Love and War in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried Essay

In The Things They Carried, as the title indicates author and Vietnam contendf be old stager Tim OBrien c befully describes all of the necessities of contend carried by the workforce with whom he shared out the war. In addition to the weapons and gear needful for survival they carried within themselves the stunt womans and memories of home. OBrien describes the miscellaneous articles carried by individuals as well as the heavier items they would take turns carrying. The heaviest were the things men carried inside (25). Because of the weightiness it was often too very much for one and scarce(a) man and they shared the weight of reminiscence. They took up what others could no coarseer bear (14). OBrien indicates the heaviest memories were of heat ones, grammatical constituenticularly wives and missys. Obrien describes the characteristics of the memories of love in a besiege zone, memories that could be a saving grace or a dangerous self-destructive weapon.  &n bsp         Women occupy a very special place for the men of OBriens platoon as they do for combat passs constantlyywhere. The women they know and love, mothers, sisters, wives and lady friends, are tens of thousands of miles away. At times they are as mentally and emotionally distant as they are in geographic terms. When firefights rage the passs suasions by necessity become fixed and think on the chaos of combat meet them and the thought of women can be evanescent or distracting. It whitethorn be a thought of the love one they apprehend to see if they survive, or the thought may distract them and cost them their emotional state or the smell of another soldier.Women are as actually as their vivid dreams merely upon awakening there is the doubt they incessantly existed. The set they occupy is the anxious and faze humans mixed with hope and doubt, felicitousness and depression. With their letters they provide a bear on to the real h uman beings once work by the soldiers who may wonder if the women pass on be there for them if and when they return. The soldier may hope their girlfriend ordain be there and doubt she will understand. The thought of the girlfriend may provide a solid foundation on which to stand firm on another day, or with a dear caper letter unwittingly provide a seemingly desperate depression. The women occupy a space contradictory any other space in the thoughts of the combat soldier.            For Lieutenant Jimmy pamper the thought of Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New jersey was a constant preoccupation (1). She was a daily part of his life, and he had a ritualistic devotion to viewing photographs of her. She was in numerous ways the embodiment of the contradictions women set-aside(p) in soldiers thoughts. She was not quite a serious girlfriend and lover who was habituated to him and would be waiting for him. In situ ation their relationship before the war was slanting            And consequently suddenly, without willing it, he was opinion of Marthawhy so alone? non lonely, just aloneand it was her aloneness that change him with love. He remembered telling her that one evening. How she nodded and looked away. And how, later, when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it (11-12).            thus far Cross would not let go of his attachment to her. He blamed it for the end of one of his soldiers now Ted Lavender was curtly because he loved her so much and could not stop thinking rough her (7). He felt that because of his preoccupation with her he failed to supervise his men and as a result Lavender was shot. As a result Cross decides to burn her photos and letters. now he hated her. Yes, he did. He hated her. Love, too, just now it was a hard, hating mixture of love (24). His feeli ngs for her were just one of the many contradictions of the war.            In some ways women became roughly magical, and occupied the superstitious and surreal world of the thoughts and actions of men in combat. Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriends pantyhose wrapped around his know as a comforter. They all carried ghosts (10). The stockings gave Dobbins the memories that console him. Later he became convinced it real was a good-luck charm as a boobytrap failed to detonate afterward he tripped it and then survived a vicious firefight (117-118). For Dobbins and others the pantyhose gave access to a spiritual world and even after he receives a dear John letter he retains the pantyhose stating the magic doesnt go away (118).            Other women, real or imagined came into the mens lives through with(predicate) their stories. The most dramatic stories are those that twiddle sand and for the across the border amongst trivia and bedlam, the huffy and the mundane (89). OBrien recounts the degree of the Sweetheart of the Song Tra bong, the girlfriend of a soldier who manages to catch her visit him at his medical-aid base (89-91).bloody shame Ann is but seventeen years old, but quickly adapts to the blood and gore of her gents job and becomes a precious assistant treating the wounded. But then she becomes more and more fixated to the war, the culture and the environment of Vietnam. She becomes kindly with, and then a part of a contingent of the strange and isolated unripeies, peculiar(prenominal) Forces soldiers stationed at the base. She eventually becomes a part of them.            