The invention and spread of agriculture coupled with the domestication of animals in the fifth millennium B.C. are two characteristics of civilization. These early civilizations are acknowledged as the developments that set the stage for the emergence of the first large-scale, complex urban societies. These societies, which appeared almost simultaneously in both ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, used stone tools. Later stone tools and weapons gave way to bronze. With bronze manufacture came a revolution in warfare. It may seem odd to consult literature professors about war but the human race is full of story-telling beings. War veterans face chaos with narrative. Soldiers who have experienced war try to find a plot line in which they are in the process of getting somewhere. Army veterans try to organize the irrational, uncontrollable, impossibly profuse events of their lives into dramas with beginnings, middles and ends. War is among the most traditional subjects of narration, beginning with the Homer's Iliad and the great epic of India, the Mahabharata. Today the most modern war is the one that the U.S faces in Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S army veterans muddle through their horrifying experiences by telling war stories. Tim O’Brien is the author of the novel The Things They Carried. O’Brien is a Vietnam veteran. Tim O’Brien explains what makes a true war story by including internal conflicts, symbols, and images to explain what he felt during the war using Realism, Modernism, and Postmodern.

The theme is that story-truth is truer sometimes than happening truth. In war times soldiers unearth stories to express feelings and emotions. It is a psychological departure from war. Soldiers want people to believe, to feel, and see what the soldier experiences. Military veterans are mostly the ones that retell war stories to feel that they are not alone. Ex-soldiers want someone to talk to, and they want to be believed in everything they say. Some war stories are too horrifying to tell. Some war stories are not believable. What makes a true war story real? Tim O’Brien is a Vietnam veteran. His novel The Things They Carried is a war story. The narrator says, “Even that story is made up. I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth” (O’ Brien 179). When a war story is told, the chances for the listener or reader believing it is very low. Tim O’Brien does not want to take those types of low chances. O’Brien writes a war story that is invented, but the feelings and emotions are real. The narrator expresses, “What stories can do, I guess, is make things present” (O’ Brien 180). Tim O’Brien uses symbols, imagery, and all types of conflicts to tell the reader what he feels and sees. He tells a war story and uses his emotions that he has felt during the war. Tim O’Brien claims that a fictitious war story is more real then a true war story. The narrator says this because in a fictional story the feelings and emotions are more important than a true war story. Mr. Blyn says, “A true war story is told without leaving out emotions” (Blyn). When a war veteran writes an imaginary war story, emotions and observations are not left out. The story that does not leave out internal conflicts that happened during the war is a true war story. Tim O’Brien uses literacy elements to explain what he has felt during the war. Internal conflicts are what soldiers face constantly in war.

Conflict is used in stories to show what the character passes through. There are two types of conflicts. The first one is called internal conflict. The second one is called external conflict. Tim O’Brien uses more the internal conflict. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross leads the platoon. The internal conflict that he has is he can’t concentrate. O’ Brien expresses, “Dense, crushing love, Kneeling, watching the hole, he tried to concentrate on Lee Strunk and the war, all dangers, but his love was too much for him, he felt paralyzed . . . he wanted to be smothered” (11). Jimmy Cross’s emotions impede him to worry on the war. His internal conflict between Martha and war cost him losing a soldier. When Ted Lavender dies Jimmy Cross blames himself. O’ Brien says “It was a bright morning in mid-April. Lieutenant Cross felt the pain. He blamed himself” (6). The Lieutenant knows that if he had been doing his job nothing would have happened. Jimmy Cross fights his desire to be with Martha and the war. Tim O’Brien invents this story to let the reader know what every soldier has gone through. Every soldier fights not only a war, but a war with emotions, thoughts, and memories. The war not only changes political disputes, but soldiers inner mind, soul, and conscience. Tina Chen comments, “Soldiers fight a war to survive and mental badger” (Chen). Mrs. Chen says that soldiers that fight in wars deal with emotional stress. Everyone in combat passes through a type of mental war. Tim O’Brien wants the reader to realize that the soldier’s internal conflicts are more important than the actual story. Few soldiers survive this mental conflict. In the war in Vietnam the new soldier never had seen a dead person before. Throughout time the first person they had to kill stays with them forever. It is a war not only with the North Vietnamese, but with their conscience. O’Brien uses Realism techniques to describe internal conflicts.

