Response to "Seduction in War Stories"

Wow! I had never thought of the war as having a seductive nature, but you are absolutely right! What begins as fascinations and curiosities turns into a lust so deep that the innocent bystanders (for lack of a better term) have no choice but to give in. Mary Anne tasted how differently her life could be and 'ran off' with Vietnam's jungles. O'Brien is completely transfixed with the man he killed and he relives his time in war, like one would relive the exact moments of their seduction.

Mystery

There are many themes that appear in O'Brien's narratives.  Many of the characters portray courage and faith.  Even though these characters know they can die at any second, they mysteriously show the persistence needed to go on.  They each believe they'll make it out of the war, despite the dangerous conditions they face.  The soldiers even play games on missions, which personify their inner strength.  Another theme that O'Brien uses is mystery.  He explains that every time a war story is told, it is usually changed.  He writes that as an event happens, somehow each of the soldiers see it in a different way. For example, when Lemon dies, some soldiers see light appear, some look away, and others don't even see him die.  The story reads "When a guy dies, like Lemon, you look away and then look backfor a moment and then look away again. The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot."  Some things that happen in war are just so unexplainable.  So as stories are retold, veterans tell their narratives in ways that they imagine are close to reality.  If you think about it, O'Brien and all vets are portraying courage just by retelling their stories.  It is hard to keep re-imagining yourself in such a scary situation, so it takes guts to be able to retell each occurrence.

Seduction in War Stories

Often in O’Brien’s writing, the theme of Seduction consistently arises. We see it perhaps most obviously with the story of Mary Anne in the “Sweet Heart of Song Tra Bong.” Mary Anne’s attraction to the lifestyle of the Green Berets and the natives near the camp ultimately brings her to turn away from Fossie’s expectations - choosing instead to submit to the alluring enchantment of the Vietnamese jungle. Rat Kiley’s observation of Mary Anne’s change is right on point when he sees her come back from the jungle:

“This Mary Anne wasn’t no virgin…I saw those eyes of hers. I saw how she wasn’t the same person no more. I mean if it was a guy, everybody’d say, Hey no big deal, he got seduced by the Greenies. See what I mean? ”

So for many of O’Brien’s stories, the jungle becomes a seductress of sorts; drawing people in and changing them as in the case of the six man patrol that climbs into the mountains only to hear sounds of music and laughter each night until the order is called to have ordinances dropped all over the place.

The jungle however, is not the only thing beguiling the soldiers into madness. O’Brien, in “The Man I Killed,” finds himself drawn towards the young person whom he shot in the head. His attraction to the scene seems to be part guilt and part awe for the aesthetic of war - like tracer rounds zipping across dark valleys or, in his case, the transformation of an eye wound on a dead man. O’Brien’s fascination and grief for the dead man is paralyzing. His description of the wound he gives reflects his amazement at the sight:

“The star-shaped hole was red and yellow. The yellow part seemed to be getting wider, spreading out at the center of the star.”

Likening a gruesome sight to something beautiful produces the seductive quality that consistently appears in O’Brien’s work and he makes it clear that the war and its landscape backdrop have a strange and eerie ability to draw people in.

Guilt as a Theme

In “The Man I Killed” and “Speaking of Courage”, guilt is a major theme, even if it is sometimes irrational on the part of those who feel it.

In “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien mourns over a man he just killed in My Khe. He cannot stop thinking about what this man’s life might have been like. He builds an idea of this man in his mind, which seems to be testament to the guilt he is feeling about killing him. What’s even more difficult for O’Brien in this moment is that his fellow soldiers cannot truly understand what he is feeling in this moment, even though Kiowa tries to comfort him. ““Listen to me,” Kiowa said. “You feel terrible, I know that.” Then he said, “Okay, maybe I don’t know (121).”” In battle, both O’Brien and this dead man were soldiers, but after O’Brien killed him, he no longer sees him as a soldier of war, but as his equal and opposite in many ways, a normal young man whose life was cut short because of his actions.

