The Things They Carried

n  War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.n

Here, encapsulated in about 20 interconnected short stories, is everything I have ever heard about war.

The hours of boredom and the seconds of sheer horror. The way a life can end faster than the blink of an eye. And just how easy it is to get used to it all. The ability of a soldier to develop a callousness toward all life, yet at the same time, an appreciation deeper than any ever experienced.

n  After a firefight, there is always the immense pleasure of aliveness. The trees are alive. The grass, the soil--everything. All around you things are purely living, and you among them, and the aliveness makes you tremble. You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your living self--your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by force of wanting it. In the midst of evil you want to be a good man. You want decency. You want justice and courtesy and human concord, things you never knew you wanted. There is a kind of largeness to it, a kind of godliness. Though it's odd, you're never more alive than when you're almost dead. You recognize what's valuable. Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what's best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost. At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe die, even so, you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not.n

Audiobook narrated by Bryan Cranston ( 7h 47m)

All of us, I suppose, like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth, bravely and forthrightly, without thought of personal loss or discredit. Certainly that was my conviction back in the summer of 1968. Tim O'Brien: a secret hero. The Lone Ranger. If the stakes ever became high enough—if the evil were evil enough, if the good were good enough—I would simply tap a secret reservoir of courage that had been accumulating inside me over the years. Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comforting theory. It dispensed with all those bothersome little acts of daily courage; it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward; it justified the past while amortizing the future.

A teacher friend in the U.S mentioned that this is one of the books she covers in her senior AP lit class. So a shout out to my friend Athena for her recommendation! The Things They Carried reminded me of my experience reading Lonesome Dove. Although completely opposite in subject- one being the American West and the other, Vietnam in 1968, what strikes me about both is that the authors are leading us into the world of men. How they think, feel, speak, joke, and deal with the memories of a war that many would prefer to forget. It is unabashedly a male world that I as a female reader was entering. Or should I say a female reader that has never fought in a war? What would be the lesson that Tim O'Brien would try to teach me?

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

The Things They Carried is a brutally raw and honest insight into the experiences before, during, and after the war. This is author Tim O'Brien's soldier experience in Vietnam. He shares the stories of the men that he knew and the ghosts that he lives with decades after his time. Being raised by a Canadian father that came of age during that war, my parents home library had a series by Time Magazine on Vietnam and my Dad showed my brother and I( as teenagers not as small children) some of the Hollywood classics like "Platoon,"" Full Metal Jacket," Apocalypse Now" etc. So I knew that Tim O'Brien's recollections were not going to be cookie-cutter memories. If you read it, please understand that this book doesn't back down from the "not so pretty "

you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty.

I felt most emotionally connected when Tim O'Brien was discussing his own ethical dilemma of heading to Canada or head to war.
Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment.

In addition to the story , Audible asked Tim O'Brien to read his New York Times piece, "The Vietnam in Me" written in 1994 a few years after the Gulf War. In it, Tim O'Brien is critical of some of the events in Vietnam that are overlooked by American society and their history textbooks.

Evil has no place, it seems, in our national mythology. We erase it. We use ellipses. We salute ourselves and take pride in America the White Knight, America the Lone Ranger, America's sleek laser-guided weaponry beating up on Saddam and his legion of devils

I would highly recommend the Audible with Bryan Cranston. He was an excellent narrator.

A prize-winning book with various stories set during the Vietnam War, from the moment the author joins in 1968 (reluctantly), then joins an infantry company; some stories are set partly or completely in the time before/after it. It’s made clear that the stories can be partly or completely made out of elements of war, not as completely-true stories. But that doesn’t mean they don’t work well, or are unrealistic, or you don’t get a feel what it was like to be in it. And not everything is from the author’s POV.

Some stories are spread over 2 or more chapters. Various things are subjects, like what they carry physically and/or mentally, the women and girls connected to them (letter senders, visitors, childhood friends), the annoyances, fears, and humor, rivalry and friendship, various deaths, a visit to a dentist, how to create a good war story when talking with fellow soldiers, views on native people (the dancing girl, the pagoda monks, the dead of course)… and the various fellow soldiers the author has come across, some of which die during the book rather tragically (I think Kiowa’s was the worst).

The book passed quickly, and though there was much tragedy, there was also humor, strange stories (”Sweetheart Of The Song Tra Bong” is a favorite now), odd quirks, beautiful strange nature, ways of coping that strangely made sense, and the friendships. The balance is just right, and it makes this book a very excellent read on this war.

The kid was near the Canadian border deciding to evade the draft or not. Spoiler alert; “I was a coward. I went to war.”

They carried burdens, they carried artifacts.

From this collection of fiction, yet very real stories, you get a sense of being there.

It was 1962. I was living in Vacaville, CA working at the A&W as a carhop when a young soldier from Travis Air Force Base got out of his car and began walking. He was carrying a bundle of letters which he placed in the garbage can behind the building. I found them when I took out the garbage that night and picked them up. I carried them into the building and hid them in my purse and then took them home. They were Dear John letters, but all I remember were these words: “I am going to join a convent.” I thought about them, wondering who they were. They weren’t just names on letters; they were people who were suffering. I still think about them from time to time. Did he die in Vietnam or is he happily married? How about her? Did she become a nun or was that just a line? I kept the letters for many years, wishing I could write to them to see how they were, to tell them that I had the letters, but then I thought it not proper. And then one day I carried them to my garbage can and threw them away. For many more years I saved the Lipton tea bag label that she had placed in one of her letters. Inscribed on it were the words: “To forgive is to forget.”

