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."