Realism techniques are used to study ordinary characters in depth more than plot. Many writers use images to clarify a meaning and O’Brien uses two images. Tim O’Brien talks about a character named Norman Bowker. This Vietnam veteran drives around a lake multiple times in a day. O’Brien says, “Clockwise, as if in orbit, he took the Chevy on another seven-mile turn around the lake” (139). Norman Bowker drives around a lake because he doesn’t know what to make of his life. His conscience is permanently damaged from the war. Bowker driving around a lake symbolizes the way life of an army veteran ends up after a war. After returning from war, a soldiers mind does not have a meaning for life anymore. It is like if their feelings were drained out in combat. Tim O’Brien shows what war can do to a human being. The second example is about wars’ deepest horror. Men were not born to kill. In war killing means survival. An image of a dead man stays in the mind forever like a tattoo does on skin. The narrator says, “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his other eye was a star-shaped hole . . . his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood was thick and shiny and it was this the wound that killed him” (124). Tim O’Brien lets the reader know what a soldier inherits from war. The chapter “The Man I Killed” is made up but the descriptions were not. It is a description of the dead man seen in war. Combat images that only death can separate or delete. Warner Berthoff says, “Many Realism authors clarify a meaning better with images than putting it in plain words” (Berthoff). Tim O’Brien exercises excellent use of imagery to explain his thoughts. He was a soldier that fought and survived one of the most violent American wars. O’Brien uses symbolism to describe the Vietnam War.
Symbols were used since the very start of human civilization. The Chinese thousand of years ago used symbols as their literature. The United States of America is a symbol of the most powerful nation of the world. Great Britain is a symbol of the American fifty-first royal state. Tim O’Brien a great American Vietnam veteran uses symbolism to describe war conditions. He uses a meat baking facility to show a preview of a real war. In the chapter “On the Rainy River” O’Brien takes a job washing pig blood clogs. The narrator says, “Goggles were a necessity, and a rubber apron, but even so it was like standing for eight hours a day under a lukewarm blood shower” (O’ Brien 43). The goggles and rubber apron symbolize the massive artillery used later in the war. The blood shower is a symbol of all the blood shed in combat. Symbolism is used to give a deep meaning to something. Tim O’Brien wants the reader to see and feel the war. A true war story is made for the intension to experience war without being there. The purpose is to make the moral strong and reject a war. Tim O’Brien says, “At night I’d go home smelling of pig. It wouldn’t go away. Even after a hot bath, scrubbing hard, the stink was always there . . . greasy pig-stink that soaked deep into my skin and hair” (O’ Brien 43). The pig smell that would not go away symbolizes the moral’s damages. The mind after war can’t accept killing as an answer for any kind of political, domestic, and foreign dispute. It changes the mind from patriotic to neutrality for ever. Most army veterans cannot fit back into society. It’s like the pig smell that just doesn’t go away. Carl Horner says, “The use of symbols is used to invest things with a representative meaning” (Horner). Tim O’Brien invests the idea of a meat baking facility for a representative meaning for war. Modernism techniques are used to show a radical change in a person from war.

