The Things They Carried

For all vets and those too young

The Things They Carried is technically a novel, but it's really more of a fictionalized memoir, in which author Tim O'Brien creates a fictitious Alpha Company very much like the Alpha Company he served in, and a fictitious author named Tim O'Brien, who twenty years later is a writer writing about Viet Nam.

Now considered one of the "definitive" Viet Nam war novels, this book did not have the effect on me that it might on someone of O'Brien's generation. I was a child when the Viet Nam war ended, barely old enough to register that a war over there was anything of significance. I lost no family members in Viet Nam; I have no close friends who served there. By the time I came of age, Viet Nam preoccupied the media on which I grew up, but it was a foreign place and a foreign experience.

Tim O'Brien's semi-autobiographical novel is full of anecdotes, small stories, and harrowing episodes, but it's war on a small scale. Some of his buddies die, and others go nuts, but most just try to struggle their way through their tour and survive. They see action but not a lot of epic battles, just the constant threat of being shot at in jungles and drawing lots to see who will crawl into a Viet Cong tunnel with a flashlight in one hand and a combat knife in their teeth.

There is not much humor, but you wouldn't expect a Viet Nam novel to be funny, would you? (M*A*S*H*, famously, was really "about" Viet Nam but since it was still too recent and raw, they had to set it back in the Korean War instead.)

It gives some insight into what Viet Nam was like on the ground, but now, going on five decades later, Viet Nam has been explored and trodden and, if not exorcised from our national psyche, made bearable and confrontable again. And the Vietnamese, desperate to get in on the global market and its bounty of modern technology and foreign currency, no longer hold a grudge against us. They run tours through villages and war memorials. They greet American vets coming back to confront the place they once shed blood in almost like returning alumni.

As a wargamer, I have an academic interest in war. My particular area of interest is World War II, a war so long ago now that there are an ever-dwindling number of men and women who remember it first-hand, and which has faded into the fog of history and national mythology. Viet Nam, I think, is getting there. You can find Viet Nam wargames now, a thing that might upset living Nam vets but which would probably have been unthinkable in the years immediately after the war ended. Listening to Tim O'Brien talk about his ("his") war experiences did not sound very different to me than similar books narrated by World War II vets - equally horrible but equally distant, even though technically Viet Nam is within my living memory.

I appreciated this book, but I'm in that middle generation, too young to have had the real Viet Nam leave a mark on me, too old to find much here I haven't heard before.

The afterword by the author was a bonus in the audiobook, but probably what I found most profound of any of his stories was his meditation on why he went to Viet Nam. When his draft number came up, like many men of that era he contemplated the way he might get out of going, and even set out on that fabled trek to Canada. The story of his abortive flight, and his decision to return home and shoulder his responsibilities - literally - may ring more true for many of his generation than the ones who did end up dodging the draft, or who volunteered, or who were traumatized or killed. He went to Viet Nam because he couldn't stand the thought of letting down his family, his nation, of being seen as a coward. So ironically, as he puts it, he went to Viet Nam because he was a coward.

Going to war makes the "author" a coward?

Any additional comments?

Author tells a story of his struggle to go to war after being drafted and his desire to pack it up and sneak into Canada to avoid the war. Long story but he decides to go to war, he ends this story with the comment that he chose the cowards way out. I was disgusted by his comment, his thought that a coward goes to war and a person of strength would have dodged it sneaking off into Canada. What an incredible insult to all the brave men and women who do the honorable thing and join the armed services to protect our freedom, they are the heroes. After hearing that comment, I simply could listen no more.

Unrealistic

I spent 1970 in Vietnam in an infantry platoon, mostly in the jungle. We were among the first American troops to enter Cambodia when Nixon invaded that country. I'm finding it very frustrating listening to The Things They Carried. Most of the stories are not believable and certainly are not consistent with my experience. An infantry grunt somehow manages to have his 17 year old girlfriend from Cleveland Heights come to Nam and spend weeks with him on a firebase? Really!? That could never happen in anything that I experienced in the Army or in Vietnam. And, then she, in about 10 days, becomes this ghostly apparition going out on night patrols with Green Berets and shortly thereafter decides to go off and live alone in the jungles of Vietnam? I saw and experienced some horrifying things in Nam, but most of what I'm reading in this book just has very little resemblance to the realty of what the Vietnam war was for me. Maybe that is only a problem for me and not other listeners, but I cannot recommend this book.

