The Lives of the Dead

O'Brien continues to tell stories because they keep alive the memory of whatever they're about. He continues to tell the stories about Vietnam because when he's gone, what will there be to tell then if he doesn't do it first? They're his memories that will live on and be relevant because they're being thought upon. The parallel storytelling of Linda, Tim's young love that died, with the story of Curt Lemon, who went out on Halloween and disrobed a Vietnamese woman and took her clothes. There is a contrast of good and bad in O'Brien's life and he tells the stories to maybe remind himself of all what he's experienced and the person it has made him. Most of what he has gone through seems like fiction to regular people who haven't been able to live life and now he can dress it up any which way he wants to because he knows what's the truth and as long as he does, it doesn't matter what's really being told to others. This is also why he creates the most main character we have in his image because it's easier to lie if it's yourself you're lying about. However, this also enables him to incorporate his own opinions and lessons on morality with becoming preachy. It's really great that he was able to also include insight and emotion along with history because it makes what could be false just a little more real.

Night Life

I suppose that when you become one with Vietnam for too long it drives you insane and you can't help but feel trapped inside. That's why Rat Kiley started itching himself to the point where he bled because after feeling nothing for so long, real pain is what he needed. It's ironic that he feels that the bugs are after him and that the bugs are eating him alive because bugs are what do indeed eat you after you die. Especially if you're left on the ground in war. All of the things he's hallucinating are things that he actually has seen being a medic and as a medic you're not supposed to break down like Kiley is doing which is why no one can blame him when he puts a bullet through his own foot. All of the stories in this novel end with whatever character is the main focus losing something, whether it be their life or their mind or somebody else's life. That's what war is about, though. Losing to gain. The soldiers lose something in order for higher powers to gain whatever it is they want. It's unfair and it will continue to be.

The Ghost Soliders

This chapter was funnier than the last couple. It reveals that Tim O'Brien is sort of a mad man. To contemplate vengeance against Booby Jorgenson, who was new to the field and who was trying his best under mutual circumstances, is kind of crazy. Also, when O'Brien is extracting his revenge it's funny that he tries to recruit someone like Mitchell Sanders first who earlier in the chapter he describes as someone who "believed in the power of morals" so of course Sanders wouldn't want to morally obligate himself with O'Brien. So then O'Brien enlists Azar who is perfectly fine with what Tim is planning because Azar is obviously "just a boy."

It's eerie when Tim and Azar are playing with Jorgenson because Tim goes on to describe it as "I was the beast on their lips - I was Nam - the horror, the war." This is vaguely reminiscent of when Mary Anne Bell said "I just want to eat this place. Vietnam. [...] I just want to eat it and have it there inside me." It's something about this country and this time that has a profound effect on people, or that's how the author is describing it, that makes them want to feel one with the country: the landscape, the people, the violence. It's an odd connection that someone who is mentally sound would want but as one can read that at the end of the chapter, after all is said and done between Tim and Bobby, Azar wants to continue and goes as far as calling Tim "disgusting" because he's made his peace. I find it funny that Tim says to Bobby "Let's kill Azar."

Good Form / Field Trip

In these two chapters, it seems like the reader gets background information about the narrator but at the same time it feels like it's the author speaking. That's my one qualm with this novel: it's hard to distinguish between the narrator and the author. I feel that it should be the author speaking but it's not and I'm constantly reminded that this is a novel and that what I'm reading isn't necessarily true. Like in 'Good Form' when the narrator tells about the time when he watched someone die in My Khe and he feels guilty because of it but subsequently says "But listen. Even that story is made up." What am I supposed to trust? I get that this novel is supposed to be great and all but reading it further and further, it's just getting annoying with the perpetual storytelling and what is lies and what isn't; what to believe and what not to believe.

