
War is probably the most horrendous thing humans have started. It has a history going back to a time we can barely imagine, but is something we will never get out of humanity. An example for this is the Vietnam war, which was one of the most brutal wars in history. It cost 58 000 American soldiers their lives and at the end nothing was achieved. Still to this day people fight about the outcome, and if it was a success or a failure for the United States. An interesting look into this whole theme gives the book The Things They Carried  by Tim O’Brien. He has a very special style of writing, because a big part of the book is just about the equipment and the guns the soldiers actually carried with them, but also what they carried with them mentally and what kept them alive during the time they were in Vietnam. Even though the book is written from the point of view of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, the influence of O’Brien’s experience is huge. To better understand the way O’Brien wrote his book the way he did, it is important to take a closer look at historical events and cultural aspects as well. To do this an interview with another Vietnam veteran, Tex Howard, and how the American population experienced this war back home is necessary. O’Brien’s own experience, the memories of the brutality and the opinion of the American population on the Vietnam war, give the excerpt its unique shape of almost no emotions and impersonality.

To give a better look into the life of a Vietnam soldier Sharon Raynor interviewed the Vietnam War veteran Tex Howard in ‘A Soldier’s Experience in Vietnam’.  It is about his time before, during, and after the war. Like many others Tex Howard goes over there with the mindset that it is not really a war, it is more of giving support to the South Vietnamese troops and necessary to stop Communism from spreading. He gets sent home after losing a friend to an RPG missile, which also injures him. He talks about his role as a squad leader, the promises he says to his men, and how much he regrets them. The interviewer then jumps straight to the day Tex Howard gets wounded. Here he describes in a very detailed way what is happening that day. He has a Search and Destroy mission with his troops and another company. In the morning, they get in contact with the enemy. He organizes the defense, but the squad leaders have to receive a briefing about the situation. When he gets back his soldiers have different positions than he assigned them to. When he sees his friend Gillespie at the machine gun, he orders him back, but an RPG missile hits and kills him, and injures Tex Howard and three other soldiers. The interviewer asks him if he understands the purpose of the Vietnam War and his change of understanding after his service. He realizes after he got back home that the reason the army told them (stop spreading of Communism) is not the real reason, and that the war just happens to make rich people richer and that it is caused by the greed of certain individuals. The inside look we get from the interview and O’Brien’s book about the Vietnam War are crucial to understand how the two veterans experienced the war. Tex Howard shows in a very detailed way how he experienced the war, and all the processes he went through before, during and after it. It shows how it was, and what the soldiers had to fight with. Because they had to fight more than just the enemy.

In ‘Media Role in The Vietnam War – The Vietnam War’ Alan Rhon portrays the different stages and the media’s influence during the Vietnam war. Important here is especially the influence on the culture of Americans, because by this time people made up their minds only through the media, and they probably still do it today. Rhon subdivides the article in three parts with a relation to time and tells how the US government does everything to censor the information and the content brought on television. At the end though people find out what is happening in Vietnam and start an Anti-Vietnam war movement. In the first part of the article the advance of the television as the new number one source of information is shown. The second part of the article describes the rising interest of the media and the people in Vietnam. More and more correspondents were present in Vietnam and they showed the horrible pictures of it on every TV in the States. The government then successfully tried to censor the media and the actions were successful and soon all the big channels showed the Vietnam war in a way of ‘good guys shooting Reds’. At that time the involvement of the USA in Vietnam was supported by the media. However, the situation changed after an attack of the North Vietnamese army, which was not successful for them, but cost many Americans their lives (Tet offensive). Suddenly the media again showed the brutality of the war, and this time this caused huge Anti-Vietnam demonstrations, which finally forced the US government to leave Vietnam. Rhon’s article shows the historical background of the media, its development and its influence. The media and the reactions it caused led to the ending of the war, so you could argue that the media changed history.

Both, The Things They Carried and Tex Howard’s interview are historically very accurate as they both show the picture of the Vietnam war in its whole appearance and brutality. Horrible events like losing a friend, or simply chaos and the fact that luck or coincidence decide over the life of a man, are just small aspects of the war. “Lee Strunk made a funny ghost sound, (…), when he went Ahhooooo, right then Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from peeing” (P.334), this is just one example of how random a life was ended during this war. You can clearly see a very neutral and somehow emotionless writing style in O’Brien’s excerpt, probably caused by such facts that you are able to influence your fate, but at the end it is up to higher powers if you survive or not. About one third of his excerpt is about what the soldiers actually carried, no emotions, simple enumerations (“(…), they carried M-14s and CAR-15s and Swedish Ks and grease guns and captured AK-47 (…)” (P.331)). Like Howard he probably saw horrible things, things that made him angry and disappointed. Historically confirmed events like burning down a village just to make sure that no ‘Charlie’ was there, or the use of napalm to burn down parts of the jungle without being concerned who is in that area. Those are some of the pictures Vietnam veterans like O’Brien and Howard remember, horrible memories, which probably had a huge impact on why O’Brien wrote his excerpt the way he did. Emotionless and impersonal. A very good example of this is given on page 330, where he describes the death of a soldier as “Boom. Down. Nothing else”.

O’Brien wrote the book The Things They Carried in 1990. By that time the Vietnam war had been over for a long time, the intentions of it were obvious and everybody made up their opinion on the war, mainly negative opinions. This for example might be the reason why O’Brien did not glorify the experience he talks about in his excerpt. When the veterans came back home to America they were not welcomed nicely, the pictures and videos people had to watch during the war were too severe.  Today this condition changed, but O’Brien probably remembers the day he came back, and because of those instances he probably wrote the excerpt (I don’t know about the book) not from his personal point of view. By writing from a neutral point of view he makes it accessible for everyone. I personally think that regular people would not by this book of it was from his own point of view and written in a glorified way, because buying such a book might mean that you are a supporter of war and an over motivated patriot. Patriotism is definitely big in the United States, but I know from personal experience that many Americans are patriots. Still, they do not really want to show that to other people, or at least not to people who are not from the States. By buying a book which is about how great the war was and which braveries the person who wrote that book did, they would show this face which they try to hide or in another word suppress. That indicates that his impersonal style of writing and the ‘not the war glorifying’ content has historical and especially cultural reasons. 

All in all, the influence of culture and history is often bigger than people think, The Things They Carried is a good example for that. The mix of historical events, his own experience and how the population of the United States looks at the Vietnam war (cultural effect) give the excerpt and probably the book its unique shape. All these play a huge role, I personally think he did not even notice it though when he was writing his book. Often influences like this are automatic, it also happens to every English student and every other person who is writing a text as well. But to sum it up, history and culture often determine the shape and style of a text, The Things They Carried is no exception from this.