In “Speaking of Courage,” Norman Bowker traveling around a lake in his hometown, having returned from the war and having received many medals of honor. However, he is troubled because of an experience he had during the war where he left his friend Kiowa to die in the mud in order to save his own life. He feels guilty because as he sees it, this is not an act of courage. “Courage was not always a matter of yes or no. Sometimes it came in degrees like the cold; sometimes you were very brave up to a point and then beyond that point you were not so brave (141).” Bowker’s father is very proud of his son and his medals of honor, and this misconception of himself as Bowker sees it heightens his feelings of guilt about Kiowa.

Mary Anne a Man?

While reading the story of Mary Anne this week, I kept wondering what was the point of her story. Is her story fiction or fact. I have come to a decision that it is both. The is no female Mary Anne running about Vietnam with a tongue necklace, but I believe there are many soldiers who find her story similar to their own. How many soldiers wished they could become a part of the land and find solace in the beauty of a new place instead of the horror of war around them. Did soldiers found themselves reverted back to a Paleolithic sense of "kill or be killed."I find many soldiers can relate to to lost sense of "morality" in war. Mary Anne does not represent a woman lost to the jungle but the multiple men.

Types of Fear

In Tim O’Brien’s, The Things They Carried there were a few prominent themes throughout his stories. Fear was a major theme that took many different forms. In “The Dentist”, Curt Lemon was afraid of letting his fear show to anyone who was around him. After he fainted in the dentist’s office he was distraught, “When he came to, there was a funny new look on his face, almost sheepish as if he’d been caught committing some terrible crime” (O’Brien 84). This is one type of fear that is noticeable in a lot of Tim O’Brien’s short stories. The men were afraid to be in Vietnam but more afraid of letting it be known to others. Its almost as if that if the soldiers outwardly accept the fear then they would have no small corner to deny its reality.

Another type of fear that is evident in his short stories is the fear of being isolated from society. In “How to Tell a True War Story” Rat writes a letter to his best friends sister explaining how much he loved her brother in an earnest hope to receive a response. “He’s nineteen years old- it’s too much for him- so he looks at you with those big sad gentle killer eyes and says cooze, because his friend is dead, and because it’s so incredibly sad and true: she never wrote back”(O’Brien 66). Rat was reaching out looking for any type of response that acknowledged his love for a man dead. He wanted someone to share in his grief from somewhere other than Vietnam.

The Shame of War

Shame is a common theme of The Things They Carried. The prime example of this is from the story On the Rainy River. This story is the perfect example of the shame that goes into deciding to go to war. Either you are a coward who dishonors your , family, your friends and your town or you are the coward who can can not stand up for what you believe in and run away from an unjust war. O'Brien could see everyone attempting to persuade him into for side or the other from his boat. He saw his family and his town cheering for him to go to war and he saw Jane Fonda and those who were and would be killed in Vietnam telling him to run and not look back. Another example of shame is in the story "The Dentist" when Curt Lemon admits that he is afraid of dentists and faints when he goes visit the field dentist. Feeling "unmanly" and shamed Lemon then sulks for hours about his inability to face his fear of the dentists. He then attempts to make up for this by faking a tooth ache in order for the dentist to pull out a perfectly good tooth from his mouth to feel more like a man and feel no shame. While these are the two most specific stories that look at shame a story such as Speaking of courage also does. In this story Norman rides along all day wishing he could tell someone the story of how he almost won the silver star, how he almost saved Kiowa but he wasn't as brave as he wish he could've been in that moment. How, as he puts it, "He had been braver than he ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be."

The Soldier : The Civilian

With the draft in effect during the Vietnam War, civilians were uprooted from society and required to become soldiers. This forced  mentally and physically unprepared civilians to take the roll of a soldier. In effect, the divide between civilians and soldiers was dramatically different from previous wars because those who became soldiers were completely unprepared. Additionally after the Vietnam War, soldiers were not held on the pedestal that they were in previous wars such as World War I & II.

In Tim O'Brien's, The Things They Carried, the theme of  the soldier/civilian divide can be noted throughout the book. Primarily, the gruesome, moralless nature of his war stories are commonly found distasteful among everyday civilians. Furthermore, the general nature and tone of the O'Brien's style can be cited in support of a divide between the civilian and the soldier. The Things They Carried has elements of PTSD, and his stream of conscious style of writing reads like you're sitting in a foxhole with O'Brien while you both pass time telling war stories. Additionally, The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong story shows a clear evolution from civilian to soldier. Mary Anne's story supports the idea of how the sudden shift from civilian to soldier can have long term effects on the human psyche.


