“I have neither given nor
received nor have I tolerated
any others’ use of
unauthorized aid”
Kathleen Williams
Core Paper # 4
Jungle Fever
Loss and Death in War
Whether it was in the jungles of India or Vietnam, war was war.
Although each war had different reasons to be fought, each dealt with the
same issues of loss and dying. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna teaches Arjuna the
justification for slaughtering his own kinsmen. Arjuna learns to deal with the
loss of his family and honor his sacred duty. In The Things They Carried the
soldiers deal with loss and death on a daily basis and often deal with their
anger by destroying animals and villages.
The Things They Carried has many examples of death and loss in the
war. Each soldier had his own reaction to Vietnam. They carried things that
helped them cope with the hostile environment such as old photos and panty
hose. When Ted Lavender died the soldiers experienced a heavy loss and used
jokes to help ease the pain. “Jungle Fever” was at its peak when they did silly
an immature acts of violence such as killing baby animals and doing rain
dances. Also, Tim O’ Brien had to deal with courage to face death in Vietnam.
By his trip to Rainy River, he learned that Canada was a pitiful fantasy. Also the
deaths and loss of Curt Lemon and Lee Strunk affected their best friends the
most. Often by playing boyish games, smiling, they would meet their death.
Each soldier humped things to help them cope with death and loss in
Vietnam. Jimmy Cross would carry the letters of Martha and her pebble in his
mouth. He fantasized a romantic relationship between them, such as caressing
her knee or walking with her on the seashore. By fantasying about Martha,
Jimmy Cross would escape from the hostile war and into a dreamful state.
Martha was his way to cope. Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriend’s panty hose
around his neck. This gave him comfort and good luck, even when he had
broken up with her. Tranquilizers helped Ted Lavender remain “mellow” during
the war. Each morning he popped a few in and smoked some of his dope. He
remained in a peaceful state throughout the day, even till the day he was shot.
His comrades thought that he did not feel a thing. The Bible comforted the
religious Indian, Kiowa throughout the Vietnam War.
The soldiers had mixed reactions when Ted Lavender was shot in the
headquarters outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. He was dead weight.
There was no twitching or flopping. Kiowa, who saw it happen, said it was like
watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something- just boom, then down- not
like the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes
assover tealike- not like that, Kiowa said, the poor bastard just flat-fuck fell.
Boom. Down. Nothing else (page 6). The soldiers joked how he had dropped
down fast. “Cement,” Kiowa would say, “Greased. Offed.. litup, zapped while
zipping” (page 20). After wrapping his body in his poncho, they sat smoking the
dead man’s dope while waiting for the chopper to come. Someone asked Ted
how the war was today. The answer was as usual, “Mellow”. They talked to the
dead as if it were still living. The chopper was a “wonderful ride”, an escape
from the jungle. Jimmy Cross blamed himself. If he had not fantasized about
Martha so often and have paid more attention to his duties, Ted Lavender
would still be alive. On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant
Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha’s
Letters (p 24). Lavender was dead. You couldn’t burn the blame (p 23). From
that pint on, Jimmy Cross kept his promise and increased his duties and
command.
Each person had jungle fever. Most of the soldiers were under twenty
years of age. They did a lot of random wacky acts of craziness. On Halloween
Curt Lemon dressed stark naked covered with paint. He carried a rife and went
“trick-or-treating” from door to door. Another funny moment was when Kiowa
taught a rain dance to Rat Kiley and Dave Jenson. The three of them whooping
and leaping around barefoot while a bunch o villagers looked on with a
mixture of fascination and giggly horror. Afterward, Rat said,” So where’s the
rain?” and Kiowa said,” The earth is slow, but the buffalo is patient,” and Rat
thought about it and said, “Yeah, but where’s the rain?” (pg 36) . They often
chanted songs while humping, “Step out of line, hit a mine, follow the dink,
you’re in the pink” (p 33). Once Mitchell Sanders took some of his hair lice and
deposited it into a blue USO envelope and wrote free in the upper right hand
corner and addressed it to his draft board in Ohio. The jungle fever got to them
badly. They burned as many villages as they wanted to. They had freedom in
the land, except they could not fly away from Vietnam. The country was theirs
for the taking; no one was restricting them to good behavior. Death was the
only escape. Sometimes when a person died, one of the dead man’s mates
went crazy. Azar strapped the puppy that Ted Lavender had nurtured to a
Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device. The jungle fever
caused men to pillage the villages, rape women, and burn everything in sight.
