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Thomas Bailey

Dr. Michael Hobbs

10-610: Intro. to Practical & Theoretical Criticism

November 8, 2010

Defunctos in Memoriis Tulit

In the beginning was death, and death was with O’Brien, and death was O’Brien. Death

was in the beginning with O’Brien. All things came to be through O’Brien, and without death

nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the

human race. The end of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried holds the key to unlocking the

value of the work. “As a writer now, I want to save Linda’s life. Not her body – her life. … [I]n

a story I can steal her soul. I can revive … that which is absolute and unchanging” (O’Brien

236). Who is dead? Who is alive? Is death the end or the beginning? What makes us dead? Is

there life beyond?

“On the Rainy River” the narrator/protagonist is offered a choice – flee to Canada or fight

in Vietnam; the choice he made, which, by his own admission, was the wrong one. He simply

froze in fear. The imagery that O’Brien employs to describe the experience is related to death.

O’Brien felt the pressure in his chest – heart attack; an overwhelming sorrow – depression and

suicide; a drowning sensation; and his life flashing before his eyes – the moment of death

(O’Brien 56-57). The narrator has ceased to exist, ceased to be alive. Within the construct of

The Things They Carried it is the telling or retelling the story that gives life and truth to the

event. The stories that are told more than once are always those of death, bringing the dead to

life, “at least briefly” (O’Brien 236) for “the remembering is turned into a kind of rehappening”

(O’Brien 32). Whether it is to honor the dead, to alleviate his guilt, or to just make a buck, the
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scenes of the dead are highlighted, remembered, anamnesized, made important. Elroy Berdhal is

not telling the story of Tim O’Brien. Who is telling that story – the means by which we live? “I

realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story” (O’Brien 246); but Tim does not

because the stories are of others not himself. Timmy is dead and forgotten.

The complex interrelationship between death, life, and storytelling is solidified in

“Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong.” If storytelling is the capturing of the soul and anamnesis of

the person, then the ending of Rat Kiley’s story is a clarion call of lasting life. O’Brien allows

for the temporary resurrection of the dead, but in the manner of all good stories they are never

told only once. Mary Anne walked into the jungle and that was enough for Rat, it is Mitchell

Sanders who demands more (O’Brien 114). When pressed, Mary Anne simply “joined the

missing” and did not die because Rat told her story, the Greenies continued her story, Tim

O’Brien has forwarded us the story, and now we tell the story. Mary Anne lives! And between

the tellings, she and all the dead simply wait (O’Brien 245).

O’Brien demonstrates the centrality of death/life in The Things They Carried through the

device of reiteration. When we are first introduced to Ted Lavender, the reader is told that he

“carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head” (O’Brien 2). On the following page, O’Brien

again describes Lavender as always carrying “6 or 7 ounces of premium dope” prior to being

shot (O’Brien 3). It is such a short span of time before retelling the descriptors. Why the need?

O’Brien fears that Lavender will be ensnared by Pluto and Hades forever if the reader forgets.

Even in his real life, Lavender did not live as he walked in a haze of existence, a drug-infused

mellowness. Lavender can therefore have meaning in a retold life, perhaps even a moral.

We hear a similar description of the dead Vietcong soldier on the side of the road, “[h]is

jaw was in his throat … [h]is one eye was shut … [the] other a star-shaped hole” (O’Brien 124;
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126; 180). The death of Kiowa is related three times, once attributed to the helplessness of

Norman Baker (O’Brien 149), the other attributed to the helplessness of an unnamed young

soldier (O’Brien 170-71), and the third attributed to the helplessness of Tim O’Brien (O’Brien

186). In the same way Curt Lemon’s death is told as both an eyewitness account and as a letter

written by Rat Kiley to Curt’s girlfriend. All of them are dead. It matters not to O’Brien if the

dead was a friend, an enemy, a luckless man at the wrong place, or a childhood love – he wants

them all to live again and for eternity. So he tells their story.

The prehistoric inhabitants of Orkney Island routinely visited the burial mounds of their

ancestors, handling their bones to reanimate them. The Greek gods, demigods, and heroes were

placed into the heavens as reminders of their deeds. The ancient Chinese left offerings to their

ancestors so that they would aid them in the corporeal world. The central act of Christian

worship, the Eucharist, is done in remembrance of Jesus Christ. Even modern wakes, are filled

with the tales of the deceased to stave off mourning and to show how they changed or affected

us. O’Brien therefore carries on the tradition.