Also included in this theme would be post war struggles for Vietnam Veterans. As noted above, soldiers' assimilation back into society was not as welcoming as in previous wars. This further increased the divide between soldier and civilian. Outside research would be needed to delve into this part of the soldier/civilian divide theme.

Guilt and Disconnect

In both 'The man I killed' and 'Speaking of courage' guilt is a major reoccurring theme, not only in the titles can you see if but also the writing.

In "The man I killed" the O' Brian drones on and on about the solider he just killed. O' Brian's statement holds up very well because the traumatic experience of killing a man creates a fabricated story in his head. He stares at the man for ages, absorbing his guilt. In this time, I believe the story he tells about him is false. The story its self is manifested guilt. It is about what life could have been for the dead man. "Secretly, though, it also frightened him. He was no fighter. His health was poor, his body small and frail. He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics." It is a projection of his own life onto this man who could have been the exact same as him. The man could of had the same potential, the same sort of family, and the same emotions. The man on the ground could very well be him at some point. All these things invoke fear in O' Brian. They create a story and skew the one he is telling with emotional truths, not factual ones like what the average reader assumes. That is the truth that come out while telling a true war story. The facts come in where they can set the proper setting but the events are usually based on the feelings invoked from the event.

It is often stated you lose a sense of whats true in a true war story. Truth is thereby created by not the facts but the emotions invoked by a particular event. This is evident by the way the speaker addresses the audience and his family in 'Speaking of courage'. Even though it was clear to see that the man he did not save could not be saved, he asserts that he could feel him still alive. His guilt of saving the man in time and being overwhelmed by the "smell" changes the facts of the story. "..If it hadn't been for that smell, I could of won the Silver Star." The smell i believe is an emotional fill for the word fear. In previous war stories the speakers never want to look weak. This story being about courage, we can safely assume that smell and fear are related. The speakers imaginary father, who was not present for the event, takes away different facts from the story. He most likely would have assumed the smell was not the main thing that held the soldier back. The emotions do not invoke the memories, just the words and tone of his son. Even then the speaker cannot speak to his father. This all occurs in his head, even more emotional truths that are, at their core, educated assumptions of reactions and events.

Themes of Guilt and Death

Shame and guilt are huge themes carried throughout each story in O’Brien’s novel “The Thing They Carried”.  In the story “On The Rainy River”, O’Brien mentions his feeling of obligation to join the war due to his fear of embarrassing his family and lack of appearing masculine if he did not become a solider. O’Brien even feels guilty throughout the war about killing the enemy. In the story, “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien explains how he killed a man with a grenade. O’Brien mentions hoe the man he killed is no different than any other man. He then, out of guilt, creates a story and a future for the man he killed as a sense of “un-killing” him. The second major theme throughout each story is death. I find the way O’Brien writes about death to be very interesting. Each time a character dies O’Brien’s writing becomes very circular and repetitive which gives the reader the sense of how much of an effect the deaths of other soldiers had on his emotions and psychological wellbeing. O’Brien makes the point that you never know when death is coming nor is there anything you can do to protect yourself from it. For example, Ted Lavender always carried extra ammo, but that did nothing for his protection when he killed by a random out of the blue bullet. O’Brien conveys you cannot predict death again when he shares the story of Curt Lemon. One minute he is playing around, the next he is dead from accidently stepping on a trap. Not being able to predict death drives someone of the soldiers crazy but also gives the soldiers a greater sense of appreciation for life. As O’Brien states in his story, "How to Tell a True War Story," “You’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead.” (O'Brien, 78)

Themes of Grief & Sadness

Theme of Grief & Sadness

It seem as if a fair share of war stories revolve around these two unavoidable themes, Grief and Sadness. Throughout the various stories we have looked at, characters seem to inevitably have to deal with some form of loss, whether it’s the loss of innocence of the loss of loved one. These two determining themes play a pivotal role in shifting a character’s perspective on harsh realities that come with war.

