The Things They Carried is a collection of linked short stories by Tim O’Brien, about a platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War. The book is based upon O’Brien’s own experiences as a soldier in the 23 infantry division. Throughout the novel O’Brien uses his language and the roles of women to reflect the cultural norms of the time period. Each female role represents a different aspect of war.

 In her journal War and Routine Violence in “The Things They Carried”, Teresa Milbrodt, argued that the characters used a hard vocabulary to contain the “terrible softness”. Meaning that they would cover their own sadness with irony and humor so that they could bare to survive another day of the war. They used words like “greased, offed, lit up, and zapped while zipping”. Her argument was basically claiming that these humorous statements weren’t made out of cruelty but just for stage presence. To her each character was an actor in the sense that when something traumatic happens everyone had their line. It would be the same exchange of painfully ironic remarks and because of this when someone died, they didn’t really seem dead, because “in a curious way it seemed scripted”. They all had their lines memorized, always “irony mixed with tragedy”. This was done in order to numb the pain, the more they repeated the cycle the less in hurt. They also never called “death” by its real name, as if to insist and destroy the reality of death itself. They “kicked corpses, cut off thumbs, and talked grunt lingo”. Which was a cultural norm for men of that era who weren’t really allowed to be scared. They couldn’t simply quit because then they wouldn’t be considered men. So they approached the situation like every other man of that time, they tried to laugh to keep from crying.

Pamela Smiley took a much different approach when analyzing the cultural context of the novel. In her journal The Role of the Ideal (Female) Reader in Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried": Why Should Real Women Play? she examined the use of female characters and how it reflected the historical and cultural norms of that time period. The most important female character is Mary Ann Belle who is used in order to show female readers the different affects the war had on women. She seemed to completely lose touch with reality but, in her mind, she only felt like herself when she was out in the wilderness. It becomes clear that O’Brien’s message is simple. War destroys the cultural order. In situations like that it doesn’t matter who you were before you arrived because eventually you will rely on instincts and thing like reason and compassion will no longer be a factor. Mary Ann not only depicts the release that the war brings but also how women are suppressed by their society and how they can be “freed” from that suppression just by stepping out of their everyday lives. The four roles of women in the story are often overlooked as the tale of Mary Ann Belle a girl who becomes one with the land overshadows the other girls’ significance. Even though Mary Ann’s story shows how women should have been deemed equal during the war, the novel was said to be more about war and the effects associated with it than the equality of the sexes. 

The lack of female characters also can represent a factor of historical context. In this time women were nothing but house wives. They played not serious role in society which is reflected in this book heavily. Martha is a prime example of this but she too holds a double meaning. She was Jimmy Crosses’ first love and his feelings for her were undeniable, but she was made out to be the typical girl of the sixties. While the men were at war the audience was being told of her playing volleyball and encouraging women to support the men at war. Although Jimmy had respect for her, he objectified her body and made her seem like nothing but a shiny new toy for his affection. Perhaps this is why she denied him, but nevertheless his mindset represented that of a typical man of that time period. Martha also represented love and the separation that these men begin to feel as the war goes on. Jimmy has to make the ultimate choice and cut himself off from Martha because his fantasizing about her causes the death of Ted Lavender. At this moment Jimmy doesn’t make the rational decision to leave. Instead he burns his letters from Martha and he realizes that there cannot be love in the war because the soldiers complete focus had to be on the violence going on around them. Which now makes the connection that Love equals death for these soldiers and that is a message that they will now carry with them even after the war is over. This results into the cultural norm of soldiers being cold and machine like after they return from war.

O’Brien’s daughter also played a key role in the novel. She symbolized the role of the naïve outsider. Although O’Brien mentions having multiple children, Kathleen is the only one that is actually introduced in the novel. Her youth and innocence force O’Brien to try to explain the meaning of the war. He becomes frustrated that he cannot tell her the whole truth and he has to word his stories carefully around her. Her presence gives him the ability to again change his stories and this forces him to gain new perspective on his war experience. The audience first sees this when Kathleen asks O’Brien if he Ever killed someone. The audience knows that he has killed a man before but he insists that he hasn’t. he even rewrites one of his stories in the third person point of view but keeps the specific details intact in order to preserve his daughters innocence.

Smaller insignificant characters even have a huge impact on the novel. During the war O’Brien thinks back to his fist date with a girl name Linda. He immediately explains that Linda died from a brain tumor but he was able to keep her alive through his dreams. He imagines her frequently and keeps he alive through his stories. Martha represents the connection between the alive and the dead. The entire platoon of soldiers used this method because it made the dead seem less dead. O’Brien had been doing this already which explains his ability to deal with the death of the other soldiers so easily. Which brings us back to the characters using stories and irony to make the pain more bearable. 

Ultimately, the language and the discrete use of female characters in the novel reflect the cultural context of the time period for both men and women and how the interact with each other. The way that each soldier and their female counterpart, whether they are dead or alive, represent different physical, emotional, and mental affects that the war had on each individual. The fact that these feminine roles were not deemed significant before is in its self a reflection of the time period that the book was written.