In the chapter Field Trip, the narrator takes his young daughter to Vietnam so she can explore the world and such but then he eventually takes her to where Kiowa died. In my opinion, that's really selfish to do because that was a place of strife and struggle and sadness and to expose a child to anything that you yourself harbor ill feelings towards is selfish. Even though Kathleen had no idea what the significance specifically was, it's still not fair. I didn't even know that Tim O'Brien was there when Kiowa died? Maybe I'm overlooking a bigger meaning but I was not impressed with this.

In The Field

Jimmy Cross's character is very interesting. He takes moral responsibility for other mens' lives and when one of them is lost, he blames himself which the results in an immediate overcorrection. In this case, it was making everyone search the "shit field" in search of Kiowa's body where as before with Ted Lavender's death, he burns Martha's picture. He is too connected to the war even though he claims that "the war meant nothing to him. He did not care one way or the other about the war, and he had no desire to command." He's obsessive over the men he commands and assumes too much guilt over their death. It's ironic that near the end of the chapter he kicks back and floats in the mud and filth that could be seen as letting himself feel what Kiowa felt in his last moments maybe and all the while he's writing and revising a letter that he's going to write to Kiowa's father about the man he thought Kiowa was and how Cross is at fault for his death. This is reminiscent of the letter that Rat Kiley writes to Curt Lemon's sister where he said the same things that Cross is planning to say.Writing, telling stories, and making jokes are reflexive coping mechanisms that go along with isolated company and boredom that also soothe in a crisis and subsequent death of a fellow soldier.

When the character of the young boy is introduced, I immediately thought it was Tim O'Brien but then the chapter goes on to give more detail that derails this assumption. I found this mysterious character curious and I question who he really is and what is his purpose other than to share the guilt or blame placed on Kiowa's death. So far it's three people that feel responsible but I agree with Norman Bowker's opinion in that it's "nobody's fault" but at the same time it's "everybody's." And I also think it's amusing that Azar actually apologizes for his comments about Kiowa literally "eating shit" as a way of death and that he feels guilty for saying those things because he feels like Kiowa was "listening."

Notes

"the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them"

-"Cause and Effect", Charles Bukowski

This chapter is interesting because it reveals a lot about the narrator, and possibly the author, and about the character Norman Bowker. Much about Bowker's postwar life can be compared to O'Brien's trouble writing about it in his literature. Bowker's life wavered after the war and so did O'Brien's feelings about how he tried to explain it in his novel Going After Cacciato and eventually O'Brien cuts the chapter from that novel just as Bowker cuts his own life out of the picture. It's tragic that he never got to read this book. 

Notes also gives insight to the lives of both O'Brien and Bowker and their transitions from wartime to peacetime. Bowker obviously chose to lose touch with normal life that ends with his demise but O'Brien, however, gets along just fine and goes to graduate school at Harvard. I personally would find that hard to do after experiencing so much like Vietnam. 

Speaking of Courage

In this chapter there's a lot of "ifs" and "would'ves" and could'ves." The war is over and Norman Bowker is home and has no idea what to do with himself. He wants to tell his story about how he "almost" earned the Silver Star for valor but he doesn't. He feels that he he didn't have enough courage but really he did for being able to endure the war and come out alive. The title is ironic in the way that he didn't earned the medal for valor, that he wasn't brave enough to pull Kiowa out of the "shit fields." He fills his time at home by driving around and thinking  of what might happen if things would go they do in his head but it doens't mean anything because what happened has happened. He develops these stories about could happen because he is ashamed in a way that he didn't receive that medal. He wants to believe in it enough so that it comes true. It's his way of filling his home life now with the war he has become a part of.

Stockings - Style

I like that Henry Dobbins believes in a tangible item as his protection and comfort rather than a false god; to me that is more powerful than religion. Also, I like that he wanted to be a minister but only for the compassion towards other people and that he didn't want to get tied up with explanations and such. That's like a subconscious rejection of organised religion and a belief in human kindness, something that isn't often prevalent in wartime. He just wants to "wear a robe and be nice to people."

