They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.”
In the opening chapter, the narrator writes that his fellow soldiers “carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing.” When most people think about what soldiers fear most, do you think they would say it's this particular fear?
“War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love.
Physical and Emotional Burdens
The “[t]hings” of the title that O'Brien's characters carry are both literal and figurative. While they all carry heavy physical loads, they also all carry heavy emotional loads, composed of grief, terror, love, and longing. Each man's physical burden underscores his emotional burden.
For O'Brien, courage is a complex emotion that is not always easy to understand. Also, courage is a commodity in short supply. Soldiers often lack courage, having cowardice instead. They fantasize about courageous acts, when, in fact, they are motivated by fear and shame.
Nelson Mandela: "Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." Oliver Wendell Holmes: "Have the courage to act instead of react." Ovid: "Courage conquers all things: it even gives strength to the body."
Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war. 21. The more comfort, the less courage there is.
O'Brien is ashamed of this event in his life because he began to cry, but also because he experienced a "moral freeze." O'Brien wants this moral quandary not to exist in the past, but to be a present question, an active engagement with the reader and what they would do.
They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture.
Since he doesn't use the first person to explain his guilt and confusion, he negotiates his feelings by operating in fantasy—by imagining an entire life for his victim, from his boyhood and his family to his feeling about the war and about the Americans.
They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor.
It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it.
Last Line: “I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story.”
Trenches were dirty, smelly and rampant with disease. For soldiers, life in the trenches meant living in fear. In fear of diseases like cholera and trench foot. And, of course, the constant fear of enemy attack.
Despite prevailing notions of masculine bravery, soldiers' letters, diaries, and memoirs described the fear experience - associated with “baptism by fire”, different kinds of weaponry (including gas and air bombs), panicking or retreating units, and other feelings such as hatred, revenge, and shame.
Cowardice in the civil war was defined as deserting in the face of the enemy.
Around World War I, approximate march weights jumped to 85 pounds. U.S. soldiers trained with at least 60 pounds but carried additional rations and munitions in combat. During World War II, U.S. troops carried more than 80 pounds in the Normandy landings.
He was NOT a coward, but he really didn't know what war was like, and his thoughts of shame were stronger than his fears.
“The heaviest burdens that we carry are the thoughts in our head.”
Though O'Brien attempts to make a case that his transition out of war was easy, he exhibits symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, including war-related depression, isolation, survival guilt, anxiety reactions, and nightmares.
“In the end of course, a true war story is never about the war. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river when you know you must cross the river and march into the mountains and do things you are afraid to do” he writes (183). O'Brien's use of truth as a metaphor is postmodern in nature.
O'Brien says the moral of a true war story, like the thread that makes a cloth, cannot be separated from the story itself. A true war story cannot be made general or abstract, he says. The significance of the story is whether or not you believe it in your stomach.
“An army of sheep led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a sheep.” "Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste death but once." Who dares, wins.
“Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.” “America without her soldiers would be like God without His angels.” “No man is a man until he has been a soldier.” “Freedom is never free.”
I serve the people of the United States, and live the Army Values. I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit.