The 20th century was marked by several military conflicts that forever changed the lives of millions of people across the world. One such dispute was the Vietnam War of 1954-1975, in which the United States of America played an active role (Brigham). The war profoundly impacted American politics and culture, including literature. Thus, Tim O’Brien’s collection of related short stories, The Things They Carried, is dedicated to the challenges, tragedies, and burdens of the Vietnam War. The Things They Carried criticizes the war, centering on its moral ambiguity and meaninglessness.
The Things They Carried is a collection of short stories dedicated to men serving together in a platoon during the Vietnam War. Each of the 22 stories focuses on the experiences and observations of different characters, offering the readers point-of-view narrations of the book’s protagonists. However, it should be noted that the character Tim O’Brien, who purposefully shares the name with the author, is featured permanently throughout the stories and narrates several of them (O’Brien 37). The stories encompass a wide variety of war-related events, from conscription and attempt to flee the draft to active battle to the comradery of the army, injury, murder, death, and the forever-changed life post-war. Overall, the author explores the trauma of war and its physical and emotional burdens and reveals the deep truth of the Vietnam War: it bore no meaning for people fighting it. Nevertheless, it decisively changed the lives of soldiers and their families.
Through the characters’ experiences, Tim O’Brien illustrates the pointlessness of war and the soldiers’ lack of purpose or conviction. The author argues that ordinary soldiers bear the brunt of the impact of the war and suffer the most, despite having little to no stakes in that particular conflict. In particular, the war is compared to the “thick and permanent” fog that blinds the soldiers, overwhelms them, and leaves them with no sense of self (O’Brien 78). War is morally ambiguous because it removes the familiar social constraints and replaces them with new rules, adherence to which is not always feasible. Furthermore, war views as moral actions that are considered immoral in peaceful times, including such an unforgivable act as murder. This notion is reflected in the ruminations of the character Tim O’Brien, who notes that “right spills over into wrong” and that “the only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity” (O’Brien 78). Soldiers can never be truly sure of the morality of their actions as they are forced to commit acts that they spent their lives believing were wrong. Meanwhile, clinging to the morality of peaceful days can lead to devastating outcomes.
The characters’ actions further show the pointlessness of war and its moral ambiguity. They are never fully aware of whom they are fighting and why. In addition, they have no idea how their actions affect the outcome of the war, their fellow soldiers, their enemies, or themselves. Through Tim O’Brien, in particular, the author shows that the American soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War knew nothing of the enemy. In one instance, Tim creates a backstory for the man he killed, trying to imagine his life (O’Brien 122). In the next chapter, Tim kills a man who poses no apparent threat to him, leading to a pointless loss of life (O’Brien 127). Another character, Mary Anne, assimilates into war to the inhumane degree of killing Vietnamese soldiers for fun and wearing a necklace of human tongues (O’Brien 105). This level of cruelty indicates that these killings had no purpose that could serve to bring about the end of the war. Overall, it can be argued that the characters have no fundamental understanding of the war they are fighting and commit acts of murder for the sole purpose of surviving.
Furthermore, the moral ambiguity of the war affected not only the ways in which the men and women fought in the Vietnam War but the impact the conflict had on them. The deeper truth evident throughout the short stories is that the soldiers are pawns who struggle to understand the meaning of war before drafting, during the conflict, and after the ceasefire. Tim O’Brien asks the gut-wrenching question 20 years after the war: “Christ, what’s the point?” (O’Brien 79). Many characters are described as having failed to have meaning in life after the war, with Norman Bowker taking his own life without a note of explanation (O’Brien 149). Thus, the soldiers who lacked understanding of the war carried the fog of war with them to civilian life, in which they could no longer fit in. The rules and truths of war have no place in the peaceful time, and those who fought in a meaningless war were forever changed by it.
In summary, Tim O’Brien’s short story collection, published under the title The Things They Carried, exemplifies the moral ambiguity of war as well as its pointlessness. The stories highlight the fact that the Vietnam War was fought by people to whom it bore no meaning and who lacked a sense of purpose or conviction. In addition, the author emphasizes the impact of military conflict on one’s understanding of morality, as rules of war cannot be compared to those of peaceful times. Overall, the ambiguity and lack of meaning dictated the actions of the soldiers who did not know why and whom they were fighting and whose lives were changed forever.
Works Cited
Brigham, Robert K. “Battlefield Vietnam: A Brief History.” Public Broadcasting Service, 2022, Web.
Casali, Luísa K., and Marcel D. Santos. “Morality and Existentialism in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men According to Principles by Jean-Paul Sartre.” Scripta Alumni, vol. 23, 2020, pp. 1-15.
O’Brien, Tim. “The Things They Carried.” Mariner Books, 2009, Web.