In "The Man I Killed," Tim O'Brien describes the extremely gruesome way that some Vietnam boy looks and finishes it with "and it was this wound that had killed him." The description makes this death seem more important than most human deaths so far in this novel with the exception of the baby buffalo. Then, he goes into an imaginary story about who this boy probably was, only going off of visual aspects of his person. This is O'Brien's first kill and I suspect that it means more to him than anything at this point, taking another' life, that he would want to speculate on what he's taken. O'Brien describes "the star-shaped hole" in the boy's eye as "red and yellow" which could be a reference to the communist flag and this is a metaphorical death of such.
He didn't kill this man out of embarrassment not to but out of nothing else to do. He explains that he was on watch at night and this man rolls out of the fog and O'Brien just throws the grenade, already prepped to be thrown so he was obviously expecting something but he didn't think this man an enemy. It seems that he killed this man because that's what the war told him to do.

The dancing girl in "Style" is strange and it's creepy that she still finds so much joy in dancing when her entire village, more specifically, her family, is burnt into a crisp.

Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

The story of Mary Anne's journey in Vietnam is thoroughly haunting in the way that an area of land can fully envelop a person and turn them into another. The metamorphosis of a young girl, someone my age, into a warrior, a "killer", is so poignant. I particularly enjoyed the character of Mary Anne Bell because she "came over clean and she got dirty and afterward it's never the same again." Being clean all the time is something that I personally strive towards but really I wish that I could relax more about it and just get over and Mary Anne is an example of being clean all the time and finally getting over it and becoming one with the jungle and the war.
The breaks in Rat Kiley's story telling refer back to the statement that he "had a reputation for exaggeration and overstatement, they give pause enough for you, and the soldiers he's talking to, to question the reality. However, it is best to ignore analyses and continue with the fantasy it creates.
I feel that it's better not knowing what exactly happened to Mary Anne because it adds to the allure that a mere girl can connect so fully with the vicious cycle of war and its casualties.

How to Tell a True War Story

The way O'Brien describes a war story makes it sound like a giant contradiction. He says that there is a moral but if there is you can never understand it because you have to actually be there to get the meaning. He says that war stories are never true. In the end he compares these stories to all of these contradictions that make the meaning of this story no clearer than when I started reading.

Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon’s friendship is interesting because Kiley is the medic and his best friend dies by stepping on a mine and being blown to pieces, something that Kiley obviously can’t fix; not even a wound that can heal but he ends up in pieces in a tree. His death is kind of symbolic in the way that he’s described by O’Brien as taking the “curious step from the shade to the sunlight” and then being blown upwards from the force of the mine could be seen as him ascending to heaven.

Rat Kiley brutally killing the baby buffalo was more disturbing than Lemon’s death. To me, this seemed like Kiley killed something so innocent in revenge for the Viet Cong killing his idol and his “soul mate.” Kiley doesn’t cope in the way that one should right away so he fights violence with violence. It isn’t until later where he pours his heart out and mulls over this letter that he writes to Lemon’s sister where he explains himself thoroughly and cries in remembrance, which is most likely the reason he’s do offended when “the dumb cooze” doesn’t write back.

Enemies / Friends

I enjoyed both of these chapters and found them to be both comical and tragic. The dynamic between Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen is funny because it doesn't seem right that a man would can beat down another man and break his nose would be so paranoid over them later. Jensen's paranoia could serve as a side effect of the war where you constantly have to be on guard of your life and I suppose he feels that he's wronged Strunk and Strunk deserves to be vengeful and it gets to the point where Jensen feels the need to call it even and break his own nose. Again, there is irony because Strunk did indeed steal Jensen's knife which incited the fight to being with, however, Strunk met his fate when his leg was blown off by a mine and he was the one who was paranoid that Jensen was going to kill him after they had previously made the pact to automatically kill the other if one should ever receive "a wheelchair wound."

