“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.” (John Joseph Powell, The Secret to Staying in Love)
The power of love is able to make another person feel their own true self worth, and can carry two people to great lengths. Love and friendship are two main components of human communication, and are realized when reflected back and forth by two people. In the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, love is shown through the relationships of the characters in the book. Through both friendship and romance, the characters’ relationships between each other convey a love story that detracts from war.
In the book, Rat Kiley loses his best friend Curt Lemon to the war, and uses their friendship to cope with his grief. When Curt Lemon first dies, Rat copes with it by writing to Lemon’s sister about all of the great times they had together and “what a brother she had, how together the guy was, a number one pal and comrade.”(68) Rat wants to cope with the person whom he felt knew Lemon best, and writes to his sister. It distracts him from the terrors of the war, and makes Kiley feel like Lemon is alive in his writing when he writes to his sister. He is in the first stage of grief, denial, as he still wants Lemon to live on. This is common within people, as when loved ones die, the person will feel an immense amount of grief. Although his grief has only started, Kiley’s grief grows out of the frustration of losing his friend. Later on, Rat finds a baby water buffalo with his platoon. Rather than watch it die in peace, “The whole platoon stood watching [Rat shoot the baby water buffalo], feeling all kinds of things, but there wasn’t a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo.” (81) Rat deals with the death of his friend by going berserk on a dead baby water buffalo. Rat goes berserk because when one is upset by the loss of a friend, the person may go into a rage to deal with their problems. Rat has the emotional burden of grief bestowed upon him. He is in a state of anger, as evidenced by his attack on the buffalo. Kiley’s grief happens due to the death of his comrade, and because of this, he has no other way to express it other than taking it out on a helpless animal. O’Brien sees his grief and feels remorse for Kiley at the death of his friend. He sees it as more than a tale of war, “It wasn’t a war story. It was a love story.”(85) O’Brien sees the death of soldiers in general and views them as more than just a soldier. He analyzes the experience of Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley as a friendship worth mourning over. The mourning may range from not being written back or from Lemon’s death, but all in all, their relationship was viewed as more than just comrades. They were best friends, and their friendship distracted themselves from the war, proving how the story is a love story rather than a war story.
In the book, Kiowa and O’Brien become great friends throughout the war, leading to an unbreakable bond between the two. Kiowa is aware how to comfort O’Brien when O’Brien kills a man. While O’Brien feels anxious, Kiowa knows that “The guy was straight dead the minute he stepped on the trail. Understand me? We all had him zeroed.” (134). Kiowa’s comfort to O’Brien shows how they all carry each other’s weight in the war. Kiowa is a mentor to him in the sense that he tranquilizes O’Brien’s thoughts of how he killed the soldier in the moment. Their friendship is strong enough to distract them both from war, and have them both come to their senses over the event that took place, showcasing how war is more about learning and experience rather than the actual war. However, when Kiowa dies later on, O’Brien is sent into denial about his death, and was convinced that he didn’t do much wrong. O’Brien later convinces himself that he was responsible for the death of Kiowa and “He’d lost Kiowa and his weapon and his flashlight and his girlfriend’s picture. He remembered this. He remembered wondering if he could lose himself.” (171). O’Brien utilizes anonymity to describe the reaction of finding Kiowa dead to represent how a person may lose their friend any time throughout the war. O’Brien finds himself guilty for the death of Kiowa, and cannot describe it from a first person view, as it would have hurt him too much to describe his best friend. Losing a friend to the war, especially when he is such a great person, can be detrimental to the other person. Although Kiowa was gone, he was not forgotten by O’Brien. He visits the scene of the crime when he takes his daughter to Vietnam, “showing her the world, offering a small piece of her father’s history.”(192). The reason O’Brien ventures to Vietnam once more is to show his daughter his friendship with Kiowa and why it mattered to him so much. His relationship with Kiowa was so much more than the war. The place in which Kiowa died represented the loss of O’Brien’s innocence towards war and the final resting place of Kiowa. The relationship between both characters proves how the story is more about love than anything, as O’Brien deliberately visits his dead friend to reconcile his feelings of guilt. O’Brien also attempts to reconnect with the dead through stories of another friend as well.
O’Brien reveals an interconnection between him and a girl named Linda, a girl whom he had an innocent relationship with. Although they were only nine years old, “It had all the shadings and complexities of mature adult love,” proving how real of a relationship that they possessed. (228) O’Brien shows his true affinity for Linda in their relationship, and together, they represent the innocence of childhood. Through the innocence of their relationship, O’Brien is able to immortalize their time together. However, that innocence for the two lovers was lost when a boy took a cap off of Linda’s head to reveal her balding head. Tim shows immense regret for not stopping the boy because “fourth grade is no excuse. Besides, it doesn’t get easier with time, and twelve years later, when Vietnam presented much harder choices, some practice at being brave might’ve helped,” (234). The loss of innocence between the two hardens their relationship for the remaining time left between the two. Her death is arguably the most undeserving though, as she did nothing wrong to deserve cancer. Linda’s corpse corrupts the innocence of O’Brien, mainly due to viewing the body of one whom he had loved at such a young age. However, because their relationship was so tightly built, “I want to save Linda’s life. Not her body–her life,”(236). O’Brien wants to keep the spirit of Linda going, as their bond was too strong to simply get over. The author learns to interact with her in dreams to preserve her memory, and it helps him cope with the loss. They keep Linda’s memory alive, and they also keep the author sane. Although Linda may be dead, in one of O’Brien’s dreams, she states, “Once you’re alive, you can’t ever be dead,”(244). This method of dealing with death helps him cope with loss, and frankly, keeps him in check. He still contains his innocence of when he used to be around Linda all of the time, and it has never left him. Their relationship showcases how the book is a love story, as he speaks of her out of context during the war. O’Brien realizes that their relationship was true love, and the innocence of it helps him cope with all of the action that happens in his life today.
Through friendships and romance, this novel detracts from a war story to a love story. Each relationship represents a growth for the character that lives in each one. Although they will mourn the death of their loved ones, they learn how to cope and integrate the dead person into their lives. The things that they carry end up being the spirits of those they had lost in the war. Although the story takes place in a wartime setting, the relationships reference friendship, grief, and love to prove that the book is more about human condition than the actual war.