Character and Style in The Things They Carried

[…kind of a recycled response to a class assignment… you can flip through the archives to see the original…]

Character development and style can be very strong elements in engaging a reader of any story. In The Things They Carried, author Tim O’Brien presented an interesting tale of the Vietnam war, and did so primarily through the views of one centralized character, Lt. Cross. Amidst the descriptions in the tale of the men and their supplies, we bounce back and forth from seeing the men—and Lt. Cross, in particular—as being “standard issue” grunts to being human. The development of the characters as well as the style used in presenting the tale—the cyclic switching of fantasy and reality—bring about an interesting perspective on war and the human psyche in general.

Throughout the work we are given multiple examples of how the war and the men’s prior lives have helped shape them. Though the military has prescribed a specific list of things the men must carry, each man carries something different with them—though in many ways, they still carry the same things. Comic books, photographs, letters, various “charms”—each man carrying something special to them which keeps them connected to their individual worlds at home; each man carrying something which attempts to keep them connected to sanity.

In the end, our main character, Lt. Cross, feels that his attempts at keeping sane—through his random daydreams—have drawn his mind away from his duties and caused an undue loss of life. I question whether the Leuitenant’s self-assesment is fair. Cross may have been miles away in his mind, but was he truly responsible for Lavender’s death? Day-dreaming of a woman that may not truly have “feelings”, imagining, questioning whether this girl was pure of mind, body and spirit—were these things really responsible for Lavender’s demise?

Boom-down. Zapped while zipping.

Cross, just as any other man would, found fault in himself, fault in his emotions—fault in being human—and decided to blame that fault for Lavender’s death. A good Lieutenant may not have been preoccupied with thoughts and visions of college girls playing volleyball, sure; but a good Lieutenant may have had his nose buried so deep in maps and radio communiqués that any number of men could have had their heads blown off.

Is imagination, fantasy, day-dreaming, escaping reality for a single moment—is it dangerous? It can be. Cross saw it as an avoidable danger in the end.

Are these separations from reality positive and helpful? Undoubtedly. One could question whether the men would be sane or even human if they did not take these breaks from the horror that they were living. It is my belief that the main point being driven here is that these feelings and emotions are impossible to escape; that to fantasize is simply a part of being human, and that it can and does happen at any time and in any setting. Whether these fantasies can be controlling—how influential they may be—is entirely up to the individual; interesting points to ponder, that were given to us through the awesome use of character.

O’Brien delivers his message very well, amidst this tale of a seemingly small platoon in the Vietnam War. The main concept of the collection of stories is to deliver the experience of the war; what better way to do so, than to write it in such a way as to allow for the reader to connect on a more human—a more emotional—level? In order to accomplish this goal, O’Brien made use of the historical fiction genre, and drew upon the use of fantasy as the connecting element between the characters and the reader. Fantasy also serves as an interesting element in affecting the flow of the story, jerking the reader into and out of the fantasies as well.

Delivering a factual tale of a war can be less than entertaining; telling the reader of the various equipment used creates a sense that the writer simply copied the dry and sterile text of a military publication—an equipment list, a duty roster, or a technical manual on the assembly of some exotic weapon. These facts, as necessary as they may be, do not engage a reader; breaking away and dipping into the souls of the characters involved, however, is very engaging. This is why, I suspect, that O’Brien chose the tactic of drawing us into the character; introducing the “current” fantasy and then breaking away back to the more “mundane” details of the things they carried, cycling back to the other “things” they carried—repeating the cycle.

This method—or style of writing—worked quite well to establish an engaging tale and give the reader a truer feeling of how fantasy can creep upon us, draw us in and then boom—back to reality.

—

Rather than keeping with one element as the prompt asked us, I chose to speak on both character and style, as the two were very closely related and equally important in this story.

…just as a side note…

…a really nice reading of the short is available at: http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podshows/10573078