The Impact of Characterization in The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried is a story driven from many separate places; the use of language, and certainly the setting, are imperative to the story's message and appeal. The ongoing theme of war and aimlessness sets the story apart, but the theme itself derives its impact and meaning from the incredible use of another element. It is the characters, loose and somewhat statically defined, who lend a kind of framed ambiance that implies the account of an entire war contained within the short story of one soldier's death. Through the use of detailed characterization, O'Brien does a brilliant job of dispelling the glorification of war and paints a much dimmer picture of life as a soldier.

When trying to identify the 'main' character in The Things They Carried, it is hard on an individual level to identify anyone besides Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. After all, the story begins and ends with an examination of Cross's psyche, and is driven along by descriptions of his evolving feelings toward love interest Martha. He is the most fleshed-out, and perhaps the only character who undergoes a significant transformation by the story's end. Cross alone, however, does not come close to representing the larger reality of the story; he is simply used as an occasional jumping point, a segue into greater explorations of the story's theme.

"They carried the land itself," writes O'Brien. "Vietnam, the place, the sod -a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity."

In this passage, perhaps the most telling of the story and its theme, the author conjures up an important image. It's not one of Jimmy Cross and his men, it's simply that of a group of soldiers. Despite their idiosyncrasies the men are most often identified in this story by the word "they." The men bore the weights of war together, and in some eventuality came to the same conclusions which were characterized by the author's frequent diatribes that began with the words "they carried." In one particular instance, the good-luck charms of three separate soldiers are described to the reader and presented with a sense of individuality. However, before the soldiers are distinguished from one another they are first united by their possession of superstition.

"The things they carried were determined to some extent by superstition. Lieutenant Cross carried his good-luck pebble. Dave Jensen carried a rabbit's foot. Norman Bowker, other-wise a very gentle person, carried a thumb that had been presented to him as a gift by Mitchell Sanders."

This characterization is repeated throughout the story, implying that the sum of the men is, in terms of the theme, greater than the parts. Together they bear strikingly similar traits that are brought to the forefront through description of the things they carry, and it is this description of similarity that allows O'Brien to relate the true nature of war.

The realities of war relayed through this medium are plentiful. Along with the description of superstition and metaphorical weight, the author writes of disease, death, and raw emotion. The characters' jaded attitudes toward the death of Ted Lavender speaks to the reality they were trying so desperately to escape. They make crude jokes alluding to the nature of his death, casting it as a sort of comic irony so as to avoid contemplating the peril they face each day spent in battle. O'Brien also demonstrates this idea in an incredibly beautiful passage.

"Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn't. When they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear Jesus and flopped around on the earth and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers, hoping not to die. In different ways, it happened to all of them."
Here O'Brien is able to truly summarize the soldiers' experience of the war. While the passage is loaded with implications of intense battle, it is never literally mentioned in the description of the soldiers' actions. They are simply listed as a sequence of movements, thoughts and cries, related to but at the same time completely removed from the idea of war. The actions exist in their own right, simply as things the soldiers did. Of course, in reality they are plausible reactions to the stimuli around them. The soldiers, however, collectively attempt to disentangle them entirely from that reality and force themselves to see only face value.

Lieutenant Cross near the end of the story undergoes an important transformation that ultimately sets him apart from the rest of the characters. Following the death of Ted Lavender he begins to feel the weight of responsibility on his own shoulders as a leader, and is overtaken by guilt.

"He tried not to cry. With his entrenching tool, which weighed five pounds, he began digging a
hole in the earth. He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and
as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a
stone in his stomach for the rest of the war."

Cross's actions, and ultimately his character, are a representation of the idealized soldier. The end of the story finds him vowing to become a better leader and soldier; to remain acutely aware of his surroundings and entrench himself within the reality of his situation. He provides a contrast to the rest of the soldiers, who look upon his grief with a sort of distant amusement. Instead of sharing in the pain of loss and embracing their own reality, they resolve to debating the Lieutenant's authenticity.

In the end, O'Brien's characterization offers an important take on the nature of war. It is one that resists glorification except to use as a backdrop for the truth as he perceives it. The soldiers in the story are faced with two choices; reject their proximity to the reality around them or be driven mad by it. It is a story of the simple yet dire choice between voluntary and forced delusion, and despite popular perception and characterization, most of the characters did not hesitate to choose the former.