Starting with one of the more recent stories, The Man I Killed, the writer is always painted as a shocked individual that keeps being haunted by the recurring image of the man he shot dead. A butterfly lands on the face of the dead victim only to flutter away after some time. Perhaps this is a nod to life leaving this certain individual, who we are lead to believe did not have intentions of being a solider. “He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole” (O’Brien, 124). We are treated to this image of a star shaped hole many times through the narrative, which is a stark description. Perhaps this may be reading too deeply into it, but since stars tend to release energy, I read the star-shaped hole as an exit point for the victim’s life.

In Sweetheart of Tra Bong, grief is a lot more apparent. We not only witness the main character lose the innocent fiancé he once knew, but we also see some members of the squad also get hit with emotions of sadness. "I loved her. So when I heard from Eddie about what had happened, it almost made me..." (O'Brien, 109). Here we get the confession of storyteller, Rat, that he grew attached to the company Mary Anne brought to the troop. It seems that losing Mary Anne to something more darker and sinister, left a lasting impression with the squadron that war has the potential to completely rewire individuals. We lose a sense of innocence with the transformation of Mary Anne.

Both characters experience grief in two similar yet different ways. In one story a character struggles to overcome the grueling reality of having ended a life, while the other story deals with the grief that comes with having a loved one unexpectedly alter their behaviors, and become something darker.

Blog 3: "The Man I killed" "Speaking of Courage"

            Themes that clearly arise in O’Brien’s writing are themes of blame and guilt. This is especially evident in “The Man I killed” and “Speaking of Courage.” In the first story mentioned O’Brien is so overcome with guilt he imagines a life for his victim, a young Vietnamese soldier who he had allegedly shot down and killed. He imagines how the young soldier must have been made fun of for his “woman like walk” and “dainty features” as well as how he must have loved mathematics, loved a girl, and how he and his family both felt about War and the Americans involvement. In fact his imagination of this soldier is in more ways than one a replica of himself. “A slim young dainty main, He had no stomach for violence. He loved mathematics.  His eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman, and at school the boys sometimes teased him about how pretty he was, and on the playground they mimicked a woman’s walk and made fun of his smooth skin and his love for mathematics” (121). The focus on these characteristics is to keep some distance in order for O’Brien to dull the pain of guilt from murder. Describing things the young man carries, allows O’Brien to relate himself to the allegedly killed stranger “He found a pouch of rice, a comb, a fingernail clipper, a few spoiled piasters, a snap shot of a young woman standing in front of a parked motorcycle” (123). By doing this O’Brien whether unconsciously or consciously seems to humanize himself and discover his own morality and avoid further guilt, since not much emotion about the actual killing or death of the young soldier is explained. On the other hand O’Brien is then feeding into his guilt since he humanizes the victim so specifically and poetically, it is described that he did in fact destroy an irreplaceable soul, and not just another Vietcong enemy. As a result O’Brien and the reader easily identify with the terrible and immoral nature of the killing.

            A theme of blame and guilt is also portrayed in “Speaking of Courage.” This story is mainly a story about survivor’s guilt, and also draws an allusion to “How to tell a True War story.” The story of Kiowa’s death and Bowkers inability to save him his embarrassing and emotional to Bowker that automatically he is overcome with much guilt and blame. “It was not a war for stories, nor for talk of valor, and nobody in town wanted to know about the terrible stink. They wanted good intentions and good deeds” (143).   Norman Bowker feels that his bravery was not enough to save his friend Kiowa from drowning to death in a Vietnamese “shit field.” “There were flares and mortar rounds, and the stink was everywhere-it was inside him, in his lungs-and he could no longer tolerate it. Not here, he thought. Not like this. He released Kiowa’s boot and watched it slide away.” (143). As Norman Bowker returns to his small town after the war, the same scene seems to keep playing in his mind as he is often described as “Being folded in with the war; he was part of the waste.” Bowker feels he was not as brave as he wanted to be, and fails to fully vocalize this guilt since his father’s constant mention of, at least he won seven metals seems to act as a place holder for his actual blaming and guilty feelings towards himself. Just like Kiowa and the sinking field, Bowker is unable to escape from his repeated thoughts about Kiowa’s death, leading him to his downfall where in “Notes” it is mentioned that Bowker hanged himself. This is extremely evident of perhaps how much guilt and blame soldiers are overcome with after war and how since some fail to come to terms with or talk about their pain, they fall as the prey to their own guilt and blame. 

