An Analytical Analysis Of The Things They Carried By Tim O Brien

The story of The Things They Carried can be interpreted in many ways. I’ve chosen to analyze the text in the chapter “On The Rainy River” through a psychological lens. As someone in strict opposition of war, Tim O’Brien was not prepared for draft notice. His initial reaction was a literal fight or flight decision. He chose the latter and fled his work and family at home to head toward the border, though a long internal struggle led to a final decision for the supposed greater good.
The summer that Tim O’Brien received the draft notice was one of both confusion and clarity. He spent that summer wrestling with his emotions in an attempt to find a solution. “The only certainty that summer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don’t make war without knowing why. Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause” (O’Brien, 38). Tim doesn’t truly understand the nature of the war, and because of this

he feels that it is not his place to fight. He holds the belief that one must have confidence in the cause to be a true help to it.
After spending six days trekking through the woods and fishing in the river with the old man, Elroy Berdahl, he came to an eventual decision.

On his final day, while out fishing with Elroy, he made his choice. “Even in my imagination, the shore just twenty yards away, I couldn’t make myself be brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that’s all it was. And right then I submitted. I would go to the war-I would kill and maybe die-because I was embarrassed not to. That was the sad thing. And so I sat in the bow of the boat and cried. It was loud now. Loud, hard crying” (O’Brien, 57). This was the moment that his true feelings started to show. Despite his sadness about it, he was going to stay and possibly kill or be killed for a cause he didn’t believe in. After a long emotional contemplation, he concluded that anything he could do to avoid embarrassment was preferable over the peace of mind in not being at

war.
After his time with Elroy on the Rainy River and his difficult decision, Tim started to make his way home. His mind was full of thoughts of what could have been and what might be next. “The day was cloudy. I passed through towns with familiar names, through pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war” (O’Brien, 58). His feelings of cowardice are heavy because he saw himself as too weak to leave behind the life he built for guaranteed safety. He also briefly touches on how he ended up going to Vietnam and did end up making it back alive, though his story was not a pleasant one.
His final decision to stay and wait for the draft was to avoid the embarrassment and dishonor that came with running away. His memories are not happy, just a recollection of his feelings and emotions during his time of extreme stress. This chapter in The Things They Carried illustrates the effects of war on the minds of the children and young men drafted to fight. Even before being deployed the levels of psychological devastation are beyond measure.