Interview with Tim O'Brien about his book
Written by Pere Vila
THE AUTHOR
Tim O’Brien was born on October the1st, 1946, in
Austin, Minnesota. He is an American novelist noted for his writings about
American soldiers in the Vietnam War. O’Brien was the son of a schoolteacher
and an insurance salesman who had served in World War II. When he was ten, his
family ―including a younger brother and sister― moved to Worthington,
Minnesota. This place had a large influence on O’Brien’s imagination and his
development as an author. The town is on Lake Okabena, in the southwestern part
of the state, and serves as the setting for some of his stories, especially
those in The Things They Carried.
After studying political science at Macalester College
in Saint Paul, Minnesota, O’Brien was drafted into the U.S. Army. In later
talks and essays, O’Brien has described how conflicted he felt when he was
drafted. He said he often felt restless and shaped by its conservative civic
culture. Opposed to the Vietnam War, he spent the summer of 1968 working in a
meatpacking plant, while he worried about his draft notice. O’Brien has
recalled feeling pulled in two directions: toward his anti-war convictions on
one side and, on the other, toward family expectations, hometown loyalties, and
fear of being a coward if he refused to serve. In his public lectures, he uses
this period to illustrate the moral pressure many draftees experienced as they
decided whether to enter the Army, resist the draft, or leave the country. He
had been opposed to the war and intended to go to Canada while in training in
Washington. Instead, he returned to the army base out of fear, and the
following year he was sent to fight in Vietnam.
During his tour of duty, he walked with his platoon to
the village of My Lai, where a massacre of unarmed villagers by another platoon
had occurred in March 1968, unbeknownst at the time to O’Brien and his fellow
soldiers. Years later he would return to Vietnam and revisit My Lai, and write
about his experience in a powerful essay for The New York Times, called “The
Vietnam in me”.
When he returned to the U.S., he studied
intermittently at Harvard University and worked for The Washington Post (1971-74),
as an intern and reporter. He collected his newspaper and magazine articles
about his war experiences in his first book If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box
Me Up and Ship Me Home, by turns meditative and brutally realistic; it was
praised for its honest portrayal of a soldier’s emotions.
The Vietnam War is present in many of O’Brien’s
novels: Going after Cacciato; the already mentioned If I Die in a
Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home; In the Lake of the Woods; The Things
They Carried; Tomcat in Love; etc.
Among other prizes, O’Brien won the 1979 National Book
Award; The James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction, in 1995;
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation, in August 2012; and in 2010, he
received The Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Whittier College.
THE STORY
The Things They Carried is a collection of interconnected short stories about
the experiences of a small company of young American men serving in the Vietnam
War. The book blurs the line between fiction and autobiography, leaving the
reader unsure as to what is fact and what is myth. It is told mainly from the
first-person perspective of a middle-aged narrator named Tim O’Brien (the same
name of the author), who is looking back on his time during the war. The first
story, the one we read, gives its name to the entire book and is a kind of
introduction to the main characters and everything they carry, both physically
and emotionally.
The story begins with the letters sent by a girl,
Martha, which lieutenant Jimmy Cross was carrying. These letters appear
throughout the story, as a reference to the past that Cross has left behind and
which is very different from the reality he lives in Vietnam. Then the narrator
goes on to detail what some of the soldiers carried. First, he details what
they carried according to psychological needs, for example: Kiowa carried his
father’s New Testament and his grandfather’s old hatchet; Henry Dobbins, in dangerous
situations, carried his girlfriend’s pantyhose wrapped around his neck as a
comforter; Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers and 6 or 7
ounces of premium dop… All this mixed with the detailed description of the weight
of their weapons, ammunition, helmets, bulletproof vests, mine detectors, radios,
flares, etc.
Little by little, learning how things weigh, we get
into the activities and routines of one platoon of 17 men in the Vietnam War:
like marching in a line through the meadows and rice fields to the coordinates
of an ambush; or how they chose by lot who would enter the tunnels that the
Vietnamese strategically built to hide; or how they dug the holes in which they
had to spend the night. Until the story reaches a turning point: The death of Ted
Lavender.
Everyone is affected by the death of their comrade. While
waiting for the chopper to evacuate the dead man, they smoke Ted’s drug, as a kind
of tribute and release from the pain of the loss. Then they entered the village
of Than Khe and burned everything, shot the chickens and dogs, they called in
artillery and watched the wreckage.
Lieutenant Cross feels responsible for Lavender’s
death and takes his position more seriously: he burns Martha’s letters and
photos. Henceforth he would shut down the daydreams, he would not tolerate
laxity, he would show strength, he needed to distance himself from his men, and
reminded himself that his obligation was not to be loved but to lead.
