Reflection

For my final blog over The Things They Carried, I want to reflect over the novel as a whole. I was greatly surprised because I found myself actually enjoying the book. For me, it was a fast and easy read; I felt as if I were in the Vietnam War recalling memories with the author. I have never been the type to like reading war novels, but this did not seem to be as focused on the fighting. It was more focused on the relationships and stories of the Vietnam War, which was much more interesting to me. The friendships in Vietnam were formed quickly and rapidly and remained strong for the entire war; after the war, the bonds were just as strong because of the shared experiences.
Just like any novel, though, there were certain things I didn't really like. The major thing that bothered me that wasn't truly a large part of the novel was the Jimmy Cross/Martha love connection. It truly annoyed me that O'Brien opened the novel with their unrequited love story, but he never ended it. The audience never found out what happened to Martha. An additional thing that I did not like that was more of an overall thing about the novel was the choppiness of the author's writing. I felt that the author jumped around and wrote whatever popped into his head, especially toward the end of the novel. For me this was pretty confusing and tough to understand at times.
Yet overall, I did enjoy reading this book. I learned many things about life from a different point of view. I understood more about the Vietnam War and I understood more about the lives of soldiers. I am thoroughly glad that this was one of the two novels chosen for us to read this summer.

Death

The last few pages of the chapter The Lives of the Dead was pretty confusing to me and I have yet to understand all of it. O'Brien consistently mentioning death was definitely not a part of the book I enjoyed. Factoring into this even more was the sudden death of my grandfather. The timing of reading this chapter and the events in my life could not have been much worse. Mitchell Sanders sums it up perfectly when he tells O'Brien "death sucks." Death is a scary, terrifying thing for me to think about; when I was a little girl, nothing scared me more. As I have grown up, that truly has never changed. Consequently, I flew through the last chapter of the book, not trying to understand O'Brien's message. When writing this specific blog entry, however, I realized that I needed to more closely examine the pages. As I did this, I began to think about his techniques of making the dead not so, well, dead. Although his techniques did cause me to worry about his sanity, I realized that we are all like O'Brien and his platoon members. We tell stories to make our loved ones seem 'alive' again; we keep pictures to remember them; we pass their stories down to younger generations. It seems to me that we fight so hard to try bringing them back. O'Brien does not differ that greatly from any of us in this respect; he writes his stories down to feel as if his friends and loved ones are alive and living as he is. From his point of view, not only had he learned to "ke[ep] the dead alive with stories," but he learned that "stories can save us [the living]."

Naivete

In the chapter The Lives of the Dead, O'Brien talked about the girl he loved long ago...when he was nine. To me, this was unbelievable at first. Who can fall in love when they are nine years old? I'm pretty skeptical of love in the first place because I think the word is thrown around too often anymore, and a grown man talking about nine year old love is pretty improbable. As I continued to read the chapter, I thought about it more. O'Brien describes his love for Linda as "want[ing] to melt inside her bones-that kind of love." He admits to the how preposterous the idea is that he was in love at the age of nine. What allowed me to think about how he could have actually loved her was the fact that O'Brien experienced so much in his lifetime; it wasn't like he was naive when he was writing this novel, reflecting on his past. Oftentimes, young people don't know enough about themselves or the world, which can create a confusion in one's mind about love. I'm not trying to say that I don't believe in young love (I mean, my parents, as well as my grandparents, are high school sweethearts), I just think that O'Brien may have loved her at the age of nine, with his innocent nine year old self. But Linda passed away at the age of nine; therefore, O'Brien can never truly know if his feelings for her would have differed as they matured and lost their naivete.

The Medic

The chapter Night LIfe, is completely about Rat Kiley's decline. The medic lost it when the platoon had to only move at night; "the strain was too much" for the soldier. Kiley lost his self and his medical abilities. One morning, he completely lost his mind and had the bright idea to shoot himself in the foot, leading to his discharge to a hospital. As crazy as he may have seemed, the idea was surely part of his plan to get out of the place he was in. Nonetheless, the entire situation stunned me. Of any of the men in the platoon, Kiley seemed to be handling the Vietnam War the best. He retold countless stories of the horrors of the war, kept his humor, and continued to risk his life to save others while he did his job as the medic. I never believed that Kiley was going to be the soldier to lose it. Yet, I suppose that is how war works. You never quite know who it is going to affect and how it will affect them. Everyone reacts to situations differently, and Rat Kiley was no exception to the rule.

Loneliness

In the chapter Ghost Soldiers, O'Brien gets shot twice, the second time leading to a great deterioration of his health. As a direct result, he was taken to a headquarters site, where he quickly adapted to the lack of battle and the safety it provided. He became "a civilian" and no longer had quite the same bond with his platoon when they came to headquarters for a break and to visit. O'Brien "forfeit[ed] membership in the family, the blood fraternity, and no matter how hard you try, you can't pretend to be a part of it." For O'Brien, this was a tough realization; the separation left him with a sense of loneliness and sadness. When Sanders tells O'Brien he is no longer with the group, he feels a "sense of pure and total loss." Sanders was clearing up the fact that "they were soldiers, [O'Brien] wasn't." I think that this can easily be connected to situations everyone experiences. For instance, when I was in the second grade, my family moved to Virginia; before the sixth grade, we moved back to Indiana. Moving back was difficult because everyone here had changed so much; I was no longer truly connected to my friends in the way I used to be. However, situations don't always have to be as huge as a move. They can simply be a vacation, or not seeing a friend for a while. O'Brien gives us a chance to empathize with his feelings of abandonment and fear of losing his friends by making what happened to him relatable.

