Tim O’Brien’s story, “The Things They Carried” describes the physical items soldiers carried and the emotional distress that came with leaving home for years at a time. Psychological hardships were frequent among veterans of all wars, but the Vietnam War veterans experienced abuse like no other.  Returning troops endured verbal, physical, and emotional hardships which is incomparable to any other foreign war.  This opposition to the war from American citizens is mainly due to the perceived lack of purpose and reason for US troops to be in Vietnam.

The United States entered Vietnam in 1965 under Lyndon B. Johnson as a result of the First Indochina War and an extremely violent Vietnamese civil war.  On the home front, tensions were astronomical because the US was in the middle of the Cold War against Russia, and that alone brought great apprehension to US citizens.  Americans lived in constant fear of a nuclear fallout due to Russia becoming a global threat with newly built nuclear weapons.  This tension led to US troops entering Vietnam to prevent the spread of communism overseas (The Red Scare), and American citizens did not agree with the government’s decision to put ‘boots on the ground.’  

During the 1960’s, the hippie movement was in full force, and a very popular saying was “make love, not war.”  The war was not widely opposed at first, but after a couple of years into the conflict, American citizens began to wonder why the US was intervening in what was essentially a civil war that did not directly involve the United States at all.  The Vietnam War was the first televised war in history.  What Americans were seeing was described as, “The war is in your living room.”  

The emotional hardship for Vietnam veterans, as described in O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” was not only a result of absence from loved ones and home, but also from the presence of blame that was placed on them for only doing what they were required to do.  O’Brien goes into detail by describing Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s distress regarding Martha, the girl he cares for, but had to leave behind for the war.  He entails Cross’s longing to return home by expressing his constant thought of her.  The lieutenant’s emotional hardship continues when he heavily blames himself for the death of his platoon-mate, Ted Lavender, on his unyielding thoughts.  Lavender’s death causes Cross even more emotional distress because of their close relationship, which is similar to Cross’s relationship with Martha.  Relating to O’Brien’s short story, the author describes Ted Lavender as fearing what is to come in combat situations right before he was shot by the Viet Cong.  Lavender is a prime example of the youthfulness among the soldiers in Vietnam, and this made it hard for the young men to leave home.  Furthermore, the average age of United States troops in Vietnam was 19 years old, so there was not much combat experience among American troops.

Many families in the United States found it hard to send their sons overseas to a civil war between two foreign countries with no clear, identifiable enemy.  For example, World War II was called a ‘black and white’ war because there was an identifiable enemy, and the United States had a distinct motive in the war.  Alternatively, the Vietnam War did not directly involve the US, and many people did not see the reason to deploy troops to Vietnam.  Young men who were eligible for the draft, which is the mandatory selection process into the military, would fabricate health conditions, go to college, or forge military IDs to evade the draft.  Many young men knew that is was probable for them to be drafted into the war, so they would use any reasonable cause imaginable to avoid deployment.

Troops overseas expected a hostile reception from American citizens, but they could not predict the level of abuse that they would receive when returning home.  Soldiers were ordered to take off their uniforms before arriving home to avoid being an identifiable veteran and therefore evading verbal and even physical abuse.  Referring to World War II once more, veterans were treated as heroes when they returned to the United States because the soldiers had eliminated the global threat that was the Axis Powers.  This was a stark contrast compared to what the Vietnam veterans experienced.  The hostile reception from Americans was mainly due to uncertainty, lack of understanding, and perceived lack of purpose for the United States to be involved in the civil war occurring in Vietnam.

O’Brien also describes the physical items carried by the soldiers in his platoon.  Many of the items were small knick-knacks that were comforting to those men.  They carried letters and photographs of loved ones, food rations, water, can openers, cigarettes, dog tags, chewing gum, and any other personal comforts.  The author goes into vivid detail while describing each item the soldiers carried by entailing the exact weight and its purpose to that specific person.  Everyone mostly carried the same things, but O’Brien details the unique items that some troops carried such as comic books, diaries, Bibles, and hatchets.  The author’s purpose of going in-depth about these items is that every man has his emotional attachments, and those comforts of home is what helped them get through the war.  Whatever it was that could remind someone of home, and make him more comfortable and relaxed was used because the emotional hardships the soldiers endured became vital to the war effort.

O’Brien also describes the physical toll that the war took on the soldiers by explaining military terms such as ‘grunts’, ‘legs’, and ‘humps.’  He says that ‘hump’ means to carry a heavy load of something, whether it be personal materials, pots, pans, or things to set up camp with.  O’Brien focuses on the story of Lieutenant Cross often by describing his feelings for Martha.  He says that Cross dreams of Martha every day and every night, and he could become very distracted which effected the entire platoon.  When Ted Lavender was killed by the Viet Cong, O’Brien described the emotional toll that his death took on everyone in the platoon.  Once more, the author focuses the emotional aspect of the war on Jimmy Cross by explaining that he could not stop thinking about Martha even though one of his best friends had just been killed.  Cross’s emotional attachment to Martha is depicted by the small pebble she sent him that he cherishes and carries with him throughout the rest of the war.  Cross tries to find the romantic side in everything she writes and sends him even though he knows she does not reciprocate the same feelings he has for her.  The entire facet of Cross’s obsession and constant thought of Martha only builds upon the psychological toll the war has begun to take on him.

The physical and verbal hardships only built upon the emotional fatigue the Vietnam veterans experienced overseas.  Veterans had little to no way of expecting the level of mistreatment from American citizens even though they had known of the outspoken opposition to the war by most of the United States.  The Vietnam War was seen as a massive failure in the eyes of the United States because the spread of communism was not stopped altogether, and nearly 60,000 American troops were killed in a war that was perceived to not directly involve the US.  The lack of understanding regarding the United States’ purpose for involving itself in an ongoing foreign civil war was a conflict on a global scale.

In the 1950s and 1960s, communism was spreading across the world, especially in Asia, and the US had been known to strongly oppose ‘The Red Scare’ due to the United States’ distinguished mission to spread democracy across the globe.  Out of the many reasons for Americans protesting the war in Vietnam, the perceived lack of purpose for American presence overseas was the main incentive for US citizens’ opposition.  Americans viewed the Vietnam War as one of the most violent and catastrophic conflicts in history because of the vast fatalities.  Many families feared the worst if their son were to be deployed, and most thought the war in Vietnam was unwinnable.  The emotional distress within Vietnam War veterans was only the beginning of what they were to face when returning to the United States.
