Shame In The Things They Carried

The Soldiers: Pursuing Feeling of Shame

“I was ashamed of my conscience, ashamed to be doing the right thing,” confessed Tim O’Brien in his book Things They Carried, when the government drafted him to the Vietnam War (49). Many soldiers felt obligated going to war to not embarrass themselves, despite their beliefs and opinions; they were ashamed of not being brave or patriotic enough, and these fears followed soldiers during the war times. Charles Dickens’s quote “I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong” summarizes the concept of shame as a burden people may face, thus it could introduce a reader to O’Brien’s book and serve as an appropriate epigraph for it. The author

repeatedly echoed the topic of cowardice, creating a statement about shame and fear that soldiers felt because of the war.
The hidden pressure created by fear of shame forced the men to join the army; it was one of the main burdens they experienced at war times.

In the first chapter of the book “Things They Carried”, O’Brien defined that soldiers carried their “greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. … It was what had brought them to the war in the first place … no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor” (20), signifying frightening effects of social obligations they had to face. Soldiers were not worrying about the ideas of patriotism, courage, and valor; soldiers were worried about the embarrassment they would encounter if they refuse to participate in the war. When O’Brien got drafted in 1968 — despite his belief that the American war in Vietnam was wrong, despite his fear of blood, death, and war — he could not make himself escape to Canada, away from the war. He was not “brave” enough to endure possible shaming, so he would rather kill people and even die (O’Brien 57). O’Brien wrote that “[his] conscience told [him] to run, but some irrational and powerful force was resisting, like a weight pushing [him] toward the war. What it came down to, stupidly, was a sense of shame” (49), addressing his reasoning behind being the soldier: the embarrassment. He concluded: “I was a coward. I went to the war”, contradicting the common belief that soldiers are courageous people (O’Brien 58). They were not doing what they believed was right; they were doing what would ease

the feeling of shame. Men were rather to kill and to die, just to not feel the burden of embarrassment.
The fear of shame not only caused people to join the war but also compelled to make irrational actions during the war.

In “The Dentist”, Curt Lemon had to visit Army dentist to check his teeth, and he fainted in the tent before anything happened. He had “a funny new look on his face, almost sheepish, as if he’d been caught committing some terrible crime. He wouldn’t talk to anyone”. Later in the night, he went to the tent and, insisting he had a toothache, made the dentist to take out a healthy tooth (O’Brien 84). Lemon viewed the cowardice as a “terrible crime”; in his own mind, he was obliged to mend his reputation as a man. He felt the need to “prove” other soldiers, himself included, that he was courageous enough to encounter dentist again. Even the death of the enemy causes a sense of guilt and shame. In “The Man I Killed” and “Ambush”, O’Brien threw a grenade into young men because he was terrified; as a result, the man died from his hands (O’Brien 126-127). He created a history and future of the dead man who “pretended to look forward to doing this patriotic duty, which was also a privilege, but at night he prayed with his mother that the war might end soon. Beyond anything else, he was afraid of disgracing himself, and therefore his family and village”, comparing his experience to one of unnamed young man (O’Brien 121). Building up man’s biography would not bring him back from the dead, but O’Brien attempted to relieve his blame, by making parallels and assessing

similarities between his own and young man’s created story. Even though the decisions taken out of fear, such as pulling off a healthy tooth or thinking up dead man’s history, were illogical and had little practical reasoning, they comforted soldiers and helped them to alleviate the feeling of dishonor.
The soldiers were haunted by shame even after the war has ended, disrupting soldier’s life with the pressure from concepts of heroism and bravery. “Speaking of Courage” explicated Norman Bowker’s story; he went to war and wished to impress his father and his hometown, by receiving medals in the war. He won seven medals yet was haunted by the highest one — the Silver Star for Valor — which he failed to obtain (O’Brien 135). Bowker believed he would have won the Silver Star if he saved his friend Kiowa from dying on the river (O’Brien 143). He wanted to explain “[h]ow he had not been so brave as he wanted to be. ... ‘The truth,’ Norman Bowker would've said, is I let the guy go'” ( O’Brien 147). He could not speak about that night to anyone; he could not find a place and use for himself in the town; the feeling of guilt and embarrassment were too intense for Bowker to manage, so he eventually hanged himself. Bowker’s story portrayed how the fear of shame might destroy and ruin man’s life; the embarrassing memory of not being brave enough was pursuing him, making him ignore other achievements and stopping him from talking about it. Even though Bowker was not responsible for Kiowa’s death, the perception of his own cowardice was too much to handle, bringing him down to the grave.