Things They Carried How Tim O(TM)Brien Shows the Negative Side of Vietnam

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                Reeder

Justin Reeder

Ms. Kavanagh

Research Paper

March 12, 2008        

How Tim O’Brien Shows the Negative Side of Vietnam

        In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, O’Brien talks about all the parts of the Vietnam War. It shows all the horrors and negative sides of the war and what it can do to men. Many men lose their lives as well as their best friends and comrades. War also changes the soldiers into something else that’s not themselves, something evil. The Things They Carried shows the negative side of war through the imagery of the shitfield, the mental affects of the war, the hatred that can be shown by each person, the way war changes people, and the loss of companions.

        In the shitfield one sees everything that is bad about the war. It’s dirty and mucky and it’s just depressing all around. While in the field the soldiers are bombarded my artillery fire so they have to sink into the muck to hide themselves. One of the soldiers, Kiowa, gets hit with one of the shells. Norman Bowker tries to pull him out of the muck but he cannot. All the men try to pull him out but they cannot. They lose a friend in Kiowa, who is lost and buried in the field, and it scars all the men for life especially when they try to pull him out of the muck. The loss of a good friend stings for O’Brien.

        O’Brien even says that he went down with Kiowa that day and he lost a part of himself in that field. Everyone lost a part of themselves there. O’Brien describes what he saw of Kiowa as he was going down under the muck. “Kiowa was almost completely under. There was a knee. There was an arm and a gold wristwatch and part of a boot…. There were bubbles where Kiowa’s head should’ve been” (O’Brien 168). O’Brien going down with Kiowa shows that there are other negative effects such as mental ones.

        The mental effects of the war are also very negative in The Things They Carried. War messes with people’s heads and Tim O’Brien shows it in his book. “I couldn’t sleep; I couldn’t lie still” (Chen 77). This is a cause of all the blood and gore the soldier has seen. And this doesn’t just speak for the one soldier who said it, it speaks for all the soldiers. The first stage is not being able to sleep, the next stage is losing your composure.

        Then men start to become paranoid during the war and some go crazy. Rat Kiley is a good example of this. He is a medic and he starts to go crazy. He says he hears noises in the night that aren’t there. He says that he hears the voices of the people dying at night. O’Brien thinks its from all the gore and blood he sees day in and day out and its just getting to him but either way he loses it. Rat tells someone he is going to shoot himself so he can get out of there because of an injury. “The next morning he shot himself” (O’Brien 223). Rat Kiley’s plan works and he gets to leave, but he apologizes to all the men for losing it and in turn they don’t rat him out for what he did. Not only does the war mess with people’s heads during the war but also at other times.

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        The mental effects also extend to after the war. The awful memories of war stick with some of the men long after they return home from the war. The post war stress is too much for Norman Bowker. He finds that when he returns home that it’s not the same to him and he cannot find his place in society. He feels empty inside and ever since the shitfield he feels incomplete. The lingering memory of not being able to pull Kiowa out of the muck sticks with him. He feels that he died there with Kiowa and this causes ...

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