"The Things They Carried": Guilt and Trauma in Tim O’Brien's Book

Introduction

Tim O’Brien, a veteran of the Vietnam War, writes “I survived, but it's not a happy ending.” (O’Brien 61) He implies that soldiers may have survived the war, but they have not survived the guilt and trauma that they experience once they return to their homeland. In his book, The Things They Carried, guilt is encompassed through both characters, Tim and Norman, who are burdened with the guilt of killing their best friend Kiowa. After returning home from Vietnam, they try to cope with their internal conflicts by telling their stories; however, there are no words that properly evoke the horrors of war. Fortunately, Tim is able to find serenity with the inhumane experiences through writing; however, Norman like many other veterans, does not find a solution and resorts to killing himself. This essay analyzes how, through the juxtaposition of these two characters, Tim O’Brien conveys the harsh truth that soldiers feel guilty for death they didn't cause, and when they do not find coping mechanisms to deal with their remorse, more blood is shed.

Representation of Guilt in The Things They Carried

Norman Bowker

In the short story Speaking of Courage, Norman Bowker’s source of trauma is that he was not able to save his best friend Kiowa from dying. While he and his fellow soldiers are camped out in the shit field, Kiowa starts to drown in the mud of the field due to mortar rounds creating a suction. Norman, hearing the screaming of Kiowa, rushes towards him, but all he finds “were bubbles where Kiowa’s head should’ve been.”(O’Brien 143) While under fire, he desperately tries to pull Kiowa out; however, he feels the muck devouring him: it was “inside him, in his lungs - and he could no longer tolerate it...He released Kiowa’s boot and watched it slide away.”(O’Brien 143) This moment is so impactful for Norman because he feels responsible for killing Kiowa by releasing his boot. He feels guilty and blames himself for the death because he was not strong enough to pull Kiowa out. As the reader, we see him as courageous because he tried to save his friend while being shot at; however, he feels like a coward and a failure because he couldn’t save him. The author purposefully chose the setting of the shit field to represent the unwinnable circumstances of the soldiers. Norman tried everything to save his comrade, but he couldn’t win because the war was too horrific — “the field was boiling. The shells made deep slushy craters, opening up all those years of waste”(O’Brien 142) — for people to be saved. The death itself also haunts him because of the brutality and inhuman circumstances Kiowa was in: Kiowa was devoured by shit. Norman witnessed the “bubbles” of Kiowa’s last breaths, which traumatized him because Kiowa was on the verge of death and he could only stand there helplessly. Norman is scarred with guilt because he feels like the one who killed Kiowa; however, it was the war that killed him. The war caused the enemy to shoot. The war put Norman in this dire position; he did not choose to go to that field in Vietnam. This story illustrates how Norman and many soldiers come back from war with overwhelming guilt and trauma because they were powerless to save the people they loved.

Norman tries to cope with the guilt of killing Kiowa by recounting the details of Kiowa’s death to an intercom at an A&W. When Norman returns to the US from Vietnam, all he can think about is the night when Kiowa died. He associates his pond with the shit field and compares his childhood best friend to Kiowa because his guilt consumes him. These comparisons prove that even though he survived Vietnam, Norman is still stuck there. Norman tries to overcome and suppress these thoughts that linger in his mind by visiting A&W. While talking to the intercom, Norman wants to tell it the story of how Kiowa died in order to cope and come to terms with the guilt and loss he feels. While talking to the intercom, he asks it, “how’d you like to hear about-He stopped and shook his head.” (O’Brien 146) Norman pauses and shakes his head to illustrate that he is not able to talk about his trauma because it brings up too many traumatic memories of Kiowa’s death. He wants to talk about it, “but he can't”(O’Brien 151), not even to a machine. He is not able to articulate the horrors of Vietnam because there are no words to properly communicate the inhumane circumstances soldiers were put through. All Norman can do is keep his emotions bottled up inside him and to shut out the world because “there was nothing to say. He could not talk about it and never would.”(O’Brien 147) Unfortunately, because Norman can never tell his stories to the outside world, he is not able to recover and cope with the trauma of Kiowa’s death. He ultimately kills himself because the guilt is too much to handle. Norman and many veterans resort to killing themselves because they are devoured by their own guilt.

