The Soldier In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

Throughout Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, there is a constant theme about all the things that the soldiers carry. In the opening chapter, The Things They Carried, the soldiers are carrying tangible and intangible items. The tangible items included things they carried like mosquito repellant, pocket knives, wound compress, tents, weapons, and ammunition for the purpose of basic survival in the war. As the rank of the soldiers increase, the responsibility that needed to be carried also increases. Being the highest rank, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried the compass, maps, and the soldiers’ lives in his hands. Rat Kiley, the medic, carries the pain medication and malaria tablets to keep the men from getting disease. Besides the survival items,

the men also carry other tangible items that they need. These physical necessities are what allows the soldiers to have the ability to cope mentally with fighting in the Vietnam War.
O’Brien introduces us to the soldiers by telling us their necessities that they choose to carry additionally to the weapons and other survival items. Each soldier carries different items depending on what satisfies their own needs. Henry Dobbins carries extra food rations because of his large size. Ted Lavender needs to be relaxed and calm at all times, so he brings and constantly uses tranquilizer pills and weed. Kiowa carries the New Testament Bible, a gift from his dad, as a reminder of his religious background in Christianity. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries letters and a good luck pebble to remind him of Martha, a girl that he had fallen in love with. These physical necessities are what allows the soldiers to cope with fighting in the war conditions. Not only are they carrying tangible items, but they also are carrying intangible items. The intangible items, for example, are like the memories they have of life before they went to war. Also, the emotional burdens that come with fighting in the war. The main burdens are fear, guilt and blame, cowardness, and their reputations. These things are intangible because
Carrying the constant fear of death is relevant throughout the whole book since they are fighting in a war. Every second there is a threat of being killed and it is our human nature to have a fear of death. In Enemies, Lee Strunk and David Jenson had an agreement that if one of them became injured and wheelchair bound that the other would kill him and put him out of his misery. But, when Strunk gets his leg blown off and becomes wheelchair bound he chickens out when Jenson goes to shoot him. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, and moaned, and tried to slide away and said, “Jesus, man, don’t kill me.” (Enemies. 2) He was so frightened to die that he swears and begs Jenson to not pull the trigger. At the time it is a sign of fear, but in the long run it could be taken as a sign of strength in Strunk t choose to live and deal with his disability rather than taking the easy way out.
Guilt played a big burden on the men.

Guilt had such a big impact because in a war like this, someone had to take the blame for the deaths. Most of the blame was self-blame that caused the men to feel guilty for killing someone or for having someone die, on what they felt was, their own hands. Even if they were not the ones to pull the trigger, they would pick up the blame and make excuses like being in the wrong place at the wrong time, making the wrong calls and decisions, being distracted, or not being prepared enough. “He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war.”(The Things They Carried.42) Lieutenant Cross was so distracted with thoughts of Martha and whether or not she was a virgin, that he was putting his men’s lives at risk. Due to the fact that Cross was so distracted in his thoughts, Lieutenant Lavender was shot in the head and killed. Even right after Lavender’s death, Cross is still caught up in thoughts of Martha. It is not until later that evening that the death of Lavender finally comes to Cross’ attention. He ends up crying in the bottom of a hole that he had dug. The next morning, in that same hole, he burns any reminder of Martha and then fully takes the blame for Lavender’s death. Dave Jensen had also been feeling guilty for not killing his friend, Lee Strunk when he had the chance. Jensen felt guilty for not putting

Shrunk out of his misery like they had agreed to do for each other. “Later we heard that Shrunk died somewhere over Chui Lai, which seemed to relieve Dave Jensen of an enormous weight. After hearing that Shrunk had died, it gave Jensen the release of feeling guilty. It also gave him the piece of mind in knowing that Shrunk had died and was finally out of his misery.
In the Things They Carried, we learn that cowardness was the biggest and heaviest burden for the soldiers to carry. “They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. (The Things They Carried. 77). Even though they all had their own reasons to be cowards, the soldiers all kept their cowardness a secret from one another. They were scared to ruin their reputation and be seen as weak. They used this fear of losing their reputation as motivation. “They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to… Rather they were too frightened to be cowards. (The Things They Carried. 77) The soldiers were more scared to be seen as a coward than they were to die. In order to not be seen as a coward, these soldiers would rather have done something that they had no intentions of wanting to do, like killing someone or coming to the war in the first place, like O’Brien.
Usually people would have been considered cowards for running away from the war, but O’Brien calls himself a coward for going to and surviving the war.

Originally he wanted to run away to Canada and escape the draft, but instead he gave in and went to the war. “I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war.” (On the Rainy River.79) O’Brien only went to war because he did not want to be judged and seen as a coward for escaping the draft for war. After leaving the war, he feels weak for not being strong enough to not have gone to the war from the beginning. This, in turn, makes these soldiers cowards for not being a bigger person and not being strong enough to stand up for something that they do not want to do (Cliffnotes). Dealing with this cowardness in complete silence is the heaviest burden of all because it is intangible in the sense that they could never shake the cowardness from their mind and

thoughts.
Even though these soldiers are carrying all this heavy physical baggage, like weapons and survival items, the weight of their emotional baggage outweighs all of that. They are carrying and trying to deal with all this emotional baggage with no release. For some, the only release is death. Even after the war is over, the surviving men bring home with them the emotional burdens of guilt and grief over losing comrades. This Survivor’s Guilt is a guilt that the men will have to carry for the rest of their lives. They will constantly wondering if they had did something different, would their friend have made it out of the war with them. This guilt can even cause the men to never feel the same again.