlarge

My Lai Massacre * For a compelling overview of My Lai, see the page below (note -- it's on a rather repellent site, but the material on the page I've linked is quite good). http://www.rotten.com/library/history/war-crimes/my-lai-massacre/ Another good My Lai site http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre Long and detailed article on the massacre http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/lai/index_1.html For a contemporary version of My Lai, see the following http://www.rotten.com/library/crime/prison/abu-ghraib/	Citizen soldiers exercising their free speech rights (click to enlarge)	Remember when O'Brien talks about the beauty of war? (click to enlarge)
See article on this famous picture	Walking along a dike separating rice patties (click to enlarge)

Connections between Vietnam and Iraq? See Ron Kovic's essay published on Truthdig. Note: it's a partisan view.

Radio Essays

• Interesting audio essay on how facts can be slippery: Radiolab http://www.radiolab.org/2012/sep/24
  
• Audio essay on how easily people can be mislead by fiction . . . sound familiar? Radiolab http://www.radiolab.org/2008/mar/24

Vietnam Glossary
In this novel you'll find several military acronyms, topical references, etc., that may need a bit of explaining.  Hence, a glossary.  Color Coded -- blue = political terms, green = military terms and abbreviations

Let's clarify three things, right off the bat.

Vietnam: Area/country in southeast Asia with an independent language, culture, and government.  Partitioned into North and South Vietnam in 1954 in response to the western fear of communism, the two countries were rejoined in 1976 after the fall of the South Vietnamese government.  During the war years, the country was bisected by the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone).

North Vietnam: The communist controlled area of Vietnam -- they wanted to unite the country under one rule.  South Vietnam's and, because of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), our enemy.

South Vietnam: The non-communist, nominally democratic (but really autocratic) area of Vietnam.  Our ally due to SEATO which stated that any member which comes under attack will enjoin all members in its defense.  South Vietnam and America were members: North Vietnam was not.

Map of Vietnam listing major battle areas.  Since this is a modern map, what was Saigon during the war is listed as Ho Chi Minh city.

AK-47: Standard issue rifle used by North Vietnamese.  Cheap, reliable, deadly.  Now a designer weapon for drug dealers.
America: love it or leave it: phrase adopted by the great unthinking class as a response to protests against the war.  It stifles dissent by suggesting that "you're either with merica', or you're with the terrorists."  Oops, wrong war -- but same idea.
ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam.  Considered poor fighters by US service men.
Bao Dai: The "playboy emperor."  Last emperor of Vietnam, courted and assisted by both communist and American regimes because "the people" accepted him as a sovereign ruler.  An opportunist, and for that reason, a survivor.
Bouncing betty: a type of land mine. After a soldier, civilian, or water buffalo would step upon it, a little rocket/bomb would shoot up that exploded at about waist height.  Usually deployed by the North Vietnamese.
Claymore: rectangular mine set off by remote control.   It would send a shower of lead in a triangular killing field.  Usually deployed by Americans.  See picture below

Diem, Ngo Dinh: Autocratic ruler of South Vietnam from 1955-63.  Corrupt, a Roman Catholic in a Buddhist country, he was propped up by American officials because of his hard line stance against communism.  Assassinated by his own military in a 1963 coup.
domino theory: argument used by American political leaders to support a war against communism.  They believed that if one country fell to communism, then others around it would fall as well (like a line of dominoes).  What they never seemed to address was why communism would prove so attractive.  I mean, it's not a virus or anything, it's merely a political system. 
Gook: US military slang for a Vietnamese person.
Gulf of Tonkin: located in North Vietnam (see map above).  Important because US military and intelligence reported that a Navy destroyer, the USS Maddox, was attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats in 1964, which lead to a resolution to increase military presence and its role in South Vietnam.  It is now generally accepted that the attack did not take place and some feel that the military and intelligence agencies perpetuated a hoax to prompt deeper US involvement in the war. 
Hawks and doves: shorthand to describe support for (hawks) or opposition to (doves) the war.  Prominent hawks from the era include John F. Kennedy (though he was there before the term really was bandied about), Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Henry Kissinger.   The main dove mentioned in the novel is Senator and Democratic Presidential Nominee Eugene McCarthy.
Ho Chi Minh: The political and spiritual (in an agnostic sense) leader of North Vietnam.  In the 1950s, after reading the Declaration of Independence, he approached American officials in France (where he was educated) and asked them for his help in overthrowing the French colonial powers. We refused due to treaty alliances and because of cheap rubber (Vietnam's primary export) and Minh then turned to Russia and China for support. 

R&R: Rest and relaxation.  A vacation from the battlefield typically involving a trip (or trips) to a brothel, drinking, and, if such was your preference, drugs.  Sleep and good food as well.  In other words, creature comforts for 19 year old males.
klicks: slang for kilometers
Eugene McCarthy: presidential candidate in 1968 elections who was against the war.  To support him meant you too were against the war.
M-16: Standard issue rifle used by the US and South Vietnamese.  It was expensive, semi-reliable, and deadly.  Because of its toy-like look, it has not become a designer weapon for drug dealers.

Three for one: 1) M-16 rifle; 2) Flack Jacket; 3) "hootch" or grass house, typical of Vietnamese civilian villages. Very flammable -- which helped make napalm (see below) such a useful (?) military tool.

