Thomas's Excellent Things They Carried Essay

Tim O’Brien stated in a Presidents’ Day speech that he is not, “...caught up in the cold hard facts but more on the heart truth of the matter.” This goes to say that even if the novel isn’t displaying ‘the’ truth it will present a truth. This is the key idea of the novel, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, which is dealing with death by telling the heart truth. This idea is presented by the deaths of Norman Bowker, Kiowa and Linda. Throughout the entire text though, we only fully grasp this idea at the end of the text leaving the reader fully satisfied and understanding the main idea. Therefore, I agree that leaving readers uncertain about outcomes is unwise and that all conflicts should be satisfactorily resolved by the time the novel is ended.

First we are presented with the death of Norman Bowker. Bowker returns back to his hometown a veteran soldier from Vietnam, where he is shunned by his medal obsessed father and I treated like an outsider. He circles the lake, quietly chatting to himself as if he was circling the issues of the Vietnam War. We hear that he is feeling very guilty for the death of his friend; Kiowa whom he let die in the ‘shit field’ in Vietnam and is imagining telling the story to his father, who in his mind accepted him. “Six medals, count ‘em...” He then stops at a fast food restaurant and attempts to confide in a fast food lady through the drive thru speaker. He is in turn declined and a few months later commits suicide. Bowker did this as a result of having no one to talk to. No one was there for him to tell his story to, so he couldn’t express the guilt inside of him about Kiowa’s death. So he bottled it up and then it ultimately lead to his demise. He ended up hanging himself in the locker room of the YMCA. This story was key to the understanding of the main idea, as it was about expressing the heart truth to deal with death, which was a major issue at the time because statistics show that almost half of the veterans that returned from Nam had committed suicide.

We are told of Kiowa’s death three times, first, through Norman Bowker, then through an ‘unnamed soldier’ and finally Tim O’Brien himself. Kiowa was killed by mortars and the depth of the muck in the ‘sh*t field’. In the Norman Bowker story, we are told that it was him that let Kiowa die that night, due to the horrific smell of the muck, which were in fact the villager’s excrements throughout the years. We then find out that it was an ‘unnamed soldier’ who was, “...showing Kiowa a picture of his girlfriend,” and had turned his torch on, giving away his company’s position. Then we are finally told that it was O’Brien that didn’t save Kiowa. Through each of these stories, we see each one getting closer to the place of the event, first with Bowker in America after the war is ended, then the unnamed soldier , the morning after the event and then O’Brien telling the story at the exact time and place of the incident. Through this we can see that O’Brien is ‘circling’ the event telling one story at a time and weathering away at the truth until it is finally presented to us. This is O’Brien’s way of dealing with death, by telling stories. He does this though by using three different stories, which allows him to deal with the truth one revelation after another and to make us feel different things with each story, each one expressing the heart truth.

We are then finally presented with the death of Linda. Linda is O’Brien’s childhood sweetheart who he undoubtedly, “...just loved her.” Linda is diagnosed with leukaemia and is teased by all the kids at school. Linda eventually dies from the cancer but taught O’Brien lessons helped him deal with death. Linda taught O’Brien that sometimes, “...the dead can sit up and smile,” through stories like this we can see the main idea of the novel finally told to the reader. The death of Linda was the easiest story to tell because throughout his life, he would have told the story of Linda many times, and each time it would’ve gotten easier and easier to tell it. The lesson was the one that stayed with O’Brien his whole life and transcended into other times that he had to deal with death, in the three stories of Kiowa and Linda. This event was key to our understanding the main idea of dealing with death by expressing the heart truth.

We finally understand this idea at the end of the text though, because it tends to be what we do in real life. When we tell a story, we exaggerate the parts in which we want the listener to relate to, or make them feel how we want to feel. O’Brien did this in the three times he told us of Kiowa’s death. He exaggerated on the horrific “smell of the muck” and made that a key factor for the audience to understand why he couldn’t save him. In stories we also tend to bend ‘the’ truth to get to ‘a’ truth. This is shown in the Norman Bowker story showing that he had no one to talk to and to present his heart truth, so he wrote about Bowker, saying that it was him that let Kiowa drown in the field. Throughout the entire book though we are not enlightened with the main idea until the last story of the book, which is about Linda. We only understand at the end that the entire book is fiction and that even though these characters in the story might not be true, they can, “...sit up and smile at you... when you can keep them alive,” in stories