Societal Conventions In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is a fictional collection of war stories that describe how knowing the difference between good and evil are changed through warfare and loss. The theme of morals is prevalent but it is displayed through losing previous morals

Tim uses plain, candid storytelling to show that the societal conventions between right and wrong are lost through warfare also. Warfare modifies practically everybody who experience it. Making them lose sight of what is right or wrong. For instance, in Vietnam’s jungles and rice fields, while “humping” or moving along, they would “search the villages without knowing what to look for, not caring, kicking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men, blowing tunnels, sometimes

After Ted Lavender was shot in the head, his compadres “were waiting for Lavender’s chopper, smoking the dead man’s dope”, and joking about his death (20). If this calamity had happened in civilized society, the reaction would have been one of horror, disbelief, or grief, instead of their attempts to make light of death. To distance themselves from the death, they would use “a hard vocabulary” like “lit up, zapped while zipping” and “greased” to pretend that the death they see and make is just in a play-not real (22). As a rule, soldiers are supposed to be the toughest of the tough, but their response to death shows the loss of morality. For example, when Kurt Lemon died, Rat tortured the baby water buffalo because he was extremely upset. This was a shocking and different kind of “sin” so to speak, than what the soldiers had ever seen before, Sanders said that in Vietnam “every sin’s real fresh and original” (80), referring to Rat’s immoral actions and to how in Vietnam, . The pain of loss caused him to do something he would never do at home, but at war in Vietnam, with death and loss attacking sense and reason, it is all blended