Themes

          The development and image of the hero fully depends on one's perspective, the concept of hero/enemy is intertwined but also at the same time the very exact opposite of each other.  In O'Brien's They Things They Carried, this theme is faint but carries out through the whole book, the most obvious one being the soldiers as heroes to American citizens. The book itself is telling a war story, the Vietnam-American War; the soldiers are at war fighting to protect our freedom, but for the Vietnamese, they are enemies, horrible monsters who invaded their country killing innocent civilians. The Vietnamese who dies is as much a hero as the American soldier who was sent over to kill them.  "most of the hamlet had burned down..."(135). To the fourteen year old girl, also the only survivor of the attack, the soldiers are not heroes, but a group of savage men who just killed her entire family and burnt away her home. The image of the hero is only something the "outsiders" see, the heroes themselves might not even view themselves as a hero. What they do (or fails to do, in this case) eat them away on the inside, the heroic titles andthe memories of war haunt them. "you had seven medals. sure.." (142) Norman Bowker comes home with seven medals, but none of that matters to him, he blames himself everyday for Kiowa's death. To Norman, the negative aftermath of war overshadows every heroic thing and good deed he's done, he isn't a hero to himself, but a coward, a shameful friend.
           Religion and faith play a big part in our society today and even though faith does not technically have to be religious, it's what helps people through even the toughest times, but while religon may save you from yourself, it can not save you from the constant death threat. Kiowa, the most religious person in the story ends up dead in a shit field, literally. His god couldn't save him when death crept up, but faith however, helps one cope with whatever problems one may be having. "He carried around his girlfriend's  pantyhose.."(10). Henry Dobbins carries his girlfriend's pantyhose as a comforter. A comforter, rather than calling it faith, each soldier as well as every living person, has a comforter. Something to go to when nothing else is there, something that gives them hope or at least calm them down and give them even the slightest bit of peace.  For some people that comforter is religion, it's where they go to when they're lost and looking for answers, guidance or just simply a place of peace of mind. For others it could be an old locket that once belonged to their grandmother, or a favorite book of poems, even a celebrity, an idol, someone they look up to, it could even be the sunrise every morning blood-staining the sky. Anything and everything can act as faith for someone, for them to believe in.

Veteran and O'Brien comparison/contrast

      O'Brien's experience in the Vietnam war was very similar but also different from the veterans' experiences in the Iraq war. It was similar in the mutual fear of death in both wars, before the war, death was just another noun, an idea to the soldiers,  no on had thought about what it is like to really die, or to watch your fellow comrade die in front of you. "There was no twitching or flopping. Kiowa, who saw it happen, said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sand bag or something-just boom, the down-not like in movies where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins." (O'Brien, 6) When Ted Lavender died, instead of rolling around in pain and dying off saying his last words in the arms of his best friend, he just, died. Quick and real, with all the weight of the things he carried, he just straight up fell to the ground after being shot, just like that. The reality of him actually dying gave the other soldiers a reality check, war isn't a game, real people will die, and that idea really doe not sink in till one's experienced/witnessed it for themselves. Veteran Truman Muir Irwin was serving in Iraq when he was hit in the leg, which was lucky compared to his best friend who was shot in the chest and died later on in the hospital. When faced upon death, one can't really think about anything else expect for "holy shit I'm gonna die." It wasn't till later that Truman realized that his best friend was shot and dying while he is sitting here worrying about his leg pain, he felt ashamed, and mourned for his best friends death, but it's just all a tiny piece of the game that makes war real. While facing death is something all the soldiers had to deal with whether they are stationed in Iraq or Vietnam, the life after war for the veterans were drastically different. After the war of Vietnam, people kept quite about it except for to blame and shame the veterans for the things they did, the villages they destroyed, the innocent people they killed, and no one seemed to talk much about the war. "Many years after the war Jimmy Cross came to visit me.......and talked about everything we has seen and done so long ago, all the thing we still carried through our lives." (O'Brien,27) People pretended like the war never happened, only the soldiers remember what the horrific memories, after about 20 years when Bollywood began to make movies about the war did people finally start to talk and accept the war. For veteran Kobe Bazelle, a machine gunner in the Traq war, things were very different, after he came back from the war, he started a blog and people would would it and ask him questions and discuss the war, whether good or bad. Instead of hiding and being ashamed of it, he embraced it and shared his unique experience with people all over the world.