Scribe

2018

 
 

The Thing We Carried

find myself astonished that we are here.


With a pretender to the throne, a feckless Republican Congress in complete supplication and complicity with a Russian surrogate attacking every aspect and institution of our democracy, disbelief and cynicism are my habitual companions. 


In The Things We Carried—Tim O’Brien’s iconized book of short story tales depicting the Vietnam War—characters Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and Tim O’Brien speak and emote O’Brien’s personal journal of self-identity. An identification born of the American Dream experientially lived, borne through war. In the totems adopted by each character for survival of mind and body, the author impresses on readers the subjective nature of war, suggesting that his characters are bits and pieces of himself fighting in Vietnam, and by extension all of us enjoined in that struggle.


While there is some truth to that, it is an inflated truth that misses the real singularity joining us all. “The Thing We Carried” was the nation on our backs. Regardless of walk of life, enlisted or drafted, we humped that weight daily: its ideals, its promise, its aspirations, its hopes and dreams; its joys and sorrows, its successes and disappointments; its unison and divisions all bound together. The notion that the caricatural creations in O’Brien’s work, though engaging, represent a literal comparison to most who fought in Vietnam is a fantastical one, suffusing lived history with literary brilliance. The fine line to be drawn in historical literature is for history to inform literature, not the other way around. Mr. O’Brien got that right. Nevertheless, its a mythical tale fashioned in the image and likeness of the author. Those things that mattered to him.


What mattered to all of us, though—those truly common bits and pieces of ourselves carried into harms way—we still carry today. It is the weight of a nation born out of resistance to oppression, tempered by the heat of battle, and sanctified by the blood of sacrifice. It is the weight of a nation forged in the promise of equality, justice, freedom, and boundless opportunity for all. It is the weight of a nation sworn to vanquish its own wickedness, when it falls prey to corruption, criminality, and self-loathing. It is the weight of a nation to find itself when it loses its way; to rise above its own negligence of virtue and cast out tyranny and despotism, and stand in its own light once again.


It is what mattered to me in April 1968; what matters to me today, tomorrow, and in perpetuity.


It is “The Thing We Carried.”