“The Man I Killed” and “Ambush” both relate the story of the death of the same

Vietcong soldier outside of My Khe. The mutilated remains of the soldier’s body is described in

horrific detail and certain elements (clean fingernails, slim, non-muscular) suggests to O’Brien

that this man was “a scholar, maybe” (O’Brien 124). The author uses the hypothetical “maybe”

only twice more as he explores the soldier’s past. It then slips to fact. “He was not a

Communist,” but a patriotic man though not a fighter. He was a man who preferred books

(O’Brien 125), attended the university in Saigon, where he wrote love poetry and married a

younger classmate in his senior year (O’Brien 128-129).

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Despite the obvious carnage and death, there is also a way in which O’Brien attempts to

describe the Vietcong soldier that moves him back to the living. There is a technical nature to

the wounds of death, precision in describing the colors and the anatomical elements. Despite

Kiowa’s demand to look away, Tim only continues to stare. He stares until life-filled features

return to the man. He focuses on the butterfly, the man’s freckles, nose, and the smoothness of

his right cheek – a beautiful man (O’Brien 127). He has humanized his enemy and finds remorse

and seeks now to make amends for the taking of his life. The only means at O’Brien’s disposal

is to tell the man’s story. The veracity is not what is important, but that he be resurrected.

The life O’Brien creates for the Vietcong soldier possesses parallels to his own life.

O’Brien sees in his weakness on the Rainy River no cause for remembrance and so that by

interspersing his life with the soldier he will then live as this soldier’s story is told. They share in

common folkloric nationalism, a desire for knowledge, distaste for war, a love for a girl, and a

desire that the fighting would pass them by. Tim O’Brien stares into the gapping hole that once

was an eye and is paralyzed, just as he was on the river twenty yards from Canada and unable to

make the right decision. It is the Vietnamese soldier who is alive. He has his books, his wife,

his patriotism, while O’Brien sits in his purgatory unable to do what was right because he lacked

courage, unlike this soldier, who despite the knowledge of his inadequacies, fulfilled his duty

with pride. If only he can connect himself to the soldier, then Timmy will live.

A fascinating exchange between Tim O’Brien and his daughter occurs in “Ambush.” The

precocious nine-year-old asks her father if as a soldier he ever killed anyone. His initial response

is negative (O’Brien 131); and yet he did and did not (O’Brien 180). The jungles of Vietnam

were a kill or be killed atmosphere. “But in a story … the dead sometimes smile and sit up and

return to the world” (O’Brien 225).

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Linda, a nine-year-old girl “who had died of a brain tumor back in fifth grade” (O’Brien

58) was the protagonist’s first experience of storytelling’s power to resurrect. He recalls his love

for her, his first date, and even his failure to stand up for her (O’Brien 228-229; 233-234). He

still vividly recalled her death and its horrific face at the funeral parlor (O’Brien 241-242). How

appropriate that their first date together included the movie The Man Who Never Was, which

demonstrated the power, life, ability, and importance of the dead. D-Day succeeded in the movie

because of the discarded corpse dressed in an officer’s uniform (O’Brien 232).

After hearing of Linda’s death, he uses the power of storytelling to bring her to life again.

He laid on the floor in his living room and willed her into his mind, where she walked down

Main Street (O’Brien 237). In his story he sits down to cry and Linda comes to comfort him and

she touched him (O’Brien 238). Again he attempts to have her live following his visit to the

funeral home. He willed his dreams, his unconscious stories to come to him and here Linda was

alive and was merely waiting to have her story told once again. The imagination of a child is a

powerful thing!

Storytelling is a necessity like water, food, and air; without which we cease to exist.

Whether or not it is to guarantee his own immortality or perhaps the altruism of saving others’

lives at the expense of his own is unknown. It is something that he cannot stop doing. The well

intentioned, the well meaning, the kind and sympathetic can miss the point of O’Brien’s stories.

Independently they can be the mere ramblings of a lonely man. Or they are the words of a

prophet and savior. To those who wish to tell him to put these stories behind him, to not think of

death and focus on life:

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I won’t say it but I’ll think it. … You dumb cooze. Because she wasn’t listening. It

wasn’t a war story. It was a love story. But you can’t say that. All you can do is tell it

one more time (O’Brien 84-85).

Allowing Curt, Ted, Kiowa, Linda, Norman, the Vietcong soldier, the baby water buffalo, Mary

Anne, “and all the dead soldiers back from the grave, and the many thousands who were later to

die” (O’Brien 58) the chance to breath again.

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Works Cited

O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1990. Print