It was ’69, and I was hanging out in Berkeley, studying and going out dancing. Mac was in Vietnam carrying a rifle and maybe letters or photographs, I never asked.

I saw them on the streets of Berkeley, holding out their hands for spare change, talking in strange tongues, sleeping on the sidewalks in doorways, and in People’s Park. The sign on the door of the Vedanta Society across the street from People’s Park, said, “Do not sleep on the steps,” and I thought, “How charitable.” Years later at a Vietnamese Buddhist monastery an Australian monk gave my husband a book to read about a monk who had been in Vietnam. I read it instead of my husband, and then I wrote this poem in memory of what the monk in the book had seen in Vietnam:

LIVING IN BERKELEY BACK IN NAM

I saw you standing
in front of the market
on Telegraph Avenue
asking for spare change.

With fear
seeping through
the shadows
of your hallowed eyes,
you let me know that you
were back in Nam,
where you watched
your buddy
holding
a Vietnamese baby
in his protecting arms,
blow up
before those very eyes
that I am staring
into now.

In one breath
you told me that it
wasn’t real,
that it
never really happened;
in the next breath
you asked me “Why?”
And I had no answer
other than to offer you
a few coins.
And you walked into that store
to buy yourself another
bottle of wine.

I turned around, and
I was back in Berkeley.
The street vendors
were selling their wares:
puka shell necklaces,
quill earrings,
stone pottery,
and tie died shirts with
peace emblems—
reminding me
that Nam was
never far away.


I walked around the corner.
A flyer dangled from a
telephone pole.
Maharishi’s liquid eyes
stared back at mine
and promised peace,
if only we would
forget the world and
let go
of all the
thoughts
that kept pouring
into our minds,
during a time when
we only wanted to stop
that damn war in Vietnam.

I was apolitical
during those troubled times
and had my own war
going on deep inside.
So I spent my days
with friends
in the Renaissance Café
drinking cappuccinos
and eating chocolate croissants,
while talking about going to Aito’s
to dance to Greek music
on Friday nights.

--jessica slade magorian
july 11, 2005

I met Mac in ’88. Fun loving and as one friend of ours said to me, “He is the kindest man I have ever met.”

Mac’s buddy walked up to him one night when he was in the trenches. “Mac, can I change places with you tonight? I feel like it is my time. I am going to die tonight.” Mac changed places with his buddy, just to ease his mind. The next morning Mac was asked to pick up his buddy’s body parts and put them into a bag and carry them away. He has carried this with him all of these years, but he doesn’t talk about it to anyone. I heard it twice and just tried to remember the details.

Mac now carries an oxygen Pac with him wherever he goes and all because he had carried that orange dust around with him in Vietnam for way too long. Sometimes, he proudly wears his Marine baseball cap, and when men see it they say, “Thanks for your service.”

The anguish of being drafted into a war not believed in, plus the horror—and the comradeship—of serving as an infantryman in the Vietnam War are brought to life in this memoir/novel. The narrative reads very much as a memoir with each chapter constructed as an independent short story. I presume the stories about being drafted, considering flight to Canada, and post war visit to Vietnam are accounts of life as remembered. However, the stories of the narrator's year in Vietnam as an infantryman in the middle of the fighting conveys elements of the fog of war that result of conflation of repeated stories. The book's description of boredom mixed with adrenaline rush from not knowing when the next fire fight would suddenly begin conveys the similitude of how the experience must have actually felt.

The book openly discusses its blurring of fact and fiction in the story titled "Good Form" in which the narrator makes a distinction between "story truth" and "happening truth." I think the message of this story is descriptive of the other stories in the book as well. In other words, the stories in this book truthfully portray the experience of the war but are not a chronological account of historical activities (i.e. fiction is more real than facts).

The fictional element of the book is accentuated by the inclusion of several surreal tales that are too extreme to be believed. An example of this is a chapter titled "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" which tells of a hometown girlfriend who was flown in by her soldier boyfriend for a visit to their unit's area of operation. Gradually she assimilates into Vietnamese guerrilla culture and eventually disappears into the jungle never to be heard from again. This story has the ring of legend, but it does convey the reality that there are some personalities who adapt to war in an enthusiastic and passionate manner.

The overarching horror of this war as retold in this book is that many of those who were unwillingly drafted into it were not supporters of the war and did not think their participation was wise or good, both personally or politically for their country. Those lucky enough to survive were given memories that subsequently let to PTSD for some. Ironically, some of these unwilling soldiers were openly reviled upon their return to the States as "baby killers," whereas the volunteer soldiers returning from the Middle East today are greeted with, "Thank you for your service."

I can see why this is hailed as a modern classic. It gives you a close-up and very real understanding of what it was like for the soldiers during the Vietnam war. The collection of vignettes/short stories get right inside the soldiers heads as to what they're feeling and experiencing as they're in the midst of it all, and it's haunting and harrowing. The writing is exceptionally well done. It's a historical fiction, and the author is a 'fictional' character in the stories, but the author was a soldier in Vietnam, and it seems clear that there's a large degree of truth to the stories - a compilation of all the very real and very brutal experiences of Tim O'Brien and fellow soldiers.

The narration by actor Bryan Cranston was excellent!

22 Vietnam War stories. 22 separate but linked stories that force you to experience before, during, and after the war. I’m amazed by the feelings these combat stories illicit, and even admit these actually warrant a reread to absorb the metaphors and the symbolism, and not to be distracted by the brilliant, such brilliant, writing.

Bravo to Mr. O’Brien for his courageous truth in storytelling.

War stories are a hard sell, especially to women, but I can’t recommend these short stories highly enough.