Once some of the soldiers imagined that they heard ballroom dancing and
cocktail parties high up in the mountains. They ordered the plans to burn the
entire mountains. The mountains smoked, but there were no parties in the
mountains.
Loss and death affected Tim O’Brien the most during the summer before
he left for the war. He worked at a pig factory on an assembly line to help
declot the pigs. When he first received the notice of draft he put it aside and
did not think much about it. He planned on attending graduate school next fall
at Harvard. He felt that he was too good for the war, an intellectual. He
thought that there should be a law that made people in favor of the war fight
it. Tim then imagined death in the war. One day while working on the assembly
line, he cracked and left for Canada. He drove until he reached the Tip Top
fishing resort in the town of Rainy River. An old man named Elroy was kind to
him, like he had sheltered a cat. Most importantly Elroy never asked questions.
At the fishing resort, Tim realized just how fruitless his dreams of escape to
Canada were. He did not want to lose respect from his parents and he feared
ridicule from the people in his hometown for ditching the draft. He drove home
and made his decision to fight.
Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon were best buddies. They often played the
funniest of invented games such as playing catch with smoke grenades. One day
they were in the happiest of spirits when Curt Lemon stepped on a boobytrapped 105 round. It was over before they had realized what had happened.
Curt Lemon was blown up and his parts were hanging from a tree. The other
soldiers sang Lemon Tree while tossing down the guts and gore of Curt Lemon.
Rat Kiley took his anger out on a baby buffalo. He slowly shot it from head to
tail so that it would feel pain. The baby buffalo had died slowly and had a glare
of aliveness in its eyes when Rat Kiley was finished with him.
The Bhagavad-Gita also has many examples of loss and death. In the
Bhagavad-Gita Krishna teaches Arjuna the principles of life and death. He
teaches him to understand his own and other’s mortality. He explains the
relationship between death, sacrifice, and devotion that coveys the idea that
one most heroically confront death in order to transcend the limits of worldly
existence. One must perform one’s sacred duty even when it requires violence.
Arjuna learns the principles of duty, discipline, action, knowledge, and
devotion. All action is to be both performed without attachment to the fruits
of the action and dedicated with loving devotion to Krishna. By purging his
mind of attachments and dedicating the fruits of his action to Krishna, Arjuna
can continue to act in a world of pain without suffering despair. Be intent on
action. Not on the fruits of the action, avoid attraction to the fruits and
attachment to inaction (page 36). Perform actions, firm in discipline,
relinquishing attachment, be important to failure and success- this
equinanimity is called discipline (p 36). Krishna told Arjuna to act with
detachment. Discipline enables the warrior Arjuna to control his passions and
become a man of discipline.
At the start of the war Arjuna did not want to fight. Arjuna saw them
standing there fathers, grandfathers, teachers, uncles, brothers, sons,
grandsons, and friends (page 24). He believed that the family and society
would be corrupt if he killed his own kinsmen. Krishna calls Arjuna a coward for
not obeying his sacred duties and explains the essence of the atman, or soul.
“Never have not existed, not you; nor these kings; and in the future shall
cease to exist (p. 31).The self does not die, it is destructible “Death is certain
for anyone born, and birth is certain for the dead, since the cycle is
inevitable, you have no cause to grieve (p33). Krishna learns that when his
kinsman die, they will be reborn again. It is sacred duty to kill them and gain
merit for his soul. He should devote himself to Krishna.
Each book The Things They Carried and The Bhagavad-Gita had many
examples of how people dealt with loss and death in war. In the Things They
Carried, the soldiers often jokes about death but when faced with it, took their
anger out on the animals and the local villages by destroying everything. Each
carried something with them to help them cope. The jungle fever distorted
their minds and attitudes to cope with the atrocities of war.