Free Things They Carried Essays: Another World :: Things They Carried Essays

Another World Portrayed in The Things They Carried   In several stories from The Things They Carried, Tim OBrien deals with the way that American soldiers of the Vietnam War related to being in country, or out of their own country and halfway across the world. OBrien creates the concept that Vietnam and the war there is another world throughout the stories. None of the soldiers he writes about flavor at home in Vietnam, and none of them successfully adapt emotionally to being so far from home.   OBrien subtly introduces the concept of another world in the title story of the book. In describing how easy it would be for a soldier to give in to the pressures of war and just collapse on the trail, thereby acquire sent home or to a hospital, the narrator says that the chopper... would... carry you off to the world italics added (21-22). The c beful reader will pick up on OBriens rightness and veridicalize that if the soldiers - for the narrator does speak for the soldiers as a collective - feel as if Vietnam is not in the world, then they must feel as if they are in another world.   This exact phrase is used later in the same story. When Lieutenant Cross is thinking about his girlfriend Martha, he chastizes himself for his delusive fantasies. He thinks to himself that Vietnam is not Mount Sebastian, it is another world (24). Then in How To Tell A True War Story, OBrien reiteraties the concept. The soldiers of the story are hearing harmony coming from afar, and the narrator describes it as all very civilized, except this isnt civilization. This is Nam (74). This blunt statement captures the soldiers feelings that they are in another world. To them, Vietnam is a world without civilization it is a world so different than the one they are accustomed to that they cannot function.   OBrien returns to the another world idea once more in Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong. As the narrator is describing the loss of Mary Annes feminitiy, OBrien writes t hat Cleveland Heights now seemed very far away (98). Mary Anne has joined the world of Vietnam, the world of the war, and lost contact with the real world. This is the same thing that happened to OBriens soldiers. Being in another world caused them to lose their ability to relate to their own world, and this manifested itself in veterans as soon as they came concealment from the war.