"They Things They Carried"

Kevin Coolidge

I’m a working class guy-born of farmers, and factory workers, truck drivers and laborers, and both my parents are veterans. I guess that why I think of the enlisted man-the guys and gals who drive the tank, repair the helicopter, that get things done-when Veteran’s Day rolls around. You know the grunts.

The grunts, the infantry, the doughboy, the duck-foot, the foot soldier who goes where the enemy is and takes them on in person-they’ve been doing it, with changes in weapons but very little change in the trade for 5,000 years. All wars are different, and all wars are the same. No matter if the weapons are spears and swords, or riffles and grenades-the ground itself has to be taken, and for that there’s never been anything, but the man in the ranks.

That’s why I chose to write about two books by Tim O’Brien. Tim O’Brien is an American novelist and veteran of the Vietnam War. He mainly writes about his experiences in the war and the impact that the war had on the American soldiers who fought there.

Going After Cacciato was the winner of the National Book Award for 1979. This complex novel is set during the Vietnam War and is told from the point of view of the protagoinist, Paul Berlin. The story traces the events that follow after Cacciato, a member of Berlin's squad decides to go AWOL(absent without leave) by walking from Vietnam to France by way of Asia.

The search for Cacciato soon enters the realm of the surreal as the troops find themselves following a trail of M&Ms and fleeting glimpses, through Indochina, across India, Iran, Greece, and Yugoslavia to the streets of Paris. The details of this hallucinatory journey alternate with feverish memories of the war-men killed in tunnels, maimed by landmines, engaged in casual acts of brutality that would be unthinkable anywhere else. Going After Cacciato is a blend of brutal comedy and stark horror that serves to illustrate both the psychology of men in battle and the insanity of war.

The Things They Carried is a series of interrelated vinnettes or short stories, that combine to tell of a soldier’s experience in and corcerning Vietnam. The novel claims to be a work of fiction, though there is more than a hint of the autobiographical, even the main character’s name is Tim O’Brien.

The men of Alpha company battle the enemy (or maybe their idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. We see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home. Yet they find sympathy and kindness for strangers (the old man who leads them unscathed through the mine field), and love for each other, because in Vietnam they are the only family they have. With the creativeness of good fiction and the intimacy of searing autobiography, The Things The Carried is a testament to the men who risked their lives in America's most controversial war. They carried love letters; photos of loved ones, Bibles, M-16s and each other. And if they made it home alive, they carried the memories of war. The thing about remembering is that you don’t forget, not now, not ever….