by Ryan Trego

Throughout the novel The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, there are many examples of life and death situations. The brutality of war can be very intense, and no one ever knows what is going to happen next. One minute you are alive and breathing, and the next minute you are lying on the ground, dead. Life can be taken away so fast; just one blink of the eye and it could be over. Now, it is pretty obvious that war is scary and frightening, but the fact of the matter is, it’s unpredictable. Life and death are two completely opposite things, but the most important thing is trying to stay alive.

One simple thing that is done every single day can turn into death. Ted Lavender feels the sudden urge to use the bathroom. He wanders away from the group while they are waiting for Lee Strunk to come out of the tunnels, “As they waited, the men smoked and drank Kool-Aid, not talking much . . . Henry Dobbins ate a tropical chocolate bar. Ted Lavender popped a tranquilizer and went off to pee” (O’Brien 10-11). Walking towards the bushes, he never saw it coming. One minute he was going to the bathroom, and the next he had been shot. All for nothing; if he had only stayed with the rest of the group, it would never have even happened. “While Kiowa was describing how Lavender had died, Lieutenant Cross found himself trembling. He tried not to cry . . . he felt shame. He hated himself” (16). Death affects everyone differently, but in this case, Cross feels like it is his fault because Lavender was one of his men, and he was responsible for him. If the Lieutenant would have been watching his men more closely, Lavender may still have been alive.

Throughout the book, the group learned to be more careful when they stopped to rest, but over time, they became lazy and were not as careful as they should be, and when they are not careful accidents can be repeated.“They were just goofing. There was a noise, I suppose, which must’ve been the detonator, so I glanced behind me and watched Lemon step from the shade into bright sunlight. His face was suddenly brown and shining . . . when he died it was almost beautiful, the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree” (67).

Just like that, Lemon was gone. He never even saw it coming; one minute he was playing catch, and the next he got blown up and was dead. All it took was one little mistake of not paying attention to what he was doing; they decided to goof off and it turned into an unbelievable situation. After the harsh day they all had, all they wanted to do was to relax and hang out. The first mistake was they had no one on watch duty, so at any moment they could have been attacked, and they never would have seen it coming. The second mistake that they made was that no one had policed the grounds to look for mines. As a result of them not policing the grounds, they did not catch the mine that killed Lemon.

The harsh reality of war is that it is never really known when or if your time is going to be up. When Lemon stepped on that land mine, it took the men a while to react to the reality of losing another one of their brothers. The pain of losing a loved one sometimes is unbearable, and that is why some of the men had a hard time talking about what had happened that day in the field. They all remained very quiet in the minutes leading up to loading him in the helicopter to send him back home.

All of the soldiers had hoped that what happened to Lemon would never happen to them. O’Brien had the hardest time mourning; he wanted to feel bad but he couldn’t. “I found it hard to mourn. I knew him only slightly, and what I did know was not impressive” (82). Tim O’Brien had a hard time mourning Lemon’s death because Lemon always seemed to play the “tough guy” and it really annoyed O’Brien. He wanted to feel bad, but he was having such a hard time doing it. When the dentist came to their camp to check all of their teeth, Lemon was the only one who was afraid to go into the tent to see the dentist. Lemon always acted like a tough guy, but in reality he was too afraid to even see the dentist. Lemon could not stand the idea of the other guys thinking he was afraid, “Late that night he crept down to the dental tent. He switched on a flashlight, woke up the young captain, and told him he had a monster tooth ache . . . the dentist couldn’t find anything . . . so he pulled out a perfectly good tooth” (84). O’Brien was angered by this because Lemon couldn’t handle the dentist, but just to look like a tough guy, he had him pull out a perfectly good tooth.

Sometimes, death in war is an accident. When Kiowa and his friend turned on the light underneath their poncho to look at a picture, it gave away their position and it caused yet another life changing situation for many of the soldiers. When Norman Bowker saw his friend Kiowa get shot, he didn’t know how to react. There was so much going on around him, he was too scared to move. When he heard the third shot, “Immediately, off to his left, he heard somebody screaming. It was Kiowa, he knew that. The sound was ragged and clotted up, but even then he knew the voice” (142). This scared Bowker so much he just could not react. By the time he was able to get to Kiowa’s side, the field was too much to bear, and he just left him there. He thought he had no other choice, “Kiowa was almost completely under. There was a knee. There was an arm and gold wrist watch and part of a boot” (142). That was all Bowker could see, so he just moved on. One simple mistake, in just seconds, caused yet another person to lose their life, and there was nothing they could do about it.

Sometimes, there is nothing that can be done about losing a brother in war, but there are also things that can be avoided to getting into a situation like that. It is never known what the next step is when at war; you just have to keep looking ahead and always be aware of your surroundings because anything can happen at any time. Even though death can happen quickly in war, sometimes many years after, the guilt and sorrow can take a huge toll on a person. Norman felt so bad about what had happened, “He was alone. He had lost his weapon but it didn’t matter… Norman Bowker remembered how his friend Kiowa disappeared under the waste water (143). Norman could not stand the fact that he gave up on his friend; he couldn’t live with it. Every day he thought he had nowhere else to go, “In August of 1978 his mother sent me a brief note explaining what had happened . . . he went off for a drink of water; he used a jump rope; his friends found him hanging from a water pipe. There was no suicide note, no message of any kind” (143). Norman couldn’t take it any longer. He felt so much guilt for not saving Kiowa; he had Kiowa in his hands, but just could not get a good enough grasp. When Norman decided to leave him there it changed his life forever, and so many years after, he decided that it was worth taking his own life.

Coming home from the war affected everyone in a different way; some suffered from anxiety disorders, some developed PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), some committed suicide, and some just moved on. In this case, Norman Bowker couldn’t handle it, while Tim O’Brien moved on to have a family and build a life for himself. As for Lavender, Lemon, and Kiowa, their lives will live on for the soldiers of all future wars, through all veterans, and also through all of the other United States military soldiers who lost their lives in the line of duty, serving their country. At that point in history (the Vietnam War), most of the men there did not choose to go into it, but they took it the way they could and always made the best of it. Many lost their lives, but what they helped this country accomplish will never be forgotten.