Death As Beauty

As we are now more than half way through the book I feel as if I'm reading multiple books in the sense that each chapter is like its own unique story versus a book thats all about one thing gradually bulding a story. One thing that obviously stands out is O' Brien's use of repetition in a twisted, emotional way. In the moment of death he often describes the details in an extremely gory way and then adds a presence of beauty to it. For example, in How to Tell a True War Story when Curt Lemon dies he describes his death as "almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms.". Another example that can be related to this is in the chapter The Man I Killed. He begins to talk about the man and imagines what his life might have been like before the war. At one point he talks about a butterfly and how it was "making its way along the young man's forehead, which was spotted with small dark freckles.". The nature of a butterfly is beautiful but before it reaches its beauty it must first go through the stages of being a caterpillar capable of giving a nasty sting so much as death. He then continues to ponder what the mans life could have been like if he didn't kill him.  Rather than hating his enemy and disrespecting the body as Azar said "Oh, man, you fuckin' trashed the fucker, You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like shredded fuckin' Wheat.'' he gracefully talks about what his life might of been.

Fear of Embarrassment

Several different themes arise in Tim O’Brien’s, The Things I Carried. One of the most common themes used throughout his stories involves the fear of embarrassment. In his story, “On the Rainy River”, O’Brien uses the fear of embarrassment as a powerful element of motivation. When he receives his draft notice he is put in a very difficult situation due to the fact that he does not believe in war and is completely against the idea because he thinks war is unfair. However, he does not want to be seen as a coward in the eyes of everyone else so its almost as if the fear of being ashamed is what motivates him to actually go to war. You would think the main reasons someone would want to go to war would be because of patriotism or love for one’s own country, but in O’Brien’s case, it is simply the fear of embarrassment which is what stops him from fleeing into Canada. Not only does the fear of shame motivate unwilling soldiers to go to war, but it also affects them once they are there. Their relationships with one another are affected because they are worried about being socially accepted during the war which is what causes them to participate in irrational actions. In O’Brien’s story, “The Dentist”, Curt Lemon is so nervous about going to visit the dentist that he faints during his appointment. He is extremely ashamed that everyone witnessed this act of cowardliness, that he insists the dentist pull out a perfectly healthy tooth in order to relieve his shame. He acted in a very unreasonable manner and was not thinking straight. The fear of shame may not seem like a very important factor for the soldiers to think about during war, considering the fact that they will be surrounded by death. Nonetheless it is very real for them and it affects their every day life. 

Profanity and Innocence / Repitition

One theme I noticed in O'Brien's writing is his seamless integration of the profane and the innocent.  Throughout The Man I killed, he describes the dead man, whom we are to infer O'Brien shot, in cold, harsh detail while adding in details which, in another scenario, would provide a delightful visual description.  ". . . the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless, there was a butterfly on his chin . . ."  The reader is forced to contrast the brutality of war with the beauty of nature, rather than absorb a description of gore without contrast.

A second theme I picked up on is repetition.  O'Brien repeats certain phrases, which to me points to a stream-of-conscience style of writing.  Like many veterans do, Tim relives his traumatic experiences without a definite sense of time.  As he remembers the man he killed, certain details emerge, and reemerge in the theater of his mind.  ". . . his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole . . ."  is one such repeated lines.  Perhaps these more-repeated details are the things that struck Tim the hardest.

He uses repetition in Speaking of Courage as well.  Bowman drives around the lake in his home town again and again, seeing the quaint town's people going about their lives the same way every time he makes the loop, and in fact as they always do.  Another way he makes use of repitition in this chapter is how, in his imaginary conversation with his father, it takes Bowman several times through the beginning of the story until he finally arrives at the critical part, when he describes how he let Kiowa sink into the swamp.