From http://s88.photobucket.com/albums/k188/kampat/

mortar: tube like cannon, easily hidden, transported, and operated.   A favorite of the Viet Cong.
napalm: bombs filled with jelled gasoline which ignites on contact with the air.  Usually dropped from jets which resulted in a streak of fire (momentum of bomb would spread flame).
tracer rounds: bullets treated with a chemical to make them flammable on contact.  If fired at night would leave a streak of light -- handy for aiming, though it also made a great target.
Sterno: metal cans of jelled petroleum.  Pop the top, instant stove.
Tran Hung Dao: Vietnamese general who repelled Mongol invasions in the 13C.  (roughly equivalent to George Washington in America -- i.e. military founding father).
Tot Dong: field where the Vietnamese defeated the Chinese in 1426, leading to their independence (think Bunker Hill).
VC: short for Viet Cong, the communist guerilla fighters who lived in South Vietnam. 
Walked point: walking at the head of line of soldiers in a patrol.  Dangerous because you would be the first person to encounter a landmine, sniper, or ambush.
Willie Peter: Short for White Phosphorous, a incendiary explosive material.

It's important to note that, contrary to the stereotype of Vietnam veterans as seething caldrons of repressed anger ready to explode at a moment's notice, most veterans readjusted to civilian life as well as veterans of previous wars. Yet serving in Vietnam was a different experience from previous war.  For one thing, soldiers were not assigned for the duration of the conflict: soldiers only had to serve 365 days of combat duty, and then were rotated out of country (as opposed to "in-country").   This abbreviated service meant that soldiers did not have the opportunity to form the lasting attachments to others in their units that would help provide emotional support -- and a sense of continuity.  Additionally, the alien country and culture lead to a disorienting feeling, as did the nature of guerilla warfare (where your enemy could be the smiling woman selling you mangos).  And of course, some soldiers faced a hostile reception upon returning home.  These all contributed to the post traumatic stress syndrome suffered by some veterans.  This wasn't a new disease -- it's simply a label for an affliction that has affected soldiers for centuries upon their return to civilian life.

These are, literally, the things a foot soldier would carry.  The rifle leaning against the backpack is an M16, manufactured by Colt arms (of six-gun taming the West fame).  The belt of ammo is for an M60 machine gun -- the kind of gun Henry Dobbins (a character you're soon to meet) carries.

Marine fire base at Khe Sanh, site of a fierce battle in 1968. The white spots on the hills in the background are from American bombings.  This should you give an idea of some of the terrain the soldiers moved in -- though these are the highlands and not the jungle/paddies. click to enlarge

Questions to Mull Over As You Read

"Things They Carried"

• Consider the following sentences "It was't cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors" (20). Why? Why characterize the soldiers as "actors"? And what effect does this have on their actions -- and our understanding of them?
• Why the accumulation of specific weight and specific detail in the lists of the things they carry? What effect does it have on the reader? And how do they contrast with the other paragraphs in the story?
• What is LTV. Cross crying about (17)? What is this story really "about"?
• Why is this the first story/chapter in the novel? How does it connect to the other stories?

"Spin"

• How does this story function as a foreshadowing for the rest of the novel? Pick out pages/details and explain.

"On the Rainy River"

• Why does the narrator work in a pig slaughter house? Does it foreshadow his experiences in Vietnam in some way? See, especially, page 42.

• Why is Tim so upset with the people that support the war?

• What is "courage" to the narrator? Given the story, do you agree or disagree with him?
• What is Elroy Berdhal's function in the story? Why not just have O'Brien standing on a windswept prominence, debating whether he should go to Canada or not? What does Berdhal represent?

General questions

• Consider the relevance of the following quote to the entire story: "Absolute occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total lie, another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth" (83). How does this relate to 1) the story/novel itself; 2) the nature of story telling in general?
• Which "True" is he talking about in the title of the story/chapter ("How to Tell a True War Story) -- the "happening-truth" or the "story-truth" ("Good Form" 179)? How can you tell -- or not tell? Does O'Brien feel this distinction is important? Why or why not?
• Trace the transformation of Mary Anne "Sweetheart:" she changes from ____ to _____. What could she symbolize? Why/how?
• What "Courage" is referred to in "Speaking of Courage"?
• How does the metaphor of the "shit field" resonate throughout the story. Why not, for example, a regular muddy field?
• How is imagination something positive in the book? (consider, for example, "Lives of the Dead," "Good Form"). How is it negative ("Thing They Carried," "Ghost Soldiers" -- other stories?)? What's the point?
• Why does Bowker taste the water at the end of "Speaking of Courage" (173)?
• What can the narrator O'Brien do that Bowker cannot? How can this ability save the narrator? (Consider "Notes")
• How does the narrator change? From what to what? (Take this in stages -- use particular chapters to trace this change) What stories show this? Where in those stories? Does your opinion of the narrator change?
• What's Linda doing in the novel? How does she or her story connect with other themes? If she and that chapter was not in the novel, how would it change? Another way of looking at this is why does "Lives of the Dead" conclude the novel?
• In an interview, O'Brien stated "If there is a theme to the whole book it has to do with the fact that stories can save our lives" (qtd. in Coffey 202). So, where's the theme? Point to at least three quotes that prove this.

Works Cited

Kaplan, Steven. Understanding Tim O'Brien. Columbia, South Carolina: U of South Carolina, 1995.

Rudd, Mark. "We, the Young People." Ordinary Americans: U.S. History Through the Eyes of

Everyday People. Ed. Linda R. Monk.  Alexandria, VA: Close Up Publishing, 1994.

248-49.

Sintoni, Joseph. "Our Country, Right or Wrong." Ordinary Americans: U.S. History Through the

Eyes of Everyday People. Ed. Linda R. Monk.  Alexandria, VA: Close Up Publishing,

1994. 252.

 

Image credits

m16 picture mike@entrinet.softnet.co.uk

© 2001 David Bordelon