the things they carried

In the things they carried, I think the main theme to get across is the horrors of war, not only the physical hardships it causes such as the men blown up by mines, or the harsh environment of the Vietemese jungle but also the psychological horrors it causes. Throughout the stories, it becomes clear that war just blurs and confuses everything, from your beliefs, the truth, and even perception.

For example in friends and enemies, we see how much the war has changed these two boys’ views of the world. In such an uncertain environment one lost sight of who "the enemy" really was. This makes you question not only what the psychological impact of war is on the common soldier but also whether they even knew what they were fighting for. They didn’t even know who their enemy was.

This actually brings me to a weird observation I’ve had. At least in the stories I’ve read so far there doesn’t seem to be so many encounters with enemy forces as there are just mines to disarm and skirmishes within the army to take care of. It kind of seems like this is done to take away from the conventional horrors you think of when you picture war such as bloody battles with gunfire and bombs. It makes you focus more on the soldiers themselves and how they’re being affected by everything.

The Vietnam War also greatly blurred the lines of truth. In one story Tim O’brian states how it doesn’t matter if seeing an orchestra in the forest really happened or not how it was all true. This shows how distorted their reality has become in the jungle. They are seeing things that are obviously not true and yet they accept them just as they accept the gruesome deaths of their comrades. I think this can tie into the larger blurring of truth that occurred with the Vietnam war, such as the government blurring the exact number of enemy and American casualties.

That’s all I’ve got so far. sooo yeah