The Blame Game

On page 169, the last paragraph discusses blame. That paragraph really struck me because blame seems so sinmple, but It has some serious effects. Jimmy Cross' thoughts tell us that "When a man died, there had to be blame." That explains Norman Bowker's suicide. each person places the blame in a different place according to his or her own feelings. Norman blamed himself. Although he didn't deserve it, he blamed himself. Jimmy Cross contemplates the "blame game" because it's something that was on the mind of every soldier. Whose fault was it that they were fighting a war? Nobody knew, but this is another insight into the mind of a soldier.

Conflict

Obviously there's some external conflict going on: the war. But the main conflicts of the novel seem to be internal. Jimmy Cross was separated from Martha, a woman he loves who does not love him back, but he still "carried letters from [her]" (1). Tim O'Brien almost swam away to Canada because he didn't want to leave his "mainstream life" (48) for a war in which he didn't believe. The book is mainly centered on how people deal with conflicts inside their own minds, especially when they're in high-pressure situations. The biggest conflict so far in the story is O'Brien's decision to go to war. He says that he "had taken a modest stand against the war" (39) and had even rung "a few doorbells for Gene McCarthy" (39). These aren't the actions of a guy who wants to go to war. His decision was like his own personal war between his mind and his heart.

Past and Present

I really like how O'Brien describes the war but also his life after the war. On page 36, he says "...the war occurred half a lifetime ago, and yet the remembering makes it now." At the beginning, it seemed like the book was going to focus on the war and the experiences one would have in a war and the emotional trials of being away from home. Chapter three and part of chapter two, however, give it a new spin. O'Brien shows the reader how memories of the war can affect a person for years to come. There are certain things which are too painful to talk about or things that people wish they could forget, and when Jimmy Cross and O'Brien visit with each other after the war, this becomes apparent. They have a mutual understanding of this which the reader sees on page 29 when Cross says "And do me a favor. Don't mention anything about--" and O'Brien responds with "No...I won't." Based on O'Brien's descriptions, memories of the war never go away, and neither do the details.

I Guess I Was Wrong...

Okay, so on that point of view thing, I think I was wrong. In chapter 2, O'Brien says "Many years after the war, Jimmy Cross came to visit me at my home in Massachusetts..." This implies that the narrator was, in fact, in on the action of the war. So the narrator is using first person now. I can see how this might get confusing throughout the book, so I think I might be liking it a bit less. With a mix of third and first person narrations, it's hard to tell if he's omniscient or not. Is he making up the other men's emotions and thoughts, or did he ask them about their feelings? And is Jimmy Cross still the main character, or is this a story about Tim O'Brien?

Point of View

The Things They Carried is told from a third person point of view. The narrator describes the love life of Jimmy Cross and on page 15 says that "Jimmy Cross led his men into the village of Than Khe." While the narrator is able to describe all these things, he never uses the pronoun "I" or indicates that he has taken part in any of the action. He also seems to be an omniscient third party. On the first page of the novel, he talks about Jimmy "imagine[ing] romantic camping trips" with Martha. A limited narrator could not know Jimmy's thoughts, so he must be omniscient. After finishing the first chapter, I really do like this book a lot better than TSAR. It's much easier to follow, and it's more entertaining.