Gabrielle Campbell
4/28/12
TTTC Final Essay
In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses oxymoronic concepts to
convey his creative and unique writing style. Although one may view death as
sorrowful, he provokes the reader to see the humor in a soldier’s death. O’Brien’s
various writing techniques are exemplified in “The Things They Carried”, “On the
Rainy River”, “How to Tell a True War Story”, “The Man I Killed”, and “The Ghost
Soldiers”. After reading this book, one may begin to see that the only thing that
lives after we die is our story.
In “The Things They Carried”, the reader is able to see that O’Brien uses
different listings of physical objects as a window of emotional burdens that the
soldiers are compelled to carry along with them. The burdens that are carried are
intimidating to soldiers to the point that they are forced to confront various issues
and conflicts involving the war, personal disagreements, and also natural
occurrences. The reader might conclude that the necessity of one soldier may be
of less importance of another. For an example, Jimmy Cross carried a good luck
pebble, Dave Jensen carried a rabbit’s foot, and Norman Bowker carried a thumb
which was given to him as a gift from Mitchell Sanders. A quote to indicate the
natural occurrences the soldiers hauled reads as follows, “They carried the sky.
The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of
fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.” As O’Brien continues to list
several possessions that the soldiers carried, he uses the idea of them carrying
their own lives to bridge the relationship between the Vietnam War and life in
general. An intelligent reader would recognize the obvious symbolism of the very
war itself. In a war, every moment is a matter of survival. That same concept
applies to life in a general sense. The choices we make can better us as human
beings or worsen us as mortals with untold stories.
“On a Rainy River” entails a storytelling technique where O’Brien allows
himself to open up and share some of his personal opinions and feelings. One
may find it ironic that he hadn’t told any of his loved ones or close friends any of
the things he shared in this particular chapter, but yet he shares it with every
reader that proceeds through “On a Rainy River”. It almost seemed as if he
published his diary or journal for a moment. In a sense, one may find this chapter
to be an outlet to his “soft side”. Not too many authors have the courage to do
that successfully. The author discretely shifts the spotlight from the characters of
the story to Tim O’Brien. After acknowledging a brilliant writing technique such as
this, one might say that it showcases O’Brien’s creativity and cleverness as a
writer. Not only that, but it indicates that even though there’s no moral to the
story, he is still a human being with emotion.
On the other hand, “How to Tell a True War Story” silently instructs
readers to tell war stories correctly. O’Brien orders one to not believe any war
story that is moral. Morals are nonexistent in a true war story. Metaphorically
speaking, the fact that he told Sanders that silence was the moral is an
interesting aspect of O’Brien oxymoronic concept that the reader might want to
notice. Usually, when one might think of morals, one might say that morals are
hidden messages within the occurrence of an event. Needless to say, O’Brien
describes morality as nothingness when it comes to telling a true war story. The
reader might consider that to be a prime example of the creativity the author
displays in his writing concepts.
The reader may find that “The Man I Killed” portrays Tim O’Brien’s choice
of diction. In this chapter he especially uses vulgar language to express to the
readers what it truly feels like for a soldier to kill a man. He uses repetition in
order to intersect the emotional burden with the subconscious guilt of killing an
innocent man. Sometimes when one is reminded of a tragic incident or
catastrophe, it causes others to feel that guilt, but only to a certain extent. Not
only that, but O’Brien uses the repletion as a strategy to indicate that one has
constantly deal with that for as long as they live. As an interested reader, one
might find it to be ironic that even in that fact, there is still no moral. This also is
an addition to the things they carried, as the reader might form a connection to
some of the previous chapters. With the military being a cultural aspect of this
book, one may not find it to be a surprise that an innocent life was taken. In all
actuality, the reader has the expectation that somebody dies as soon as they find
out that it’s a story about war, the Vietnam War for that matter. The death itself
as well as Kiowa’s response to it, simultaneously uncovered many tones, all
within this very chapter. This provoked the reader to take O’Brien seriously as a
writer in spite of his dark humor, although he remains blunt without being vague
or indistinct.
One might say that In “The Ghost Soldiers”, O’Brien’s paradigm changed
as he discussed his wounding experiences. The first time he was wounded, he
discovered that it wasn’t as bad as it appeared in films. O’Brien found that the
thought of being shot was actually worse than the wounds that surrounded it. The
things he had to carry along with being shot were far more extreme than the
event of being shot. The reader might consider this as a connection between the
two times he was shot. The second time he was wounded, he was upset due to
the fact that he was not treated as he wished. That very idea shares a
relationship with the title of the chapter. Furthermore, the term “Ghost Soldiers”
refers to the struggle of a soldier needing his company’s assistance versus the
difficulty of finding it. O’Brien reintroduces irony in a different sense. One might
say that it is difficult to find effective assistance to meet one’s needs. The reader
might correlate this idea as another item on the list of things to carry.
Ultimately, O’Brien allows the reader to draw several themes from The
Things They Carried. For example, one might conclude that the only thing that
lives after we die is our story. This holds the reader responsible for making their
own meaning, whether their story is told or not. To come to this consensus,
O’Brien’s precise writing technique does not resemble Freytag’s Pyramid. An
avid reader might consider it to be O’Brien’s Scribble. If one were to trace these
elements back to the title, it could be said that Tim is just an individual that
carries other people’s lives, secrets, and memories. Every individual is
responsible for the things they carry.