Growing Pains
“The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.”
Alfred North Whitehead
During the Vietnam War, our country sent thousands of its youngest, most able-bodied men to a foreign continent to kill unquestioningly. But they were not sent because of their youthful energy, or because they were most able to fight; the soldiers of Vietnam were so young because they were also impressionable and easily manipulated. The young men that emerged from the war did not know how to react to the things they saw, and as shown in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, they did some awful things as a result. Because the American soldiers in Vietnam didn’t know how to react to the atrocities of war, they decided to act immaturely and sometimes disgustingly, to deal with the pain.
Early on in the novel O’Brien states the average age of his platoon “was nineteen or twenty, and as a consequence things often took on a curiously playful atmosphere” (37). But youth is more than an age; it is a state of being. Over and over again O’Brien reiterates that a soldier is still “just a child” (105). But it is more complicated than simple childhood; the boys are to be caught in between adulthood and adolescence. Before Curt Lemon dies the soldiers may well have been ten-year-old boys playing in their backyard: Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley “giggling and calling each other yellow mother and playing a silly game they’d invented” while Mitchell Sanders plays with his yo-yo (69). After Curt Lemon dies the boys are forced to climb the jungle trees of Vietnam and peel out their friend’s body. Forcing children to do adult things causes them to skip the steps of growing up. Suddenly the ability to kill is present, but the knowledge of when to kill is not. It is this sudden leap that causes the soldiers to do some of the horrible things they do later in the book.
To deal with the war the soldiers often try to use “harsh vocabulary to contain the terrible softness” (20). The boys know they are only boys, they admit this often, but they still don’t want to show that they are boys. They act immature and even flippant about the death of close friends; they make phrases like “zapped while zipping” (17) to try to make the death less real. As shown by Norman Bowker’s story, such attempts to avert attention from the pain do not work. Norman doesn’t deal with the death of Kiowa, he only tells Azar to “‘pipe down’”, and the tragedy eats away at him until he can’t take it anymore and hangs himself long after the war is over. This again shows the impressionability of the soldiers and emphasizes that the atrocities that occur while their minds are still being molded affect them for the rest of their lives.
The most memorable example of an inability to deal with emotions is Rat Kiley’s massacre of the baby water buffalo. It is probable that Rat felt that he could not show his pain about the death of Curt Lemon through words because he thought that would be a juvenile reaction, so he tries to express himself in a manlier manner. When killing the baby water buffalo doesn’t help Rat to feel better, he reverts back to a near infantile state and starts to cry as he “[cradles] his rifle and [goes] off by himself” (79). But the scene is more than just Rat Kiley killing an animal; the baby water buffalo can easily be a symbol of the young men who have been sent into a war they don’t understand to take a beating they don’t deserve. The soldiers had been chased down by the government and tortured by their enemies. The soldiers never lash out at the government just like the baby water buffalo who is “all the while silent, or almost silent…nothing [moves] except the eyes which [are] enormous, the pupils shiny black and dumb” (79). This comparison of the helpless baby animal to the helpless young soldiers shows more clearly than anything else the inability to cope with what is happening around them.
Of all the things the soldiers in the novel carried, experience was not among them. Although they are still teenagers, many of the soldiers are forced to make life and death decisions. These decisions cause them to leap the chasm between childhood and adulthood without the bridge of adolescence to carry them across. Because the soldiers lack experience and knowledge in the face of the atrocities of war, they can’t express their emotions in any way that a truly adult person would.
“The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.”
Alfred North Whitehead
During the Vietnam War, our country sent thousands of its youngest, most able-bodied men to a foreign continent to kill unquestioningly. But they were not sent because of their youthful energy, or because they were most able to fight; the soldiers of Vietnam were so young because they were also impressionable and easily manipulated. The young men that emerged from the war did not know how to react to the things they saw, and as shown in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, they did some awful things as a result. Because the American soldiers in Vietnam didn’t know how to react to the atrocities of war, they decided to act immaturely and sometimes disgustingly, to deal with the pain.
Early on in the novel O’Brien states the average age of his platoon “was nineteen or twenty, and as a consequence things often took on a curiously playful atmosphere” (37). But youth is more than an age; it is a state of being. Over and over again O’Brien reiterates that a soldier is still “just a child” (105). But it is more complicated than simple childhood; the boys are to be caught in between adulthood and adolescence. Before Curt Lemon dies the soldiers may well have been ten-year-old boys playing in their backyard: Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley “giggling and calling each other yellow mother and playing a silly game they’d invented” while Mitchell Sanders plays with his yo-yo (69). After Curt Lemon dies the boys are forced to climb the jungle trees of Vietnam and peel out their friend’s body. Forcing children to do adult things causes them to skip the steps of growing up. Suddenly the ability to kill is present, but the knowledge of when to kill is not. It is this sudden leap that causes the soldiers to do some of the horrible things they do later in the book.
To deal with the war the soldiers often try to use “harsh vocabulary to contain the terrible softness” (20). The boys know they are only boys, they admit this often, but they still don’t want to show that they are boys. They act immature and even flippant about the death of close friends; they make phrases like “zapped while zipping” (17) to try to make the death less real. As shown by Norman Bowker’s story, such attempts to avert attention from the pain do not work. Norman doesn’t deal with the death of Kiowa, he only tells Azar to “‘pipe down’”, and the tragedy eats away at him until he can’t take it anymore and hangs himself long after the war is over. This again shows the impressionability of the soldiers and emphasizes that the atrocities that occur while their minds are still being molded affect them for the rest of their lives.
The most memorable example of an inability to deal with emotions is Rat Kiley’s massacre of the baby water buffalo. It is probable that Rat felt that he could not show his pain about the death of Curt Lemon through words because he thought that would be a juvenile reaction, so he tries to express himself in a manlier manner. When killing the baby water buffalo doesn’t help Rat to feel better, he reverts back to a near infantile state and starts to cry as he “[cradles] his rifle and [goes] off by himself” (79). But the scene is more than just Rat Kiley killing an animal; the baby water buffalo can easily be a symbol of the young men who have been sent into a war they don’t understand to take a beating they don’t deserve. The soldiers had been chased down by the government and tortured by their enemies. The soldiers never lash out at the government just like the baby water buffalo who is “all the while silent, or almost silent…nothing [moves] except the eyes which [are] enormous, the pupils shiny black and dumb” (79). This comparison of the helpless baby animal to the helpless young soldiers shows more clearly than anything else the inability to cope with what is happening around them.
Of all the things the soldiers in the novel carried, experience was not among them. Although they are still teenagers, many of the soldiers are forced to make life and death decisions. These decisions cause them to leap the chasm between childhood and adulthood without the bridge of adolescence to carry them across. Because the soldiers lack experience and knowledge in the face of the atrocities of war, they can’t express their emotions in any way that a truly adult person would.
3 comments:
This is a great close analysis Tara. I like the point about how the soldiers never grew up, but skipped right from childhood to adulthood. I especially like your interpretation of the water buffalo scene, where the soldiers are the baby buffalo.
I really agree with you Tara about how the soldiers skipped a step when growing up by being sent to the war. All of your examples throughout the book are great explanations of how the soldiers did such awful things to ease the pain from the war, since they didn't know what else to do because they never really grew up.
I found your idea on the skipping steps facinating. It was a very interesting way to explain the vicious acts they committed.
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