On a Rainy River

The entire first paragraph of this chapter is worded in a way that builds excitement and incites a curiosity to continue reading. In my opinion it's almost anticlimactic in the way that the narrator makes it seem that he's about to tell a story about the time he murdered his neighbor but really he's recounting his fear and embarrassment about being drafted. Although this is the case, I enjoyed how this story gives detailed background information and establishes a point of view of one of the soldiers that have been present in this novel. I found Tim O'Brien's muted contemplation of escaping to Canada but only making it to the Minnesota border. Also I particularly liked the character of Elroy Berdahl who might serve as a foil to Tim's character as Tim is frantic for a decision to fighting but Elroy is old enough to have a great understanding of humans to not worry anymore. Tim changes in the way that significantly effects the way the rest of his life is going to be lived. If he had gone to Harvard and lived his life never experiencing something as a tremendous as the Vietnam War, who really knows the kind of person Tim would have become.

I found it very ironic that, at the time, a soft spoken being like Tim O'Brien would hold a job as gruesome as a pig declotter. It's ironic that this job which he describes as "standing eight hours a day under a lukewarm blood bath" is a precursor to war where you could be standing for 24 hours a day under a blazing sun watching the men and women and children around you die in an actual blood bath. The pigs that are decapitated, split down the length of the belly, pried open, eviscerated, and strung up by the hind hocks" would become human beings and it would all be real.

Love / Spin

“I want to know you moved and breathed in the same world with me.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

I am actually quite attached to the story of Martha and Jimmy Cross. That kind of romance fascinates me because it's so tragic and meaningful to know that one person can feel so much about another human being and at the same time are never able to know anything about them. There are so many questions that would be unanswered and it hurts when you realize that. When you become obsessed with the existence of someone else it does distract you from what is real and tangible and you focus on achieving that goal of nearness. You start making up reasons why you should be together and you look for them in random objects.

I think that Jimmy Cross feels so guilty after Ted Lavender is killed is because that event is what proves to him that she is another body that is living a life somewhere else and she is not thinking about him. Essentially, Ted Lavender losing his life is what forces Jimmy to take back his and burning all of Martha's pictures sets her apart from the war.

As the character Tim O'Brien is remembering his time spent in Vietnam, he reconnects to the people he shared that time with. He remembers the good and the bad. The war and the peace. The boredom and the action. To him, making these connections, and writing about them, is an obsession. He makes positive connections with all of what he experienced there, both the frightening and the mellow. Hindsight is 20/20.

The Things They Carried

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is in love with Martha in the sense that he has convinced himself that she loves him and twists the words in her letters to him to imply romantic feelings, however this is evidently only out of politeness; he knows this but chooses to accept his own reality. He relies on Martha's presence in his mind only because he is scared out of his wits in this foreign place and put in charge of other human beings' lives. This creates an intense mental stress that Jimmy Cross deals with by holding on to a piece of home by clinging to these letters and their imaginative meanings. It almost is used to prove that a civil life still exists.  After Ted Lavender is shot dead on front of everyone, Jimmy Cross is suddenly reevaluating his "relationship" with Martha and her letters and at the end of this first chapter, he takes a brave step mentally, and burns them in a foxhole he's dug. This act and the following declaration of being a better officer to his troops and implementing stricter SOPs is just a coping mechanism he's using to deal with the fact that his "day-dreaming" has cost another his life. From this point on I feel that he's only going to cover up his emotion, because feelings of being weak in a time of war are looked at to be embarrassing, and this will eventually turn into either anger or insanity. He's lost his hope of home and gained a sense of real emotion and reality.


The idea of listing items a solider would carry at this time and the weight of it manifests a tactile feeling. I imagined actually holding all of these things collectively and having to walk around with it all. It connected real things to words. It's effect on me as a reader is one of awe for the fact that I know I would not be physically capable of supporting that weight. The weight's also illustrate a factual and concise image of "the things they carried."