The Things They Carried

We read "The Things They Carried", a war story set in Vietnam. The protagonist, Lieutenant Cross, is a man stuck between two worlds-- the rice paddies and deadly jungles of Vietnam, which he must 'hump' without respite, and the world of 'back home' an idea that becomes more and more alien and dangerous to him as the story progresses.

Cross wants what every man in his unit, in his war, wants- he wants to be home. He 'dreams of freedom birds', he wants to survive, to leave this awful place and return to the woman (or rather, the idea of this woman) that he left behind. Cross is instead forced to face the realization that whatever meaning he attached to this woman was invented, that 'home' didn't exist here in the place he inhabited, and that nothing that happens in this world necessarily carries a meaning (or "moral").

Quite a few of the passages are vivid- among the most vivid are the sections and descriptions of Ted Lavender's untimely death, because we often dramatize the actual instant of death, attempting to project ourselves into it, even unconsciously, in order to prepare ourselves for its eventuality. If the act itself is so... banal, it is shocking and surreal, too difficult to parse or categorize, too fleeting to accept as so final a passage. Right alongside the passages involving Lavender are the ones relating to the stone Cross carries in his mouth-- it is rife with symbolism, both sexual (the hard stone in his mouth, perhaps as a substitute for the nipple of the woman he longs for), and as the ultimate unpalatable and impossibly 'bitter pill' of war and mortality. He shuffles the thing in his mouth, tossing and sucking it, but never accepting, never swallowing this fated stone. Instead, it sits squat, out of place (literally, because it comes from 'back home', and metaphorically as a token of fate and death), and salty in his mouth. Finally, the dreamlike images of freedom birds, so out of place within the context of the surrounding language, both in expression and imagery (choice of syntax, almost 'dreamspeak', loose, flowing sentences versus the blunted and clipped wording of the waking life).

It is perhaps fitting that Cross grows to hate Martha-- his survival and sanity is dependent on his strict adherence to the rules of his engagement, as well as his need to offset the guilt he feels over his role in Lavenders death. As a soldier 'humping' the country of Vietnam, always unclear of his mission and even who the enemy is, any enemy, even one so familiar, can serve to crystallize and focus his will when it is needed most.