Garrett Love

INTL 3111-001
03/18/2021
The critical essay I chose to analyze was Tim O’Brien’s “Bad” Vietnam War: The Things They
Carried & Historical Perspective by Ramtin Noor-Tehrani “Noor” Mahini, Erin Barth, and Jed
Morrow. The essay was published in Volume 8, Issue 10 of the journal of Theory and Practice in
Language Studies in October, 2018. The authors intended to use The Things They Carried,
coupled with historical information, to provide an analysis of the actions of American soldiers
during the Vietnam War. The main argument being made throughout the essay is that these
actions were largely immoral, unlawful, and unjust. To provide evidence of this claim, the
authors broke O’Brien’s book into several sections, each with accompanying historical context.
The sections examined were, “Meaningless Deaths in a Monotonous but Terror-filled Guerilla
War”, “‘Abusive Violence’ toward Vietnamese Noncombatants”, “Drug Epidemic”, “Senseless
Mutilation of Animals and Enemy/Civilian Bodies and Corpses”, “Rare Collaboration with
Civilians”, and “Guilt and Looking at the Bright Side”.
The historical information and critical analysis of The Things They Carried presented by Mahini,
Barth & Morrow in Tim O’Brien’s “Bad” Vietnam War: The Things They Carried & Historical
Perspective was very close to my own viewpoint of the Vietnam War. My initial reaction to The
Things They Carried was that it was a realistic portrayal of a group of American soldiers in
Vietnam. Growing up I was always very interested in history, especially the Vietnam War, as my
Grandfather was a Vietnam Veteran and regularly shared very detailed stories with my siblings
and I. The stories that he shared with us were very similar to those told in The Things They
Carried, in that they both heavily described how lawless and inhumane American soldiers could
be during this war. This essay, while initially pretending to pose a question of the soldier's
morality, closely aligns with this sentiment, and in each section breaks down actions of the
characters in The Things They Carried, and uses historical context to relate it to the larger
Vietnam War.
Despite agreeing with the overall message of the essay, there were a few points that struck me as
odd. For example, in section A, the authors explain that every soldier's death, no matter how
meaningless, was still “heroic”. This was a strange distinction to make as the rest of the essay
paints the soldiers in a rather negative and villainous light. Additionally, I dislike how the
abstract framed the essay to be a question of the soldier's morality, despite having a clear bias.
As stated in the conclusion, the essay assumes the soldiers to be immoral, and to have acted in
horrendous ways - so why pretend otherwise? Regardless, the essay was a decent critical analysis
of the topic, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Mahini, R. N., Barth, E., & Morrow, J. (2018). Tim O'Brien's "Bad" Vietnam War: The
Things They Carried & Its Historical Perspective. Theory and Practice in Language
Studies, 8(10).