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 sown experiences as a soldier in the twenty-third infantry division. Throughout the novel O’Brien uses ironic humor and the roles of women to reflect the cultural norms of stoicism of the period. Each female represents a different issue that a soldiers has to deal with while he is fighting in this war, such as losing his love, losing himself, or trying to forget the horrible acts that he had to do in order to survive.

In her article “War and Routine Violence: The Things They Carried”, Teresa Milbrodt argued that the characters used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness of the War. Meaning that they would cover their own sadness with irony and humor so that they could bear to survive another day of the war. They used words like “greased, offed, lit up, and zapped while zipping” (20). Her argument claimed that these humorous statements weren’t made of cruelty but just for stage presence. To her each character was an actor in the sense that when something traumatic happens everyone had a line to repeat. 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 curios 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 it hurt. They also never called death by its real name, as if to destroy the reality of death itself. They “kicked corpses, cut off thumbs, and talked grunt lingo” (12). This was done in order to uphold the cultural norm of men being too macho to show feelings, which supports my thesis. They weren’t allowed to be sad or pity themselves because at the time that was considered to be unmanly. They couldn’t simply quit because to those at home they wouldn’t be seen as real men. So, they approached the situation like every other male of that time, they laughed to keep from crying.

Pamela smiley took a much different approach to her analysis of the men of the novel. In her Article “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 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 the male characters other 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. The 1960’s and 1970’s were a critical time for women’s right because while they legally had equal rights, there were many issues such as equal wages that were not being handled properly and still aren’t today. 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. 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 according to the rising rates of post traumatic stress disorder.

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 daughter’s 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 could keep her alive through his dreams. He imagined her frequently and kept her 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 humorous cruelty and the discrete use of female characters in the novel reflect the cultural context of the 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 everyone. The fact that these feminine roles were not deemed significant before is in its self a reflection of the period that the book was written. 