Literature has many writing styles. The technique most used today is Modernism. This style has many characteristics. Flawed heroes and interest in how the mind works are some of them. The characteristic that O’Brien uses is loss of belief in civilization. The narrator introduces a young girl named Mary Anne in the chapter entitle “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” to explain these believe. O’Brien says, “At best, Rat said, she was seventeen years old, fresh out of Cleveland Heights Senior High. She had long white legs and blue eyes and a complexion like strawberry ice cream. Very friendly, too” (93). When Mary Anne arrives she is very friendly. Mark Fossie is a character in this chapter. Since nobody regulates what Alpha company is operating in the mountains, Mark Fossie sneaks his girlfriend to their location. This story is also fictitious. O’Brien shows how Vietnam changes anyone. A young innocent girl is curious and wants to know what war is like. In less than weeks the spirit of war takes her over and she changes in a blink of an eye. A new personality takes over. The narrator says, “In part it was her eyes: utterly flat and indifferent. There was no emotion in her stare, no sense of the person behind it” (110). A radical change takes place in this girl. The war is a natural high for Mary Anne. She no longer has innocence and friendly characteristics in her. War is all she has in her heart. Killing is an adventure. She joins the greenies at night and loves to ambush the enemies. Tim O’Brien shows that the young girl’s life resembles all the soldiers’ personality. War becomes the morphine to survive. Most of the drafted souls are collage graduates. In the war they become killing machines. Susan Carson comments on Modernism, “Writers explain the loss of respect in civilization” (Carson). War veterans’ belief becomes uncivilized in a way that there’s no more respect for life. War is never pleasant. Tim O’Brien didn’t forget to use imagery in his novel.

Tim O’Brien’s main focus on his novel is imagery. He strongly feels that everyone that reads his books needs to understand war confrontations. In ancient Egypt, dreams were categorized as images. People that are known to read images were used to interpret the dream. One famous dream that a pharaoh had was the image of seven skinny cows and three healthy sheaves of grain. An interpreter was called in to read the images to the pharaoh that day. The man read that the image of seven skinny cows meant that the Nile was heading for a drought for seven years. The three healthy sheaves of grain meant that the drought would arrive in three years. The pharaoh trusted the interpretation of the images and gathered enough food to last for the seven years of drought. In modern days, images are use to show the reader a meaning just like in ancient Egypt. O’ Brien says, “And yet right here, in the spell of memory and imagination, I can still see her as if through ice, as if I’m gazing into some other world . . . I can see Kiowa, too, and Ted Lavender and curt Lemon, and . . . Timmy skating with Linda” (245). The other world is an image of his memories. Through the ice he sees all his friends lost in death. The narrator says, “At the girl’s throat was a necklace of human tongues” (110). Mary Anne is wearing an unusual necklace of human tongues. The necklace is an image of Mary’s personality change. It is like the evil side that would never appear in a person took over. O’Brien shows that in war anything can happen. He uses images to prove it. Vince Passaro says, “Images are the figurative language, especially metaphors and similes, used in novels and other literary works” (Passaro). Images are use to make literature come alive. Anyone can get confused with reading simple wording. Images are unique because they are universal. Postmodernism is used in this novel.

Another style in literature is Postmodernism. This technique is use to blend fiction with nonfiction. This type of literature is often self-aware and comments on itself. Tim O’Brien fuses fantasy with fact. In this novel there are two types of facts; they are story facts and happening facts. Of coarse happening facts in this story do not exist because the novel is invented to explain what makes a true war story. Story fact is real in the story. In the chapter “On the Rainy River,” the narrator blends past, present, and future together. Tim O’Brien says, “A hallucination, I suppose, but it was as real as anything I would feel. I saw my parents . . . and Abraham Lincoln, saint George. There was a slim young man I would one day kill with a hand grenade along the village of My Khe” (59). The narrator sees Abraham Lincoln and Saint George. This vision happened during the Vietnam War. So it is highly impossible for a dead president and a Saint to be along with people of the future. Tim O’Brien combines the past with future to create postmodern techniques. The narrator says, “Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it . . . you’re at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You’re twenty-one years old . . . there’s a hard squeezing pressure in your chest (56). Tim O’Brien uses this style of writing to reveal the reader how it feels to be drafted during the Vietnam War. He desires the reader to share what it feels to have feelings of betrayal or loyalty. Twenty-one years of age was the average called for war. Children were summoned to be killing machines. Most of the soldiers did not know the reason why they were there in the field of blood and death. Sylvia Martin states, “Postmodernism is a very new technique used in literature” (Martin). Tim O’Brien uses postmodern techniques to unearth feelings before war. Emotions, feelings and memories are the primary factors that make a true war story.

