Wartime Inhumanity: the Effects of War as Illustrated in Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried"

In the short story “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien illustrates a grotesque, graphic, but soberingly realistic depiction of war through the demise of the story’s main character, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, in the setting of the 1960’s Vietnam conflict. Ripped apart by the death of one of the men under his command, in the story, Cross undergoes a transformation in which his idealistic, but obsessed attitude gives way to his formation into a mere machine fighting for the American war effort. Against a background of wartime brutality and horror, Cross’s transformation in many ways illustrates the demoralizing effect of war on the human soul through the eyes of O’Brien and ultimately presents the prevailing theme of the story: that war is a multifaceted destroyer that wreaks havoc on not only the body, but also the mind.

O’Brien conveys this theme through a couple of short steps. First, he begins by breaking the story into a number of short sections, each with its own subject, in order to contrast the horror, senselessness, and brutality of war against the nature of Cross’s character. To do this, the sections more or less switch off between characterizing Cross and his immense love obsession with Martha and creating an elaborate depiction of the war’s horrors. For example, the first paragraph of the story introduces the reader to Martha and Cross’s love for her, illustrating his predicament in that “more than anything, he wanted [her] to love him as he loved her” (1). From this, the reader gets the sense of a hopeless young man who “[is] just a kid at war, in love,” thereby characterizing the lieutenant as a caring, emotional being (22). Once at that understanding, the reader moves onto the next section and instead of finding an intricate description of emotion, discovers a laundry list of the heavy supplies and personal items each soldier carried. In contrast to the one before it, this section is part of O’Brien’s description of war’s brutality, depicting the physical strain each soldier much endure before even getting in a firefight. Later, these descriptions of war are further continued with the vast descriptions of weaponry, representing the ever-present reality of shooting and death in war. Thus, as a result, both of these sections contrast one another incredibly well by juxtaposing two different tones, war and love, thereby driving the conveyance of the theme forward.

With this structure in place, O’Brien then fully develops a contrast between Cross and the other characters, which in many ways represent the effect of war’s brutality, in order to better illustrate the transformation and the theme. Thus, because of the multiple sections describing his unwavering love for Martha, there develops a contrast between the caring and seemingly “humanity” of Cross and the relative indifference to life possessed by his men. As certain sections describe Cross’s good luck pebbles, letters from Martha, and his constant inquiry into her feelings toward him, others describe Norman Bowker’s (one of Cross’s men) good luck thumb, which is cut off the hand of a “VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen” before another of Cross’s men kicks the dead boy’s head to “[watch] the flies scatter” (28, 34). When some sections document Cross’s daydreaming about attempts he could have made to show Martha how much he loves her, others describe the ways in which the soldiers burned and pillaged the village of Than Khe with airstrikes and then “watched the wreckage,” and how they made jokes about Lavender’s drug use and his death, saying that whole incident was a real “mind blower” for him (40, 72). Also, after Lavender’s death, the reader further sees this contrast by how disturbed Cross is and how his role in the death “he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war;” however, on the other hand, his men, such as Kiowa, “[wish] [they] could find some great sadness…, but the emotion [isn’t] there” and are just “pleased to be alive” after the incident is all done (42, 60). With contrast effectively established, these vast differences help to portray Cross as a man who still is holding onto his past and has not totally succumbed to the mentality and brutality of war, making him a rare subject on O’Brien’s battlefield.

Yet, sooner or later, the contrast stops and the transformation takes place, finally revealing the theme of war’s multifaceted destruction on the individual. Based around the death of Lavender, the transformation of Lieutenant Cross occurs once he realizes that if he had not been daydreaming about Martha when the sniper killed Lavender, he could have been able to save him. Confronted with this immense amount of guilt and the sense of failing his duties, he is utterly overwhelmed and suddenly any idealism that the lieutenant had vanishes as he finally realizes “she did not love him and never would” (43). With a vengeance against himself, he becomes a changed man, ordering his men to torch the village of Than Khe, burning the pictures and letters of Martha, and vowing to “perform his duties firmly and without negligence” (99). Therefore, in a way, he becomes a machine, giving his complete focus to his responsibilities and pushing out of his mind any hopes or memories from back home. Now, much like his men, he is devoid of emotion and only concerned about humping it and getting their mission accomplished as to “avoid the blush of dishonor” (77). Ultimately, in the end, the transformation shows how war has ruined any optimism within the heart of a certain individual and thus finally O’Brien’s theme is conveyed to the reader.

In the end, “The Things They Carried” is a short, but chilling testament to the effects of war on the human soul and goes to show that, regardless of the mission, war is inevitably a destructive force.