Bitter divide

One of the most prevalent themes on Tim O'Brien's writings is the significance of the alienation between soldiers and civilians. In several of the stories in The Things They Carried there is a clear sense of resentment on the part of the soldiers towards civilians, for their ignorance of the war, and the feeling of isolation and abandonment by the people in the 'real world'. Examples of this animosity can be seen in several of O'Brien's stories.

 One of the clearest examples is in "How to tell a true war story". The somewhat bitter division can  be seen in several instances:  Rat Kiley's referring to Curt Lemon's sister as a 'cooze' after she does not write him back after his own letter. Which was to him was a heartfelt message of her brothers bravery. Another is the reaction of O'Brien to the old woman's criticism of his story towards the end. In both cases there is a sense of misinterpretation: Neither Curt Lemon's sister nor the woman in the book store understand what it is either soldier is trying to express, as they have not had the same experiences. They can never fully comprehend the ordeal of war and O'Brien seems to express the sentiment that they are unwelcome to try.

It is for this reason that the idea of Mary Ann in the "Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong" is so appealing to the soldiers. Even if she is merely a story the notion of a woman  who understands both civilian and soldier mentality is incredibly attractive, as is seen in Rat Kiley's words "I loved her... we all did, I guess.... she was there. She was up to her eyeballs in it. After the war man, I promise you, you won't find nobody like her" (O'Brien, 113-4).

O'Brian's repetitive writing style

It seems as though when O'Brian writes about certain traumatic things, mostly death, he gets very repetitive in his writing.  For example, in "the Man I Killed," O'Brian repeatedly goes back to how the dead corpse looked.  Multiple times he mentioned the star shaped hole where the eye used to be, the cheek that was "peeled back into three ragged stripes," and how the man's fingernails were clean.  He is very meticulous in describing the dead body.
Additionally, O'Brian does the same thing in "How to Tell a True War Story," about Curt Lemon's death. He distinctly describes how it looked as though Curt was getting sucked up by the sunlight, and how they had to peel him off of the tree. I find it to be a bit disturbing.  Hearing it the first time, I can skim over it and not pay much attention to the gory detail, but by the second time, it's like O'Brian forces his readers to read every little detail.  The repetitive nature of his writing makes the stories about death unsettling.  Reading his encounters multiple times makes me feel more connected to his emotions which I believe brings his stories to life.

Themes of Death & PTSD

While reading "The Man I Killed", I noticed how O'Brien narrates death, especially when the death is personal to him. From what I've read and researched about PTSD, flashbacks are recurring and the same horrific incident replays again and again. Throughout his writing, it felt like that in the sense of the details that O'Brien repeated. For example, what the victim looked like and his physique was mentioned two or three times throughout the story. Another characteristic that reflected PTSD throughout the reading was the heavy theme of guilt. Even though it was not directly mentioned, by the way O'Brien analyzed this man's home life made it seem like he was feeling very guilty about killing him. "He spent nights alone, writing romantic poems in his journal, took pleasure in grace and beauty of differential equations" (pg. 122). From this quote and the rest of the paragraph on that page, O'Brien gives a backstory and a life to the man he has killed. He doesn't seen this man as just another dead body but someone who had ambitions and goals and relationships and for that, he blames himself for killing him.

Self-Inflicted Violence and the Soldier's Psyche

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, self-inflicted violence is a phenomenon that occurs most notably in two stories within the volume: firstly in “Enemies”, our initial glimpse into the relationship between Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk, and secondly in “The Dentist”, wherein the reader receives some insight into the psyche of the late Curt Lemon. Perhaps the most interesting divide between the instances of self-harm as shown in these stories is the motivation behind each of them. In this analysis, the different circumstances which drove Jensen and Lemon to cause themselves bodily harm while in Vietnam will be compared and contrasted.

In “Enemies”, Dave Jensen breaks the nose of Lee Strunk while entangled in a vicious fist-fight over a jack-knife which Jensen suspected (rightly) had been stolen. What followed can be described as an obsessive fear of revenge that eventually drives Jensen to slam his gun into his face, breaking his own nose and displaying it to Strunk before asking if “everything was square between them” (O’Brien 64). Later, Strunk proclaims that Jensen is “crazy”, giving no indication that he had ever intended to carry out the retribution which Jensen had fixated on with such emotional instability. Thus, the reader is implicitly asked a question pertaining to the fairness, balance and justice of wartime dynamics: what was it about Jensen’s situation which led him to believe that an “eye for an eye” approach to injury would ultimately save him from the graver fate he believed Strunk had in store for him?

