The Things They Carried Blog

The Things They Carried is a very interesting book to say the least. So far it has been mostly a compilation of short stories that give us tremendous insight into the mind of Tim O’Brien. He tells us a story that he has never told anyone before, his true feelings about the war, his time in the war and much more. However, through this great range of stories there seems to be a couple predominant themes, the most prevalent being silence.

Silence comes up on more than one occasion throughout the stories. It plays a big part in the story ‘On The Rainy River.’ In this story O’Brien tells us how he stayed at man’s lodge named Elroy Berdahl. He tells us that his time there literally saved his life and that “What I remember more than anything is the man’s willful, almost ferocious silence. In all that time together, all those hours, he never asked the obvious questions: Why was I there? Why alone? Why so preoccupied? If Elroy was curious about any of this, he was careful never to put it into words” (O’ Brien 49). O’ Brien knows that Elroy knows that something is not right with him. That something is bothering him and is acting as a burden upon his shoulders. I think that is why Elroy decided to remain silent. Because he knows that O’ Brien is in a stressful situation right now and has some important decisions to make. So instead of pestering him with questions he probably already knows the answers to, he lets O’ Brien sort these issues out in his brain. This silence, more than anything, helped O’ Brien make the decisions he had to and is what inevitably saved his life.

In ‘How To Tell A True War Story’ silence is talked about again. One of the guys tells O’ Brien about a true story he heard once. It was about 6 guys going on a Listening Patrol in the mountains. They had to lie there in silence for a whole week, not saying a single word the whole time. After a while they started hearing noises, like orchestras, operas, and cocktail parties. So they report enemy movement and warrant an air strike. After the place was torched they started back again towards their camps and “‘Around dawn things finally got quit. Like you never heard quiet before. One of those real thick, real misty days—just clouds and fog, they’re off in this special zone—and the mountains are absolutely dead-flat silent. Like Brigadoon—pure vapor, you know? Everything’s all sucked up inside the fog. Not a single sound, except they still hear it’” (O’ Brien 75). Even after all that destruction of the would be noise and assurance that the noises are gone, they still hear it. The reader starts to wonder then if the noise was really even there. What was it that made those men go mad, was it the silence? Possibly. Later O’ Brien asks the man telling the story “’ what’s the moral?” “Forget it.” “No, go ahead.” For a long while he was quiet, looking away, and the silence kept stretching out until it was almost embarrassing. Then he shrugged and gave me a stare that lasted all day. “Hear that quiet, man?” he said. “That quiet—just listen. There’s your moral.”” (O’ Brien 77). So I guess there was no moral to that story, it was just a story for story’s sake.

There was also a theme of silence in the story where Rat Kiley tortures the baby buffalo. The buffalo was silent the whole time and did not make a peep once.

So silence plays more than one role throughout these stories and so far it is the most recurring theme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N8_u1FLu30&feature=channel

Not really related to the novel just thought it was funny.