Analyze Short Fiction

Analyze Short Fiction

TIM O’BRIEN

THE THINGS THEY CARRIED

First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian

College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them

folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig

his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers,

and spend the last hour of light pretending. He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White

Mountains in New Hampshire. He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had

been there. More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her, but the letters were

mostly chatty, elusive on the matter of love. She was a virgin, he was almost sure. She was an English

major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm

exams, about her respect for Chaucer and her great affection for Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines

of poetry; she never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself. The letters weighed

10 ounces. They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was only a way

of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant. At dusk, he would carefully return

the letters to his rucksack. Slowly, a bit distracted, he would get up and move among his men, checking

the perimeter, then at full dark he would return to his hole and watch the night and wonder if Martha

was a virgin.

The things they carried were largely determined by necessity. Among the necessities or near-ne-

cessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent,

chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military

Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water. Together, these items weighed be-

tween 15 and 20 pounds, depending upon a man’s habits or rate of metabolism. Henry Dobbins, who was

a big man, carried extra rations; he was especially fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound

cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized

bars of soap he’d stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers

until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because

2 Tim O’Brien: The Things They Carried

it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed 5 pounds including the liner and camouflage

cover. They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their

feet they carried jungle boots—2.1 pounds—and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of

Dr. Scholl’s foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried

6 or 7 ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried

condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist,

carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday

school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his

grandmother’s distrust of the white man, his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated.

Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel-centered,

nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier.

Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in

the helmet band for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet,

each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent.

With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost 2 pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April,

for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him

across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away.

They were called legs or grunts.

To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Mar-

tha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, to hump meant to walk, or to march,

but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive.

Almost everyone humped photographs. In his wallet, Lieutenant Cross carried two photo-

graphs of Martha. The first was a Kodacolor snapshot signed Love, though he knew better. She stood

against a brick wall. Her eyes were gray and neutral, her lips slightly open as she stared straight-on at

the camera. At night, sometimes, Lieutenant Cross wondered who had taken the picture, because he

knew she had boyfriends, because he loved her so much, and because he could see the shadow of the

picture-taker spreading out against the brick wall. The second photograph had been clipped from the

1968 Mount Sebastian yearbook. It was an action shot—women’s volleyball—and Martha was bent

horizontal to the floor, reaching, the palms of her hands in sharp focus, the tongue taut, the expression

frank and competitive. There was no visible sweat. She wore white gym shorts. Her legs, he thought,

were almost certainly the legs of a virgin, dry and without hair, the left knee cocked and carrying her

entire weight, which was just over 100 pounds. Lieutenant Cross remembered touching that left knee.

A dark theater, he remembered, and the movie was Bonnie and Clyde, and Martha wore a tweed skirt,

and during the final scene, when he touched her knee, she turned and looked at him in a sad, sober

3Tim O’Brien: The Things They Carried

way that made him pull his hand back, but he would always remember the feel of the tweed skirt and

the knee beneath it and the sound of the gunfire that killed Bonnie and Clyde, how embarrassing it

was, how slow and oppressive. He remembered kissing her good night at the dorm door. Right then,

he thought, he should’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. Whenever he

looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he should’ve done.

What they carried was partly a function of rank, partly of field specialty.

As a first lieutenant and platoon leader, Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, code books,

binoculars, and a .45-caliber pistol that weighed 2.9 pounds fully loaded. He carried a strobe light and

the responsibility for the lives of his men.

As an RTO, Mitchell Sanders carried the PRC-25 radio, a killer, 26 pounds with its battery.

As a medic, Rat Kiley carried a canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria

tablets and surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic must carry, including M&M’s for

especially bad wounds, for a total weight of nearly 20 pounds.

As a big man, therefore a machine gunner, Henry Dobbins carried the M-60, which weighed 23

pounds unloaded, but which was almost always loaded. In addition, Dobbins carried between 10 and

15 pounds of ammunition draped in belts across his chest and shoulders.

As PFCs or Spec 4s, most of them were common grunts and carried the standard M-16 gas-op-

erated assault rifle. The weapon weighed 7.5 pounds unloaded, 8.2 pounds with its full 20-round

magazine. Depending on numerous factors, such as topography and psychology, the riflemen carried

anywhere from 12 to 20 magazines, usually in cloth bandoliers, adding on another 8.4 pounds at mini-

mum, 14 pounds at maximum. When it was available, they also carried M-16 maintenance gear—rods

and steel brushes and swabs and tubes of LSA oil—all of which weighed about a pound. Among the

grunts, some carried the M-79 grenade launcher, 5.9 pounds unloaded, a reasonably light weapon ex-

cept for the ammunition, which was heavy. A single round weighed 10 ounces. The typical load was

25 rounds. But Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried 34 rounds when he was shot and killed outside

Than Khe, and he went down under an exceptional burden, more than 20 pounds of ammunition,

plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and tranquilizers and all the

rest, plus the unweighed fear. He was dead weight. There was no twitching or flopping. Kiowa, who

saw it happen, said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or something—just boom, then

down—not like the movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over

teakettle—not like that, Kiowa said, the poor bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down. Nothing else. It

was a bright morning in mid-April. Lieutenant Cross felt the pain. He blamed himself. They stripped

off Lavender’s canteens and ammo, all the heavy things, and Rat Kiley said the obvious, the guy’s

4 Tim O’Brien: The Things They Carried