A Return to Vietnam

In the chapter Field Trip, there were multiple poignant moments for O'Brien that the reader experienced as well. As the reader traveled through the memories of Vietnam with O'Brien they experience his thoughts and feelings too. When O'Brien returns to Vietnam years later, memories overtake him. One place in particular that moves him deeply is the field in which Kiowa died. He returns to mourn the fact that such a small field had "swallowed so much. My best friend. My pride. My belief in myself as a man of some small dignity and courage." At this field, O'Brien begins to remember the horror of the war and the emotions that worked in tandem with it. When he places Kiowa's moccasins in the bottom of the river, he realizes that these emotions have returned because of the loss of a great friend in Kiowa; the moccasins are a huge gesture of the importance the soldier played in O'Brien's life. O'Brien also makes a point in this chapter through dialogue with his daughter, when she asks why he was even in the war in the first place. His reply, "I don't know. Because I had to be" reminds the reader again of the fact that O'Brien was drafted; he didn't care to be in the army in the first place. Making this point crystal clear is obviously extremely important to O'Brien.

Kiowa

The death of Kiowa in the chapter In the Field, was incredibly depressing to me. Kiowa was the character who did not deserve to die; he was kind, religious, a good friend and soldier, and caring. Furthermore, he did not deserve "to be lost under the slime of a shit field." In my mind, he deserved to die with honor and dignity. However, I suppose O'Brien is making a point. The war did not choose it's victims; it did not care if a soldier was a good person. War only cares about winners and losers. In this particular circumstance, Kiowa happened to be on the losing side. Kiowa had the great misfortune of being a casualty of a series of stupid mistakes made by the other members of his platoon. As a result, his fellow soldiers felt awful for Kiowa and this is clear in the way O'Brien wrote about his friend. "'We can't just leave him there,' and the men nodded and got out their entrenching tools and began digging. It was hard, sloppy work. The mud seemed to flow back faster than they could dig, but Kiowa was their friend and they kept at it anyway." It is important to understand that these men truly loved Kiowa; he was a friend to each of them when he needed them. They all felt the responsibility of his death being place squarely on their shoulders. The men knew they could blame the war, or the climate, or the enemy, or God, but the real blame must be accepted by those soldiers who had "a moment of carelessness or bad judgement." I believe this connects to real life too; we must accept responsibility for our actions. We cannot place the blame on others when we know it is our fault. We must take the blame, and move on with our lives, trying not to commit the same mistake.

A Polite Town

The chapter, Speaking of Courage, made me realize what it was like for soldiers after the war. Norman Bowker's story tugged on my heartstrings. The line "the was was over and there was no place to go" greatly saddened me. As the chapter continued, I began to understand that things were only getting harder for Norman. When he returned from the war, he learned that most of his friends had moved away for jobs. He learned that the "high school girls were mostly gone or married." He couldn't tell anyone how he almost got the Silver Star, because in the first place he never got it, and secondly, the story was inappropriate. His life would forever be different because of the draft and a war. He was out of place in a "polite town." This small chapter made me wonder about soldiers and their life when they return. Is it as hard on most soldiers as it was on Norman, or do most soldiers adapt better? I was saddened even more by the revelation that soldiers just like Norman had had their entire lives ahead of them, as recent high school grads, but unfortunately, they were sent to war, ruining any chance of normalcy in their future. This chapter furthered my realization that war can easily ruin an individual.

Comfort

In the chapter, The Man I Killed, Kiowa's attempts to comfort his friend were so real to me. O'Brien does a wonderful job of writing Kiowa as a best friend who is deeply concerned for his buddy's well-being. It surprised me how spot on the phrases were. Kiowa acted just like every friend does when their best friend is going through a crisis. The hysteria growing is almost tangible; the fact that O'Brien will not answer Kiowa even with the smallest of words, creates a fear in Kiowa every friend can understand. We all have tried to comfort a friend with similar phrases to the ones Kiowa uses on page 124 such as "man, I'm sorry" or "why not talk about it?" or "come on. man, talk" or simply the word "talk." It is clear that Kiowa feels that he can only help O'Brien if he talks to him, but isn't everyone like that? Sometimes when all a friend needs is you to just quietly stay with them, we feel the need to listen. I think this is because people think they can fix things if they know exactly what is going through the minds of their friend; uncertainty scares us. Kiowa is proving himself to be the man in the platoon who has the incredible want to fix each of his fellow soldiers. Every person is a little like Kiowa, which makes him so easy to relate to.

Decency

In the chapter Church, a particular piece of dialogue stuck out to me. On page 115, Henry Dobbins says, "the thing is, I believed in God and all that, but it wasn't the religious part that interested me. Just being nice to people, that's all. Being decent." A few pages later, he reflects upon this again with his comment, "All you can do is be nice. Treat them [people] decent, you know?" The chapter touches upon the values that individuals hold important. All people may not find religion to be too important, but most people try to allow respect for others. As children, we are taught from a young age that we must treat others kindly. Dobbins' statements touched me because of the specific situation he found himself in. Think about it. He is part of the American troops fighting, meaning they cannot treat everyone kindly; they are there to win a war, so they may return home safely. The fact that they still believe in treating others with respect and kindness, even though hatred and misery surround them, surprises me. However, as I thought more about the origin of the comment, I realized this statement is truly a reflection of the authors'. This surprised me again because the war did not destroy his belief in the basic goodness of people.