The Things They Carried

"They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried."

This reader is typically hesitant about war stories. But knowing so little about the Vietnam war—a nebulous conflict that drove my own father to volunteer for military service rather than waiting for his draft number to come up—I felt compelled to explore it through this bit of literature.

I first heard tell of this book because it was required reading for an alternative school my friend worked at. She’d mentioned to me the kids were particularly connecting with the author’s personal depictions of PTSD. (Any book that teens don’t find a chore to read is a point of fascination for me, so I jumped at the chance to borrow it.) I now understand why it captured them so. Part memoir, part short-story collection, and part narrative non-fiction, O’Brien sets the soul of his younger self on brutal display. As it seems with his previous works, this book is his catharsis—his own brand of personal and much-needed therapy.

I couldn’t possibly sum it up better than he does:

"By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others."

Loosely structured yet interconnected, this is a deeply affecting and well written piece. The scenes are set with vivid, palpable clarity, and the imparted empathy is haunting. The author even manages to be fairly unobtrusive concerning his own political perspective. My primary complaint is that it was pretty lacking in physical descriptions of characters—aside from one particular dead body described ad nauseum (for justifiable reasons), and the story involving Mary Ann. I didn’t care for the vague notion that I should rely on ethnicity alone to derive the mental image of a character.

While presenting the abstract horrors of war and human nature on a relevant level, this isn’t the kind of story most could look to for hope or healing. There is the all-too-realistic sense that the author, while coping through this productive outlet, has yet to find wholeness even decades after the fact. And perhaps—considering the lack of emotion conveyed in the more senselessly cruel moments—hasn’t fully come to terms with his own inhumanity.

Of all the characters mentioned, Kiowa was the one who ripped my heart out. In reflection, I find I’ll most recall this book because of him—and I’m grateful I had the chance to know him just a little.