Heavy Load

Like voices from the grave, devastatingly profound, and haunting. A review would be inappropriate, but my experience with this book was probably similar to other readers that were very young teens during the height of the Viet Nam war. Though I wore one of those MIA bracelets, sent neighbors and friend's older brothers off, went to Country Joe and the Fish concerts and yelled out the FISH cheer, I was young, distant, and naïve, and could only marginally intellectualize the atrocities and the nightly tally of deaths. Listening to Cranston narrate these stories gives faces to the words; the soldiers become flesh and blood -- not just characters and chapters. Their candid stories and Cranston's seriously brilliant interpretations were so achingly real that I could not listen long without pausing, or just stopping my device for a breather. (It took me 2 weeks to get through this.) This would be a much easier read, but hardly better; Cranston is able to convey the emotion, every chuckle, every hope, every pain, every horror. It's not always the obvious that is difficult to hear; the slaughter of the water buffalo wasn't half as savage as the fundamental experience that nurtured the attack... it's listening to the innocence and promise in these young soldiers as it ebbs away. It's looking back through the all-seeing eyes of retrospection and time, and probably also adding *mother* to the list of sister, daughter, girlfriend, neighbor. A vivid reminder of the fragility of life and the true cost of war. Like others have mentioned, there are several books concerning wars that give you that *boots-on-the-ground* feel, but this one, especially as it is performed here, is the emotional experience--to the degree that it can be shared.

Grief, terror, love, longing

These are just the intangibles that O'Brien packs into 'The Things They Carried'. There is something about Tim O'Brien's second (after 'Going After Cacciato') war masterpiece that just gets me. It is one of my favorite [I know, I know favorite isn't the right word and if I had more time, I'd figure out a better term] war novels ever. I love how O'Briend both masters and subverts the form. I love how he bends the reader through time and space. How O'Brien messes with the idea of what a true war story really is. This novel, along with 'Dispatches' by Kerr and 'Matterhorn' by Marlantes, infuses the Vietnam War with its own mass, a specific gravity and real tangible gravity. These fictional stories seem almost to be as true as any nonfiction books written about the War.

While I haven't been to war, both my brothers and a brother-in-law that have come back from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and the burdens they all returned with seem to reflect in this novel.

Finally, I'm not sure how they hooked Bryan Cranston for this narration, but it might just be my favorite narration EVER. Sir Anthony Hopkins nailed it when he wrote a note to Cranston about 'Breaking Bad':

___

That kind of work/artistry is rare, and when, once in a while, it occurs, as in this epic work, it restores confidence.

You and all the cast are the best actors I’ve ever seen.

That may sound like a good lung full of smoke blowing. But it is not. It’s almost midnight out here in Malibu, and I felt compelled to write this email.

Congratulations and my deepest respect. You are truly a great, great actor
___

Let me just add to and mimic the great Sir Anthony Hopkins. You Bryan are the best narrator I've ever HEARD.

Terrible, Wonderful Voluptuous Realism

I first read this book long ago. When the audio version was released, I decided to revisit it. My initial reading made me feel this was an extraordinary collection of stories written with a kind of driven brilliance, an awful, playful bitter precision. Tim O'Brien is a master of descriptive writing. A reader would have to have serious cognitive deficits not to get pulled in and inundated in the stories. It wasn't until I listened to the audio version, narrated flawlessly by Bryan Cranston, that I noticed the voluptuous poetry of his language.

The book is an anthology of stories about the Vietnam War. Bound together by the theme of what is carried, it opens with the very literal list of what the men in his platoon carried and broadens out into the emotional scars, the guilt, the sense of loss, fear, unrequited love, of brotherhood and of the deadly numbness that is carried on the soul.

I was immensely grateful to encounter this book again.

"Vietnam Was Partly Love"

The Things They Carried (1990) is a powerful audiobook, perfectly read by Bryan Cranston, and written with searing and sensitive honesty by Tim O'Brien. The book contains twenty-two Vietnam war stories based on O'Brien's experiences and those of his fellow soldiers during his one-year tour of duty in 1969. The pieces combine to vividly evoke what it was like before, during, and after the Vietnam War. And it's not only a Vietnam War book; it also explores universal questions of memory, imagination, language, reality, story, war, and love. For O'Brien, Vietnam becomes at times a metaphor for the world, and a state of mind as much as a physical place.

The title story introduces the war and the American men who fought in it by listing and explaining what they carried: war gear (helmets, boots, bandages, weaponry, etc.), practical things (canteens, c-rations, toilet paper, bug repellent, etc.), personal things (comic books, condoms, dope, photos, letters, basketballs, etc.), unpleasant things (infections, diseases, lice, molds, etc.), intangible things (fear, guilt, longing, grief, memories, etc.), and Vietnam itself (soil, sky, monsoons, etc.). They carried it all without any "sense of strategy or mission" or hope, moving by inertia. Through the lists O'Brien weaves the desperate fantasy love of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross for Martha, an unresponsive girl he dated once in college.

"Love" depicts Jimmy Cross' visit to O'Brien some years after the war, when the subject of his love, Martha, came up in conversation.

The third story, "Spin," concerns how memory makes the war now, while story makes it forever.

