Tim O’Brien’s classic Vietnam short story is about much more than the technical listings of standard issue war gear. The things these men carry are only underscored by the weight of ammunition, rations, weapons, and canteens—“They carried the sky” (364). I love this piece for its ability to combine the gritty realities of war with the inner turmoil that is almost never talked about after the fighting stops. The “Thousand Yard Stare”, or countless other names, will always be only an enigma to most of us civilians.
Lieutenant Cross is carrying much along the march through the jungle: his gear, his command, and his men. Mostly, though, he carries Martha. Not a yearning flame for passionate love, but instead only a vague notion that he must get back to her, that she is the thing that might save him. But war distorts reality, and he knows that she only signs “love” at the end of the letters as a formality.
However, Martha’s pebble and the story that accompanies it is the most important aspect of this story. She finds it on the Jersey shore where the waves meet the land, where they’re “together but also separated” (359). This is the core of Cross’s, and most of the men’s plight. They are separated from all the things they care about, separated from each other by their own ideologies, and separated from the horrors they do and have done to them. They are separate soldiers but a solid unit—separate but together.
Cross thinks it’s his daydreaming that gets Ted Lavender killed, but it’s not. War gets him killed. Lavender’s over-prepared, weighed down with too many tranquilizers, dope, and grenades. He’s “dead weight”. He carries enough to keep him permanently separate, but not together, and it kills him. Or at least, that’s the poetic way of looking at it. But war is not poetry. It’s men and women and children dying in awful ways with no resolution. No one ever “wins” a war, they only keep carrying it.
What these men are truly carrying is the “burden of being alive” (367). Their friends and enemies fall around them, and still they must go carrying on, forced to try and make sense of a senseless situation.
I remember asking my great-uncle Ray about WWII once, and what he did during the war, and all he said was, “I killed Japs.” He was in his eighties then, mostly senile and in deteriorating health, but even then as little kid I could see the weight in his eyes—the weight of what he’d carried back from the war. It must be a profoundly human thing to experience such an extreme set of circumstances, and no amount of flowery language would render me remotely capable of reaching for meaning in war, but I do know what it means to see suffering in its rawest forms. And in those moments there is a great weight that can crush you if you let it. To carry it is not a heroic deed, it is not a mark of honor or courage. It is only the rule of life that one must carry on.
I really love how you tie Ted Lavender to the “together but separate” analogy. I hadn’t thought of that. Lavender really does seperate himself from his group which in the end does contribute to his death. My grandfather was also a WWII vet and I like you asked him what war was like and what he did. He kindly told me war was not a topic of conversation. My grandfather never even spoke of the war to my grandmother. I have so much respect and awe for our military.
I also appreciate your “separate but together” piece. It makes me think of the different items that each character carries, and how that’s reflective of diversity in the soldiers/people. And in spite of all the diversity/differences in the world, everyone has a common emotional denominator when it comes to tragic situations like war: the exposure to brutality is transcendent. We all normally feel the same fear and pain.
“The exposure to brutality is transcendent.” I think this sums things up superbly!
I really liked your points on the story, especially when you said that “No one ever “wins” a war, they only keep carrying it.” That statement is also very true, but also ties well into the story. I thought that this story was very cleverly written in that he writes it with little emotion and very straight forward. This reflects well the way that the men feel during the war. They seem to be in a dream like haze so that when people die, as the soldier in the story says, it seems scripted. I think this is probably part of why its so hard to come home because they spend the time in war like its a bad dream and coming home is like waking up to realize it was all real.
I agree, but would differ in saying that perhaps the war is where these men wake up. Instead of being in a daze, they’re all matter-of-factly employing their training–to be emotionless, order-following soldiers. A battlefield is no place for reflection, and so these men have to push everything underneath while they’re there, lest they don’t want to survive. In coming back home, THAT, I think would be more like the dream/nightmare. To spend so much time honing skills to kill and be on 24/7 alert, only to have to end a tour and have to deal with the idiosyncratic trivialities of things like waiting in line at the bank or picked up groceries at the supermarket. Those things would be the things distorted and perverted by the frame of war, and likely would be the heaviest weight to carry of all.
That’s an interesting way of thinking about it. I got my perspective from when the soldier speaking about how he felt like he should have been more upset at the man who was shot, but to him It seemed scripted.
I saw the narrator carefully listing out the weight of each object as a way to show the emotional weight that each man was carrying. On top of the expectations of a nation, (no small thing) each man carries the weight of the family members expecting them to come back in one piece. They also carry the weight of responsibility for each other’s lives, and each of them is noticeably heavier after Ted Lavender dies.
I like that you commented on them carrying the burden of being alive. I think that is an accurate portrayal of the meaning as well.
I agree. Juxtaposing the material weight of the items against things like “they carried the sky” really shows the dual modes these men must have been in: partially trained soldiers in a rank and file unit, but also emotional human beings being asked to do terrible things.
I agree, though I would add that these are emotional human beings who have volunteered to do terrible things. I imagine that adds another layer to the burden they carry. I sometimes wonder if our country asks too much, especially every time I read this story. This is the first time I have read the short story, though I have read the novel several times. The novel delves even more deeply into the psychology of these men, and makes me cry every time. It’s a wonderful read if you like the short version.
This is lovely: “[I]n those moments there is a great weight that can crush you if you let it. To carry it is not a heroic deed, it is not a mark of honor or courage. It is only the rule of life that one must carry on.” So many of these stories, if we let them, comment profoundly on the condition of humanity.
Thank you! I’d read this before, and even though it had been two years since looking at it I remembered almost the whole story. It’s a beautiful piece, and I think the added depth stems from O’Brien’s own service record. I come from a big military family, and I guess I just felt a strong connection to the humanity of what goes on underneath the ammo and flak jackets.
It *is* a beautiful piece — rife with humanity and burden. This struck me as I reread it today in preparation for our discussion tonight. I associate the story’s preoccupation with Ted Lavender with Lt. Cross’s (as in, holy cross) weight of responsibility for his death. I always reread the part where he dies, because it always seems to me that Lt. Cross hasn’t done anything egregiously wrong, but I think it speaks volumes about the weight of responsibility he carries for all of his men.
This piece is close to home for me too; my dad was drafted for Vietnam but the war ended right after he went to basic training. But he came *thisclose* to serving there.