Soon she cannot be found scorn her boyfriends search. According to the story she began going out with the Green Berets on combat missions. When she returned she was no pineer what she had been.He had a hard time recognizing her. She wo re a bush hat and filthy green fatigues she carried the standard M-16 automatic intrusion rifle her face was black with charcoal. bloody shame Ann handed (her boyfriend) the weapon. Im exhausted, she said. Well jaw later. (102)Despite her boyfriends exploit to get her away from the Green Berets and shine her home she is hooked Vietnam had the effect of a powerful drug (114). Soon, the story goes, bloody shame Ann disappears into the jungle, never to be heard from again, only occasionally postureted as a ghostly figure in the jungle. It is as though she allotd as a fiction for the space occupied by women in the war. They were far away in a land so remote it no longer seemed to exist. Then against all betting odds the soldier is able to literally mo the woman he loves. Then the war changes everything and destroys the relationship.            For OBrien women overly occupy a dual yet contradictory space in his life. His first preado lescent love is also his first collision with death. Although he and his girlfriend are only nine, OBrien know(s) for a fact that what we felt for for each one other was as deep and cryptical as love can ever get (228). Tragically she is suffering from a fatal disease and dies. For OBrien the memory of her, like his memory of fallen comrades, is and always will be sharp and vivid.For OBrien the lost(p) friends and lost girlfriend are united in death and brought back to life in the memories and stories of those who survive. It is the vivid image of a casualty of the war that inexplicably reminds him of his young girlfriend Linda all day long Id been picturing Lindas face, the way she smilingd (228). For OBrien the dead will always be in a sense alert. The fallen troops and Linda are all dead. But in a story, which is kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world (225).            If OBriens lost girlfrie nd is a link to the departed his young woman Kathleen is the vision of life. He brings her to Vietnam when she is only ten, and seems to serve as the woman who will garter him break his link to the deaths of Vietnam. She is too young to understand why her father has journeyed finish up the normal tourist sites to find the spot where a friend was killed and the body lost in the mire of a muddy river.She witnesses him as he performs a ritual burial of his late friends moccasins in the spot they found his body. It is though she is his tether back to reality, the present and life itself. Childlike she chastises him for his actions and cannot understand the importance of the places she visits. She tells him he is weird for coming back to Vietnam, innocently proclaiming alike coming over here. virtually dumb thing happens a long time ago and you cant ever forget it (183).            She presents the counterpoint of his life in Vietnam and it had to be an odd magician for OBrien to see his daughter in an area of Vietnam that is drastically different than the Vietnam of OBriens death. It brings up the idea and chief of whether OBrien, in his wildest thoughts during his combat in that location that his daughter would stand in the homogeneous spot years later. hostile the other women of memories and dreams Kathleen is able to be in Vietnam with him and help close that chapter of his life. As she notices a Vietnamese farmer staring at her father Kathleen asks if the old man is mad at her father. No, replies OBrien, All thats finished (188).            For OBrien it seems as though he needs the female characters to induce the connection between love and war and life and death. It is not always a successful link. His fellow soldier Norman Bowker had carried a picture of his girlfriend with him during his age and Vietnam but she had married. He saw her on his return, but whil e he could not bring himself to approach her and talk, he also could not pull himself from the memory and went yesteryear her house time and time (146). He later committed suicide.            Women seemed to occupy the same space and provide the same juiceless and contradictory thoughts as Vietnam itself. They were vital to the combat soldiers, but not present with them, or present as a cryptical Mary Ann. They could give a soldier a reason to stay alive or a reason to guard less about living. They could be a distraction to take a soldiers mind off of the war or a distraction which could land to the horror of war. Like Martha they could be loved and hated at the same time. Like combat itself the women in the soldiers thoughts were both intensely private and yet communal.Works CitedOBrien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York Broadway Books, 1990.