Tim O’Brien

Like Norman, Tim is traumatized with the fact that he killed Kiowa. While Tim and Kiowa are casually chatting at night in the open shit field, Tim turns his flashlight on to show Kiowa a picture of his girlfriend. Tim, the young soldier, thinks nothing of it. However, when he looks back at the event of the night when Kiowa died, he realizes that the flashlight killed Kiowa. Without the light, the enemy would not have known they were there, and Kiowa would still be alive. While processing the tragic experience, all he could remember was “Kiowa leaning in for a look at the picture - ‘Hey, she’s cute,’ he’d say - and then the field exploded all around them. Like murder.” (O’Brien 163) The author uses the word murder in both the sense that the explosions were loud, and that Tim believes he murdered Kiowa. The flashlight is symbolic because light represents positivity and hope; however, here it causes something so dark: death. Even the most virtuous things are turned into murderers in times of war. Tim and Kiowa were just having a normal conversation, talking about something so innocent-a girlfriend-, which ends up killing Kiowa. Tim is burdened with guilt because Kiowa, the sweet understanding friend, is dead because of him. Tim’s innocence is stripped away. He no longer is the “young soldier” that his name portrays; he has to deal with the trauma of believing that he murdered his best friend. The tragedy behind this story is that the death wasn’t Tim’s fault. War caused Kiowa’s death. There were so many reasons why Kiowa died that night — the field was unprotected and it was still light out when they set up — but he feels responsible. The author purposefully chose Kiowa to die because he was a “splendid human being, the very best, intelligent and gentle and quiet-spoken” (O’Brien 157); he still had his humanity intact. Kiowa’s death is so important because humanity is obliterated, drowned in muck. In Tim and Norman both feel solely responsible for Kiowa’s death, O’Brien demonstrates how war strips soldiers of their humanity because it makes them feel responsible for murders they didn't commit.

Tim copes with his trauma by writing stories about the tragedies and horrific experiences in Vietnam. Like Norman, Tim is not able to openly talk about his past because he does not feel like his explanations convey the truth of the inhumane things he has encountered. While reflecting on his short story Speaking of Courage in Notes, he writes that putting Norman’s story into words was very difficult for him because it opened a wound that he was trying to ignore. The difference between Norman and Tim is that Tim is able to somewhat cope with his guilt of that night because he uses writing to overcome his trauma. Writing about Kiowa’s death is “like clearing a throat”(O’Brien 151); it allows Tim to confront his past and come to terms with what he has done. However, clearing a throat is only temporary relief; it does not permanently fix the issue. Tim is not able to rid himself of all his guilt and trauma. He only is able to separate himself from it because “by telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself.” Therefore, Tim writes his stories in the third person because he thinks of himself in Vietnam as another person in order to detach himself from the guilt. He is able to release his inner remorse because it feels less personal to him. Writing is “partly catharsis” to Tim because he is finally able to make sense of that night and partially forgive himself for what he believes he has done. Unlike Norman, Tim comes to the realization that the brutality and the circumstances of war have killed Kiowa, not only him. Writing has saved Tim’s life because he is able to separate from the guilt of Kiowa’s death and the horrors he experienced in Vietnam.

Conclusion

Tim O’Brien uses the characterization of Tim and Norman to convey that soldiers experience barbaric things that cause them to feel responsible for things out of their control. Once soldiers come home from war, they try to cope with their trauma; however, most are unsuccessful because there are no words to describe the horrific things soldiers have seen. Some commit suicide due to the intolerable guilt they feel. War does this to them: war sets them up for failure. War strips them of their humanity and kills them, sometimes literally and sometimes metaphorically. Therefore, Tim O’Brien writes, “I survived, but it's not a happy ending” because soldiers return from war, but they are still caught up in their past; every day they are reminded of the morbid inhuman memories that destroyed their lives. Tim O’Brien hopes to explain the causes of soldiers’ trauma and guilt in The Things They Carried, so the outside world can start to understand the trauma soldiers have to live with when they come back from war. O’Brien suggests that society needs to understand the consequences of war on its people and ask themselves if war is more important than the lives of many young soldiers.