Curt Lemon, too, is motivated by fear to turn to self-harm. However, in “The Dentist”, he is terrified of embarrassment as opposed to physical attack from another, albeit these worries both originating within the self rather than the plausible words or actions of others. Fainting at the mere prospect of a dental examination is a source of unbelievable shame for Lemon, and causes him to withdraw into himself despite receiving no harsh words from the other soldiers. It is in forcing the dentist to pull a “perfectly good” tooth that allows the young man to regain his bravado: if he was able to get through an examination and painful procedure only to end up “all smiles” (O’Brien 88), no one would have grounds upon which to accuse him of cowardice. In this way, as with Dave Jensen, Curt Lemon restores balance in his wartime existence in order to continue living with as much of a sense of peace possible. 

The Man I Killed

The story "The Man I Killed" seems to trace back the cause of Tim O'Brien's PTSD. The title of the story is self-explanatory; it is about a man Tim O'Brien kills in action. He begins the story by describing the dead body of the man. O'Brien describes the man's "jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole" (O'Brien, 118). This is obviously a gruesome sight to see, and O'Brien is just sitting by the body staring at it. He then begins to make up a back-story for this man he just killed. There is no way he knew anything about the man he killed but he begins to make up his life story. "He had been born, maybe, in 1964 in the village of My Khe near the central coastline of Quang Ngai Province, where his parents farmed and where his family had lived for several centuries...He was not a communist. He was a citizen and a soldier." (O'Brien, 119). O'Brien seems to be making this man more human, where in war the enemy is dehumanized in order for soldiers to want to kill. O'Brien is not used to killing; this is possibly his first kill of the war. He cannot believe he has the power to end a complete stranger's life. The entire situation has him in shock. There are also some signs of PTSD that start to become evident in the way Tim O’Brien tells the story. He keeps repeating himself, especially in describing the dead body. The imagery of the eye that’s a “star-shaped hole” really stays with him. He repeats this four times in the short six page story. He also keeps running over the dead mans imaginary life story in his head. This cyclical thought cycle is commonly associated with PTSD.

Theme of Justice

Justice is defined as the quality of being fair and reasonable. In the chapters “Enemies” and “Friends”, the theme of justice has a particularly entertaining way of carrying itself out. These two chapters deal with the interaction between Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen.

During “Enemies”, the first chapter, Jensen and Strunk get into a fight. “Strunk’s nose made a sharp snapping sound, like a fire cracker, but even then Jensen kept hitting him.” This quote vividly describes Jensen’s victory over Strunk. After Strunk’s nose was put back together, he returned to the patrol. Jensen expected revenge for his actions and became very paranoid about Strunk. He was so paranoid that it was, “Like fighting two different wars.” Eventually Jensen smashed his own nose with the back of a pistol, in order to end his guilt. The next morning, both soldiers agreed that everything was square and they moved on.

            In the second chapter, “Friends”, justice is once again served in an unpredictable way.  As time went on, the two became better friends and even made a pact. The pact stated, “If any of them should ever get totally f**d up—a wheelchair wound—the other guy would automatically find a way to end it.” This agreement would later be tested after Strunk stepped on a mortar and lost half of his leg. While lying on the ground helplessly, Strunk is approached by Jensen. Strunk moaned, “Jesus, man. Don’t kill me.”  Against their previous deal, Jensen agrees not to murder Strunk and even gives him hope towards recovery. Strunk later died in Chu Lai. His death brought Jensen a great deal of relief. I believe justice prevailed because their pact’s end goal, neither of them having to live severely handicapped, came true.

            Justice presents itself different ways in each of these chapters. In the first, it is Jensen’s action of breaking his own nose that levels the playing field. In the second chapter, justice sort of prevails on its own without Jensen having to kill Strunk. These two chapters show Tim O’Brien’s ability to present justice in different and entertaining ways.