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"'But you got to promise. Swear it to me - swear you won't kill me.'
"Jensen nodded and said, 'I swear,'...Later we heard that Strunk died somewhere over Chu Lai, which seemed to relieve Dave Jensen of an enormous weight." -- Page 63
Alas, yet another member of Squad TTTC is wandering the Elysian Fields. It seems only fitting that the two consecutive chapters highlighting Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk's relationship are titled 'Enemies' and 'Friends'. It mirrors the fickleness of Vietnam itself. One day you're safe and sound in a foxhole, the next day a mortar round just went through your leg. The two men's relationship is also defined through the diction and colloquialism spoken between them, most evident with the phrase "Swear it to me". The word 'swear' is not used as simply a vulgar promise, but rather as a sign of the bond between the two friends, explaining why Strunk insists on repeated affirmation. In my personal opinion, Strunk had it coming. He stole a guy's jackknife. I mean, c'mon, you don't do that stuff...
"He showed him what he'd done and asked if everything was square between them.
"Strunk nodded and said, Sure, things were square.
"But in the morning Lee Strunk couldn't stop laughing. 'The man's crazy,' he said. 'I stole his fucking jackknife.'" -- Page 61
Alright, before I get going on my rampage of analysis, I have a legitimate question to ask. Why do authors sometimes use quotes for dialogue and othertimes not (as seen in the above quote)? I'm puzzled as to what effect this has on, well, anything. Anyways, at this point in my reading I'm really enjoying the antics of Squad TTTC (The Things They Carried, self-nicknamed). They crack me up, and this chapter 'Enemies' is no different. Although their motivations are at times confusing, for the most part I take pleasure in reading the stories of everyman heroes. I'm starting to notice that the shorter, get-to-the-point chapters are more entertaining for me than the long, drawn-out, let-me-whine-about-my-feelings mini-novels. One thing I do respect about Tim though is that he knows how to end a chapter. I don't know what it is, but all his endings, up to this point included, either make me laugh or reflect, both of which I'd consider reactions desired from an audience.
"He was the true audience. He was a witness, like God, or like the gods, who look on in absolute silence as we live our lives, as we make our choices or fail to make them." -- Page 57
Ok, so I backtracked a little bit. Shoot me. In truth, I just couldn't pass up this wonderful opportunity to point out a literary term in use. I mentioned in my earlier post an eighty-one year old (his name is Elroy Berdahl), and after my initial temper flare geared towards Tim cooled down, I realized that Elroy is the perfect example of a static character. His personality (at least the part of it we see) fails to change significantly during the story, and he really only serves as a complement to Tim's inner conflict. During the boat scene I kind of interpreted his duty as a Virgil of sorts, a guy who's 'just there' to ferry Dante (Tim) from one world to the next and guide him through the danger he currently faces. Which reminds me, I need to buy Dante's Inferno for my 360. I knew classic literature had it's modern uses!
"...and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war." -- Page 58
I didn't like this chapter. Maybe it's because this guy has gone hippie-liberal on me. Maybe it's because I listen to country music (go figure) and consider myself patriotic. Maybe it's because I'm a narcissist and I don't like when other people think they're better than me.
I don't know.
Anyways, I'd categorize Tim in this chapter as what we literary moguls call an antihero, a person not worthy of the task put in front of him. He avoids the call of duty and runs to Canada (really?) in order to escape confronting his fears. Regardless of what Tim tries to seep into my mind during this chapter, that is not the right thing to do. It was not brave to stay on a resort where you get paid $200 a week for eating an eighty-one year old's food. It takes gall to go off to war, and Tim shames the true heroes in the military by calling himself a coward when he himself comes to terms with his drafting. C'mon Tim, stop being an antihero.
"Or Ted Lavender adopting an orphan puppy - feeding it from a plastic spoon and carrying it in his rucksack until the day Azar strapped the puppy to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device." -- Page 35
I'm sorry if this sounds bad, but this passage literally made me laugh out loud. The fact that, in the middle of all this stressful and traumatizing fighting, a kid named Azar can take another guy's dog and blow it up just brings tears of laughter to my eyes. I took the liberty at this point of looking up just what exactly a Claymore is, and this is what I found:
Pretty menacing stuff, huh? Apparently these things shoot steel balls up to 100 meters away across a 60 degree arc, kind of like a remote-control shotgun. Call me crazy, but seeing a puppy attached to one of these is a new entry on my bucket list.
"Jimmy shook his head. 'It doesn't matter,' he finally said. 'I love her.'" -- Page 28
In the chapter titled 'Love', I made the slightly incorrect assumption that Tim was the Hemingway of his Vietnam platoon and the rest of the chapters in the book would play out similar to the first two; a story was told about a member of the gang during the war, and then where he was after his return to American life was highlighted. The point of view continues to be first person; however, Tim has yet to play a pivotal role in the plot, aside from documenting the stories as they happen. As it turns out, Jimmy still loves Martha. From the persective of my normal, nonviolent, high school drama-lacking life, this seems pathetic, and slightly creepy. But then it made me think; what does war do to a person, mentally and psychologically? It's expected that a soldier may hold on to a fantasy-filled image of what his life was like back home, but for how long? Apparently, time is no magic eraser. Even more puzzling for me is that despite Lieutenant Cross' inner obsessions, other aspects of his life (like being a military leader) seem unaffected. Then again, the book is self-proclaimed fiction, leading me to ponder what parts of certain characters' personae were left as 'fill in the blanks' for O'Brien...
"Lee Strunk carried a slingshot; a weapon of last resort, he called it. Mitchell Sanders carried brass knuckles. Kiowa carried his grandfather's feathered hatchet. Every third or fourth man carried a Claymore antipersonnel mine - 3.5 pounds with its firing device. They all carried fragmentation grenades - 14 ounces each." -- Page 7
Alrighty, here's the deal. I'm not usually very good at pointing out all these hokey-pokey literary devices and other ingenious ways authors convey pulitzer prize-winning styles of legendary writing. However, I really enjoyed the first chapter of the book. The listing of all the equipment the soldiers carried showed some appreciated insight into the lives of someone at war, as well as providing Indirect Characterization for the lives of the men in Tim's squad. Also, the additional weight (e.g. love interests, faith, internal conflict) gave a double meaning to the chapter and book title. They not only carried the weight of their tangibles, but also the weight of their intangibles. The one thing I was grumpy about while reading this first chapter was the dialogue. Why do all classic literary wonders have to contain such (in my opinion) meaningless and painful conversations?
"He remembered kissing her good night at the dorm door. Right then, he thought, he sould've done something brave. He should've carried her up the stairs to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left knee all night long. He should've risked it." -- Page 4
I liked Jimmy. I really did. He was a hopeless romantic who brought along with him a crush from an entirely far-away life. Although having read only the first few pages of the book, I had emotionally invested myself in the outcome of First Lieutenant Cross, the likely protagonist of the book. That is, until the quote above unfolded on the pages of my newly-ordered The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, still wafting off that Amazon new book smell. It was at that moment that I realized Jimmy was not the main character. I mean, how could he be? A perverted potential rapist who eye-fondles a picture of some girl he hasn't seen in who knows how long? I'm not buying it. I only hope my disappointment at this first character does not signal doom for the rest of the book. We shall see.
