All of the short stories throughout Tim O’Brien’s book The Things They Carried have various themes that are often reoccurring in each story. Two of the stories which show many different aspects of O’ Brien’s experience before and during the war are On the Rainy River and Lives of the Dead. Both of these were an interesting insight into what a young man goes through when he is called off to war.
In the beginning of the book O’Brien presents the story On the Rainy River. In this installment of his book he shows how he wasn’t interested in going to the war in the first place, and actually attempted fleeing to Canada to avoid the draft. Once he actually makes it to Canada he becomes very emotional. This leads to him turning around and going to war because of the sheer embarrassment he felt.
There are many different themes that can be found in this piece. Rules are a major theme here. The rules that O Brien is expected to live by he doesn’t agree with, leading to him attempting to break the rules. It turns out for him he has such convictions to the rules he can’t bring himself to break them. Shame is also something we see that is very apparent here. He can’t endure the shame he will be feeling if he actually flees to Canada. This is why he breaks into tears when he’s on the boat just 20 miles from the Canadian shore and then turns around to go home and be a part of the war. Truth is also scene here very prominently. In the beginning of this story when O’Brien has just finished school and he is working in the meat packing plant he has no aspirations to go to war. He claims he doesn’t know the truth about what happened to the U.S.S. Maddox and doesn’t know anything about Ho Chi Minh. All of the people he knows from town don’t know either they feel he should just go to war for his country. Showing knowing the truth about what is going on is very important not only in this story but O’Brien’s whole book.
Another story in the book where we see many opposing themes that we saw here is in Lives of the Dead. This is a much darker story in the book, but does have an uplifting message. The main theme of this story is death. As O’Brien explains the first time he fell in love. It was with a girl named Linda, they were just 9 years old at the time. Linda always wore a red cap. No one knew why until one day a kid knocked it off her head exposing she was going bald due to a brain tumor. Shortly after this she died. O’Brien explains vividly the experience of seeing her in the casket. This was a loss of innocence for O’Brien. He was seeing the first girl that he loved now dead in a casket in front of him. He was experiencing love and death for the first time as a young boy. This leads to how the soldiers in the platoon deal with seeing so many dead bodies in general. Dave Jensen, a member of the platoon, makes fun of an armless man that is dead on the ground. The men of the platoon often acted as if the bodies were still alive conversing with them just as a form of escape. Escape is such an important thing in this story and in any setting of war when you’re getting to know the soldiers.
There are many other themes in each story of the book. These were a few that re-appear throughout almost all of the stories and in any war story showing what the soldiers are really going through.
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