Theme Of War In Tim O Brien's The Things They Carried

War is an ambiguous matter. From one perspective, it is seen as a glorious act of valor, benefitting the nation and bringing peace to a victorious land once drenched in blood. On the other hand, however, war is a massacre; a useless act of violence that only brings more death and destruction. While focusing on the bigger picture of war’s influence on the world is often the most popular discussion, the individual aspect of war in which soldiers’ deal with their own personal struggles is often forgotten. Through the novel, The Things They Carried, the author, Tim O’Brien, teaches his readers that war compels soldiers to become morally ambiguous. This message is further reiterated in the poem, Midnight Movie, by Mike Subritzky. Morals become

While out on the battlefield, they often react in ways that are driven by self-preservation. In one case, Tim O’Brien kills a man whose motives were unknown: “I was terrified. There were no thoughts about killing. The grenade was to make him go away – just evaporate – and I leaned back and felt my mind go empty and then felt it fill up again” (). This quote demonstrates how O’Brien was driven by fear to make the man on the trail simply “go away”. He wasn’t thinking about the moral implications at that moment because his mind was “empty”. It was not until after the incident that he could feel his mind being filled up again. The filling up of the mind is O’Brien’s realization of the act that he just committed. Before, his mind was numb, not aware of moral implications of what he was doing. O’Brien was simply trying to stay alive. Similar to O’Brien’s case, Mike Subritzky writes in his poem, Midnight Movie, about a soldier who

Soldiers are held to different expectations when it comes to exhibiting emotion. Take for example, Norman, who is having trouble dealing with Kiowa’s death: “[Norman] could not talk about it and never would. The evening was smooth and warm. If it had been possible, which it wasn't, he would have explained how his friend Kiowa slipped away that night beneath the dark swampy field. He was folded in with the war; he was part of the waste” (). The reason Norman feels like he can’t speak about Kiowa is because he is “folded in with the war”. This phrase means Norman’s mind is trying to fit into the expectation of not showing overt emotions. He is having an internal battle of choosing to show grief and sadness for another human or to not appear as a coward to his fellow soldiers. When war brings about certain social expectations that are different from that of civilian life, it causes soldiers to have an internal struggle of how they should morally react to hard