Slide 1: Ritter 1 Kristian Ritter English 211 Response Paper June 7, 2007 The story I read was titled “The Things They Carried” and was written by Tim O’Brien. This short story was about a platoon of men who were serving in the Army during the Vietnam War. I really enjoyed how O’Brien moves from topic to topic in his story about the men in this platoon. O’Brien’s likes to switch from describing what and why the men opt to carry certain objects to how these objects effect how the men live their lives in Vietnam. However, the story is much more complicated than just giving a few physical descriptions of what the men are carrying. These men also carry an immense amount of emotional baggage which coincides with the items they are carrying throughout the jungles of Vietnam. For instance, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, who is in charge of the platoon, has been carrying some letters and a small stone from a woman named Martha: she is a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. Martha becomes an infatuation of his and eventually starts affecting the way he runs his platoon. For First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, these letters trouble him greatly because he doesn’t know what these letters from Martha mean. He wants these letters to lead into a relationship when he finishes his tour in Vietnam. The problem that he is having with these letters is he doesn’t know what Martha wants from him. These letters cause him to become very confused and eventually they begin to consume him completely.
Slide 2: Ritter 2 The letters and pictures he carries in the bottom of his rucksack only weigh 10 ounces, but they are much heavier emotionally. These letters cause his mind to wander throughout the day; he is consumed with wanting to know what Martha is doing and who took the pictures that she sent him. With this baggage, he spends most of his day walking through the jungle also wondering if she loves him or if she is just signing the letters “love Martha (1415)” as a way of being polite—these different issues effect him both mentally and physically. The battle that wages within him about his future with Martha is something that he struggles with daily. This part of the story affects me the most because I have experienced this many times from the Marines I was in charge of in Iraq. While in Iraq, I saw many different Marines run into this type of problem. Most men who serve overseas deal with this issue on a daily basis whether it is corresponding with a woman from back home via email or snail mail. What happens is these men need female companionship because they feel as if at any moment, they might lose their lives while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. The struggles First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross encounters while in Vietnam are something that many men and women overseas struggle with to this day. From my experience of this type of situation, I think O’Brien captures the reality of this circumstance quite well. As a reader you see how much of an obsession these letters have become for First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, especially when O’Brien writes, “he would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing that her tongue had been there (1415).” As a reader I got to see, through O’Brien’s narrative, how these letters had begin to run his life and eventually affect First lieutenant Cross’s ability to lead his platoon. The letters from Martha eventually cost one of his men his life because First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross spent too much of his time day dreaming about Martha instead of making good decisions in regards to his platoon.
Slide 3: Ritter 3 It is amazing how these letters, pictures, and stone—which Martha finds on a beach and sends with one of her letters—becomes such an obsession for him. It is quite intriguing to see how he becomes so engulfed in the letters and stone that he in turn becomes oblivious to what is really going on around him. These letters, pictures, and stone become a way for First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross to escape the horrors of Vietnam. It is as if they pick him up and place him by her side. O’Brien tries to symbolize what it really means to be a soldier fighting in a war, especially Vietnam. O’Brien tries to explain the physical but also the emotional baggage that is carried through the jungles of Vietnam by first lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s platoon. While reading “The Things They Carried” I got an up close and personal look at how much it took to be a soldier in Vietnam. The soldiers were essentially cut off from the rest of the world. These physical items that they carried were a way for the men to get in touch with the real world. These items were a way for the men to escape the realities of the war that they are involved in. However, some of these items were used to ensure their lives were prolonged. The following quote shows to the reader what the men were carrying as standard issue and also all of the additional items that the men had picked up along the way. These un-issued items were used by the men in order to better their chances of staying alive while fighting in Vietnam. O’Brien Says, In addition to the three standard weapons the M60, M-16, and M-79 they carried whatever presented it, or whatever seemed appropriate as a means of killing or staying alive. They carried M-14s and CAR-15s and Swedish Ks and grease guns and captured AK-47s and Chi-Coms and RPGs and Simonov carbines and black market Uzis and .38 caliber Smith and Wesson handguns and 66 mm LAWs and shotguns and silencers and
Slide 4: Ritter 4 blackjacks and bayonets and C-4 plastic explosives. Lee Stark carried brass knuckles. Kiowa carried his grandfather’s feathered hatchet. Every third or fourth man carried a Claymore antipersonnel mine- 3.5 pounds with its firing device. They all carried fragmentation grenades- fourteen ounces each. They all carried at least one M-18 colored smoke grenade- twenty four ounces. Some carried CS or tear-gas grenades. Some carried white-phosphorous grenades. They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried (1418). At the end of the story, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross finally realizes that he needs to let Martha go so he can stop letting his day dreams effect his decision-making abilities. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross feels that the death of Ted Lavender could have been avoided if only he had not been paying so much attention to the letters, pictures, and stone which Martha had sent him. Finally, he comes to realize that just because Martha signs the letters “Love Martha,” doesn’t mean that she actually loves him. Now he must spend time removing the blame that he feels for the death of Tim Lavender. At this point in time, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross has finally begun to realize that he is in a completely different realm where he can’t be wondering around Vietnam day dreaming about a woman back home. When O’Brien says, He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of his life (1422). Tim O’Brien does an astonishing job of conveying the internal battles that waged within First Lieutenants Jimmy Cross’s head because of a woman he had met stateside. From reading about First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s internal battles a vivid picture is painted of what goes through a man’s head in combat zone while there is a woman who is corresponding with him. I
Slide 5: Ritter 5 would venture to say that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened. Anyone who reads this story should talk to a service member, who served overseas in a combat zone, that service member would be able to tell a story of how something like this situation affected their platoon’s leadership. I had a similar situation like the one that Tim’ O’Brien wrote about; the only difference was no one lost their life over this situation. I had a Gunnery Sergeant who found out his girlfriend was cheating on him, and this severely distracted him from his ability to lead our platoon in Iraq. It drove him to a point where he would think that he was telling us to do certain things when in fact he had never spoken to anyone. It was very hard dealing with this situation, so I know what the platoon in the story was going through with their leader. Tim O’Brien did an exemplarily job of capturing what it is like to serve in the military in a combat zone. He did an equally outstanding job of translating that into a short story. The story “The Things They Carried” is a wonderfully mastered piece of writing that engulfs any reader and brings them into the story. It is hard not to become entwined in the story and feel an emotional attachment to the platoon at hand. While reading this story, I can feel as if I am actually with this platoon humping many different items through the jungles of Vietnam.
Slide 6: Ritter 6 Works Cited O'Brien, Tim. "The Things They Carried." Making Literature Matter. Comp. John Schilb and John Clifford. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin_ 2006. 1414-1437.