
Tim O’Brien is an American novelist who is most well-known for his short story, The Things They Carried, which revolves around an element of immaturity that was inevitably present due to a flood of inexperienced teenagers and young men into Vietnam to fight a truly horrific war. Being away from his love, Lieutenant Cross is deeply involved in trivialities relating to his partner, involving himself in constant questioning and daydreaming. The story highlights the innocence of these men through the first-person perspective of Lieutenant Cross, who vividly describes his comraderies’ equipment and personal items. O’Brien cleverly relays through such descriptions, the escapist tendencies Lieutenant Cross and other soldiers resorted to as a path to escape the horrors of war and hard truths of life. The story reflects the disillusionment of the American people in the face of a pointless, brutal conflict such as the Vietnam War. The effect of the war is conveyed through the experience of Lieutenant Cross, who finds no solace in the trivialities of American life after his horrifying experience in Vietnam.

                The love letters that Lieutenant Cross receives are heavily indicative of the state of young adults entering the Vietnam war. Lieutenant Cross is still preoccupied with his life back home, rife with the warm drama of his engagement with his love Martha, the girl of his dreams. Lieutenant Cross, like any other soldier, still longs for the powerful and comforting embrace of traditional American society. In love, he constantly questions Martha’s love for him, as well as questioning her virginity. These matters of the heart contend with the anxieties of war, driving a wedge between the reality of war and the experience of young adults like Cross. Such a barrier slowly disintegrates after the death of his comrade, in which Cross cannot further entertain his escapist, delusional fantasies that were common in 60’s America, an era of high culture, fantasy, excitement, and later disillusionment. Not only can Cross not entertain his escapist any longer, but his whole mind set and the way he leads are altered after the death of Lavender, “After the chopper took Lavender away, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross led his men into the village of Than Khe. They burned everything. They shot chickens and dogs, they trashed the village…” (337)

                  The irreparable nature of such a devastating occurrence serves to then launch the Lieutenant into a state driven by survival instinct. No longer can Cross fight off the pressure developing from his environment, the war has broken him here, rendering his highest priority one of survival, not of the trivialities he notices among his comrades. Such a stark contrast is revealing compared to his concerns before the tragic death of his comrade, when Lieutenant Cross reveled in the fantasies of love and his descriptions of his comrades. An example of Cross’s description is when he says: “As a big man, therefore a machine gunner, Henry Dobbins carried the M-60, which weighed 23 pounds unloaded, but which was almost always loaded” (330). Cross’s casual descriptions of his comrades lose their comforting aura when compared against the backdrop of severe trauma, leading to the state of disillusionment with a past life that occurs within Lieutenant Cross. Past his relief of surviving the shooting by the Vietcong, Lieutenant Cross sees no reprieve, no alleviation, from the horrors of life. This then leads to his intense despair and guilt due to his failure to save his friend, feelings almost overpowering by the end of the short story, “He was now determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence. It wouldn’t help Lavender, he knew that, but from this point on he would comport himself as an officer. He would dispose of his good-luck pebble...” (384) His internal dialogue is no longer concerned with triviality, rather, such thoughts are replaced with a confusion and disillusionment that takes Lieutenant Cross farther from the clarity he desires. 

                Lieutenant Cross’s inability to contend with the death of his comrade leads to an introspective nightmare. He no longer can distract himself with triviality, digging a hole for himself that is in equal parts tragic and symbolic. This action is also representative of the nature of American society at the time, a society which, caught in a War that is laden with devastation and immorality, cannot blindly entertain the artifacts of culture and enjoyment that it had so relished itself in before. American society becomes disillusioned, as does Lieutenant Cross, seeking an answer for such pointless and irreconcilable violence. This dynamic perfectly fits the tendencies of American society at the time, with the young resorting to drugs such as marijuana and the elder members of society resorting to denial. The stark contrast here is that Lieutenant Cross and his comrades lack the faculties to truly escape the horror of violence, and are each deliberately broken down by the harsh realities of life, leaving them in the purest form of disillusionment, confusion, and despair. 

             In Tina Chen analysis, she looks at the story through the perspective that the bitter truth overbears all falsities; as she states, “Although O'Brien's fictive project centers on the impossibility of ascertaining any one truth from the experience of war, Things is guided nonetheless by an impulse to tell the truth, though the truth is ugly” (80). Chen’s analysis supports my argument that the preceding paragraphs establish speaking of the confusion and ambiguity of the protagonist who, within a matter of hours, completely changes due to the intensity of major truths and realizations. Furthermore, Chen connects O’Brien’s characteristic writing style to the story saying that rather than trying to elicit pity towards the protagonist, he emulates an experience that amplifies the central theme of accepting indeterminacy and adapting to a situation. In an interview between Larry McCaffery and Tim O’Brien, O’Brien speaks about how the raw indifferent nature of a war-torn area impelled him to write. The overwhelming experience was nearly a stigma for O’Brien, projecting his experiences through stories  that all progress with a reformed and unique style.

             The story is highly compelling, matching the destructive nature of any war story with the unique writing style of O’Brien who incorporates experiences through first person perspective to appeal to the feelings of defeat that a soldier may experience. “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight” (338), here, O’Brien seeks to relate these overpowering emotions to some tangible feeling. All the varying elements of O’Brien’s writing masterfully bring together these emotions to produce an enthralling story for both readers and scholars alike to experience. In some sense the indifference of war towards humans serves as a metaphor for readers and scholars alike who are captivated by the horrors of war prevalent in modern, reflective contemporary literature.