A true war story is not patriotic; it emphasizes wars’ deepest fears. The Vietnam War is very similar to the one the U.S faces in Iraq and Afghanistan. American soldiers encounter guerrilla tactics. The tactic is very confusing. Many American combatants do not know who the enemy is or looks like. Just like in the war in Vietnam, U.S Marines go to every village and strip search everyone. The purpose is to find weapons and disguised enemies. Mothers in Iraq and Afghanistan would not hesitate to train their children to kill. Middle Eastern kids do not know the reason why they have to fight. In their opinion Americans are the heroes. So they fight not only a war but with their judgment. This is the deepest war secret. Before joining the arm forces the young American adult is happy. The training is easy and vigorous. When the soldier steps on enemy grounds the war horrors begin. Death changes American soldiers’ minds and souls. If their conscience allows it they start loving taking enemy lives. If the conscience does not allow seeing death, hatred begins building against war and everyone in it. They start hating sand in their boots and fighting ghosts. U.S soldiers begin detesting sand storms because after it is over the ghosts come. The ghosts then start shooting and bombing. The desert and the oil beneath it start receiving blame for all the nightmares. In the day time American soldiers fight a war, but at night they battle horrific dreams. War dreams hunt U.S Marines down because the dead come back to life. Lastly American veterans hate leaving without their friends and brothers. Detestation grows in the heart for leaving them because soldiers fight together in a war. U.S Army veterans come home and hate leaving them because they are dead. Soldiers’ friends and brothers do not have the chance to come home. They stay lifeless in the hot desert of Iraq or the mountains in Afghanistan. Tim O’Brien survives the Vietnam War, but his mind stays in combat. Iraq veterans come home, but their conscience is still in that flaming desert. Nothing has change from the past and present. Certainty it would not be different in the future. Most war veterans who survive tell a true war story without omitting emotions, memories, and terror.


A True War Story Works Cited

Berthoff, Warner. "American Realism: A Grammar of Motives." The Ferment of Realism: American Literature, 1884-1919. New York: The Free Press, 1965. 1-47. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Lynn M. Zott. Vol. 120. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 1-47. Literature Resources from Gale. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 30 Apr. 2009 .

Blyn, Robin. "O'Brien's The Things They Carried." Explicator. 61.3 (Spring 2003): 189. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 211. Detroit: Gale, 2006. p189. Literature Resources from Gale. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 29 Apr. 2009 .

Carson, Susan. "Modernism." Hecate. 30.1 (May 2004): p176. Literature Resources from Gale. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 30 Apr. 2009 .

Chen, Tina. "'Unraveling the Deeper Meaning': Exile and the Embodied Poetics of Displacement in Tim O'Brien's The Thing They Carried." Contemporary Literature. 39.1 (Spring 1998): 77-97. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Joseph Palmisano. Vol. 74. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 77-97. Literature Resources from Gale. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 30 Apr. 2009. .

Horner, Carl. "Challenging the Law of symbolism and Heroic Identification in Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone and The Things They Carried." WLA: War, Literature & the Arts. 11.1 (Spring-Summer 1999): 256-267. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed.

Joseph Palmisano. Vol. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 30 Apr. 2009 .
Martin, Sylvia. "Postmodernism." Hecate. 18.2 (Oct. 1992): p126. Literature Resources from Gale. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 30 Apr. 2009 .
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1998.

Passaro, Vince. "The Things They Carried and Imagery." Harper's Magazine. 299.1791 (Aug. 1999): p80. Literature Resources from Gale. Gale. Gwinnett County Public Schools. 30 Apr. 2009 .

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 15.02.2010

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