War In The Things They Carried, By Tim O Brien

War and the experiences encountered within it create countless stories, both heroic and horrific. A few of these war stories are shared throughout the book, The Things they Carried, by Tim O’Brien. The men involved in these war stories respond to the uncertainty, fear, and death that surrounds them in their own distinct ways. During a time of war, the soldiers in combat respond to their stimulative surroundings through their own coping mechanisms. In the chapter, Night Life, Rat Kiley’s fear of death leads him to deal with it in a horrifyingly brutal way. Kiley, holding the position of medic in his platoon, dealt with countless disturbing injuries as well as several deaths. As O’Brien describes Kiley’s state of mind he recounted, “Always policing

The second Curt was notified of the dentist’s presence on the base, he immediately became fearful of the moment he would have to step into the tent of the Army dentist for his inspection. In the book O’Brien explains, “He didn’t mind blood or pain --- he actually enjoyed combat --- but there was something about a dentist that just gave him the creeps.” O’Brien suggests through this comment that Curt was not a man full of fear, rather just simply a fear of dentists. Immediately passing out as he stepped into the tent resulted from this built of fear Curt possessed. Curt’s reaction to his fear formed a cowardly aura for himself, which challenged him to defeat this newfound aura. Curt marched straight back into the tent at night, falsifying a toothache, forcing the dentist to rip out one of his perfectly good teeth. Curt responds to his surroundings at war by doing this brutal action, to not only prove his strength and bravery to the men around him but also to himself.

The way Henry Dobbins chooses to deal with the fear that surrounds him is mentioned several times throughout the book, particularly in the chapter Stockings. Dobbins finds comfort and a release of fear through wearing the stockings of his girlfriend around his neck. “More than anything, though, the stockings were a talisman for him. They kept him safe. They gave access