"The Rainy River" examines what to O'Brien was a colossal failure of conscience and nerve, his choice not to flee to Canada to avoid Vietnam: "I was a coward. I went to the war."

"Enemies" shows how the enemy is not always the guy fighting for the other country.

"Friends" ironically develops the situation between two enemies in the previous story.

"How to Tell a True War Story" anatomizes war, memory, fiction, and reality. "If you feel uplifted in the end [of a war story], if there is any rectitude, you've been made a victim of a years old and terrible lie."

"The Dentist" is a vignette about a bully's fear of dentists.

"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" depicts the seductive call of nighttime jungle patrols to the soul of a 17-year-old girl visiting her boyfriend soldier: "I feel close to my own body. I'm glowing in the dark. I know exactly who I am. I couldn't feel that anywhere else."

"Stockings" proves the talismanic protective power of pantyhose.

"Church" is a quiet story in which the platoon occupies a pagoda, monks cleaning machine guns and soldiers talking about religion.

In "The Man I Killed" O'Brien describes a young VC soldier he killed, delicate body and smooth complexion, black pajama pants, blown out of his rubber sandals, one eye staring open, the other a star-shaped wound, his jaw knocked into his throat, his hopes and fears and goals and wife.

In "Ambush" O'Brien tells how he killed the man, and when his daughter asks him, "Have you have killed a man?" he says "No," but is still seeing "the young man step out of the fog."

In "Style" O'Brien depicts a callous soldier mocking the graceful dance of a Vietnamese girl before her burnt house and killed family.

After the war in "Speaking of Courage," Norman Bowker is at a loss at home, driving round and round his small town's prairie lake, houses, and 4th of July park, imagining telling the story of how he failed to get the silver medal for uncommon bravery.

"Notes" explains the "true" story behind "Speaking of Courage," revealing in a "slip" that it was O'Brien who failed to win that medal by failing to prevent his buddy from sinking into a field of excrement and mud during an appalling mortar barrage.

In "In the Field," the platoon searches that muck for the corpse of their fellow-soldier as O'Brien (?) tries to come to terms with his role in his friend's death.

In "Good Form" O'Brien says that apart from his having done a tour of duty in Vietnam, everything is invented. He didn't kill that young man but, having been present, he might as well have killed him. Story vs. truth. Or the truth of story.

20 years later in "Field Trip," visiting that same muck field with his 10-year-old daughter, he goes for a cleansing swim in it.

In "Ghost Soldiers" O'Brien deals with his second wounding injury and his vengeful hatred for the rookie medic who nearly killed him by mistreating him.

In "Night Life" a fellow soldier bugs out from the stress of high alert nights.

In the last story, "The Lives of the Dead," O'Brien interweaves his sad memories of Linda, a girl he loved as a boy ("Why do you think I'm dead?") with his memories of death during his tour of duty.

After The Things They Carried, an hour-long "bonus featurette" written and read by O'Brien, "The Vietnam in Me," (1994), closes the audiobook. This non-fiction piece depicts his return in 1994 to Vietnam with his lover, Kate, revisiting places of terrible carnage from his tour of duty and speaking with local people and trying to deal with his nightmarish memories, vivid nightmares, and love for Kate. I found this non-fiction piece more moving than The Things They Carried. I had felt that occasionally in his stories he is at times too consciously telling stories, both in his comments about the nature of memory, story, and truth, and in his talent for crafting perfect tales. That coupled with Bryan Cranston's stellar professional reading made for a moving and harrowing experience that at times felt crafted, acted, and story-like. By contrast, O'Brien's craggy, tenor voice is the voice of a plain, sensitive, and damaged person reading his failures, survivals, and losses, along with the self-delusional nature of America's mythology of righteous innocence. The burning truth of "The Vietnam in Me" as read by O'Brien scorches the stories.

Finally, O'Brien, who may feel like a coward to have gone to war, exercises intense bravery in his honest fictional autobiographies.

Raw, Haunting, Ruthlessly Open Account

Vietnam described in ways you never expect . . . my husband (a retired SGM) and I listened to this on a road trip recently . . . at times we laughed, totally familiar with the military terms, at other times we were totally silent . . . no words . . . absolutely NO words to describe what we were feeling . . . this is not the patriotic, hero stories of comrades at war . . . it's the down in the crap (literally), sinking into despair, wondering what the hell you are there for, tale of soldiers trying to make it one day at a time in a war that nobody wanted to fight . . . it's truthful and hard to swallow . . . it's honest beyond anything I've ever heard on Vietnam . . . no matter what your politics, you need to hear it . . .

Devastating.

This story will stick in your mind for a while after reading. It hurts my heart to know the burdens put on soldiers. I can't imagine going through anything like they have to endure.

Of its time...

I cannot imagine my daughter being nearly as affected as I was since it was not her generation with the direct experience of Vietnam. Yet as my grandchildren continue to grow and thrive, I hope they will one day read the book.