Books |
Tim O’Brien: The Things They Carried
By
Published: Feb 27, 2024
Category:
Fiction
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War used to mean hand-to-hand combat. Now it’s drones and missiles — death by remote control, bloodless and abstract. “The Things They Carried” restores the human factor. It makes war tragic again. The story of “Tim O’Brien” deciding to submit to the government and fight in Vietnam is written as a silent drama, interrupted by tears and ending with two simple sentences that define great writing for me. And the bonus interview at the end — a reader writing to thank O’Brien for bringing her father back to life — is worth more than all the honors that came to this book. Don’t miss it.
When I went to Costa Rica — into the rain forest and a climate that can be like Vietnam — I took along the paperback of “The Things They Carried.” One afternoon, when the temperature was 95 and so was the humidity, I sat down with this collection of short stories. Two hours and 271 pages later, I got up.
You don’t get better reading experiences.
What’s so great? The people. O’Brien delivers a company of American soldiers during the Vietnam war with unsentimental tenderness: the guy who will get his head blown off seconds after smoking a joint, the guy who will commit suicide years after the war, the guy who will die in the muck, the guys who will find him — and the Vietnamese soldier O’Brien kills. There is no larger war, no deeper significance. Life has been reduced to a jungle and these men.
And what they carry. O’Brien spells it out:
Every third or fourth man carried a claymore antipersonnel mine, 3.5 pounds with its firing device. They all carried fragmentation grenades, 14 ounces each. They all carried at least one M-18 colored smoke grenade, 24 ounces. Some carried CS or tear gas grenades. Some carried white phosphorous grenades. They carried all they could bear and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.
The phrase is, as you see, both literal and metaphor. And that’s its ultimate appeal, that’s why it was a Pulitzer finalist and has sold 2 million copies and is on an Amazon list of 10 necessary books. And it’s why kids love it. As O’Brien says, “The young bring such fervor to it that comes from their own lives, really. The book is… applied to a bad childhood or a broken home. And these are the things they’re carrying.” [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
If we were talking about fiction, we’d say something like: “The voice of the narrator is strong and authentic.” But this is something else: memoir served up as fiction. And so the stories read like confessions. Because, in fact, they are.
And no one seems to have more to confess than the narrator, who is, in these pages, called “Tim O’Brien.” He’s no mere device. In l968, O’Brien was about to graduate with honors from college in Minnesota. He had won a fellowship to Harvard. And then he was drafted.
The story that resonates most for me — because I was also graduating from college in l968 — is “On the Rainy River.” In it, O’Brien tries to figure out whether to flee to Canada or face his fate in Vietnam. He has a summer job in his home town in Minnesota; abruptly, he flees and drives north, north toward the border. He gets as far as a lodge before he runs out of courage. No one is there but the aged proprietor, who instinctively knows that this young man is in the throes of crisis.
The old man doesn’t invite O’Brien to talk about his “problem,” in that new-fangled Oprah way. He just takes him out fishing, and pretends not to notice that O’Brien is weeping. But his silence means everything: O’Brien makes his decision, and, even more, knows why he made it.
The story ends with O’Brien driving home:
The day was cloudy. I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier. I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.
“I was a coward. I went to the war.” Those two sentences haunt me. They’ll haunt you. Even if you don’t read the book, you’ll never forget them.
SHELBY: You’ve won numerous awards and praise from critics. What are the pieces of feedback you’ve gotten from any source that have been the most meaningful for you?
O’BRIEN: The most meaningful have been letters I’ve received, not from veterans, but from the wives and children of veterans. One letter in particular, this 26-year-old woman wrote me and said, “I had a terrible childhood. My dad wouldn’t talk. He was silent and angry all the time.” She said, “My mom told me one time, ‘I never loved your father.’” The daughter said, “Why’s that?” The mom said, “How can you love somebody who won’t talk to you?”
The girl wrote, “One day, I was assigned ‘The Things They Carried’ in an AP English class. I brought it home and left it on the kitchen table by accident. My dad read it. And he started talking. At first, just a couple of words. Then the next night a few more words. And a few more words.” And it ended up that a father was kind of saved, and a family started talking and at the end of this letter the girl said, “My mom and dad aren’t perfect, but they’re still together. And I don’t think they would be if that book hadn’t been sitting on that table that day. So I guess I’m writing to say thanks.”