STYLISTIC KEYS OF THE AUTHOR
Metafiction: O’Brien frequently addresses the act of storytelling
itself, drawing attention to the artificiality of narrative and the author’s
role. He often affirms that a story isn’t true in a literal sense but that it
is true in the sense of capturing a particular emotional or psychological
reality.
Fragmentation: His stories often lack a traditional narrative
structure, jumping between time periods and perspectives. This fragmentation
mirrors the fractured nature of memory and the disorientation experienced by
soldiers in combat.
Repetition and Motif: O’Brien uses repetition and recurring motifs to
emphasize key themes and create emotional resonance. The image of the weight
carried by soldiers ―both physical and emotional― is a prominent motif in The
Things They Carried.
Lyrical Prose: Despite dealing with difficult subject matter,
O’Brien’s prose is often remarkably beautiful and evocative. He employs vivid
imagery and poetic language to create a powerful emotional impact.
“Happening Truth”: O’Brien frequently speaks of a “Happening Truth”, a
truth that isn’t necessarily factual but is emotionally and psychologically
authentic. This concept is central to his writing. He argues that stories can
be true even if they did not happen exactly as told. The goal is not to report
facts but to convey a deeper understanding of the human experience.
IN MY OPINION
This story is highly recommended to the times we live
in, when wars spread so easily. We have in our hands an anti-war book par
excellence. All the events narrated in the story lead us to reject wars, such
as the death of Lavender and its consequences, that we have already seen above.
This is a clear example of how brutal wars are. However, there are two more
examples that I would like to comment on: one is Martha’s virginity, and the
other what we could call Sander’s gift.
Martha’s virginity. Throughout
this chapter of the book, Lieutenant Cross reflects at least five times on
Martha’s virginity. Is Martha a virgin or not?, Cross asks himself. We don’t
need to know. What matters is what O’Brien (the author) wants to convey to us
with this fact. Martha’s letters talk about teachers, classmates, writers,
poets… She never mentions the war. She lives in another world. She lives
immaculately, without having to do horrible things. She carries no stain, nor
does she imagine the hell that Jimmy Cross is going through. She does not
suspect how dirty war is, how it profanes the integrity of the soldiers, who
are stained for life. Martha’s virginity is for Cross like a mirror, where
every time he looks at it, he sees himself dirtier.
Sander’s gift. This is the episode where Mitchell Sander finds the
dead body of a Viet Cong boy. Sander says: Here it is a definite moral. And he
cuts off the dead boy’s thumb and gives it to Norman Bowker, who will carry it
on his person from then on. Then they argue about the morality of this event, but
it is really hard to see the moral here. However, if we look just before these
events, Bowker is described as a good person, literally “a very gentle person”.
Under normal circumstances, a good person would never accept a gift of this
kind. But they are in a cruel war, and Bowker accepts the gift. So, the moral
is that no matter how good a person you are, in a war to survive you have to do
horrible things. And they remember the old TV series Have gun, will travel,
where if you have a gun, use it and you will be able to move forward, survive. So,
we see how war brutalizes good people.
TO FINISH
Tim O’Brien work has helped redefine the war
narrative, moving away from traditional heroic portrayals and focusing instead
on the psychological and emotional toll of conflict. His innovative use of
metafiction and his exploration of the relation between truth and storytelling
have inspired countless writers. His commitment to honesty, vulnerability and
emotional depth has earned him a place among the most important American
authors of his generation. He forces readers to confront the complexities of
truth and the enduring power of stories to shape our understanding of the
world.
O’Brien’s legacy is not simply about writing about
war, it is about writing about what means to be human: to remember, to grieve,
to search for meaning in a chaotic world, and to understand that the stories we
tell ourselves and each other ultimately define us.
QUESTIONS
-What things would you carry (in an emergency, in an epidemic,
to a desert island…)?
-Are they fair wars and unfair wars, or are all the
wars unjustifiable?
-How can an Indian become a Christian? How is possible
for a person fit two contradictory behaviours or beliefs / faiths?
-Would you justify SIW in order to avoid going to war?
-What do you think it’s better for a country, a compulsory
military service for everybody, or a professional army? Expose your reasons.
VOCABULARY
(There are unnumbered military
terms in the text: we’ll try to explain them in our session.)
foxhole, canteen, major, killer, magazine, swabs, slingshot,
bad news, draw numbers, rabies, spools, fatigues, sniper, frisking, smokestacks,
wiggy, talons
