In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien used the theme of shame and guilt in the chapter Field Trip. In this chapter O’Brien visits the site where Kiowa died. He sees that O’Brien and his platoon sees the field as just a shit field, but in reality it’s a farming ground where people worked for a living. He is ashamed of this fact and feels guilty when coming back to Vietnam to try to settle his past. O’Brien a Vietnam veteran writes, “One morning in Saigon she’d asked what it was all about. ‘This whole war,’ she said, ‘why was everybody so mad at everybody else?’ I shook my head. ‘They weren’t mad, exactly. Some people wanted one thing, other people wanted another thing… Kathleen sighed. ‘Well, I don’t get it. O mean, how come you were even here in the first place?’ ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Because I had to be’”(O’Brien 175) This theme is important to this book because, especially in the Vietnam war, people were ashamed of what they did in war. War can bring out the worst in people. In my personal life I get ashamed when i do something wrong.
These are what the fields were like at Vietnam. Where Kiowa met his unfortunate demise.
Source:
https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe50s/life_08.html
Who was affected the most from Kiowa’s death? I feel that O’Brien was one of the most affected from Kiowa’s death because at the end of notes, Tim O'Brien the author of eight books, writes “In the interests of truth, however, I want to make it clear that Norman Bowker was in no way responsible for what happened to Kiowa. Norman did not experience a failure of nerve that night. He did not freeze up or lose the Silver Star for valor. That part of the story is my own.”(O’Brien 154) He tells us that the others aren’t at fault he was that night, he was. This was a curious topic because we learned how most of the people in O'Brien's platoon dealt with Kiowa’s death.
I am also curious who is most affected by Kiowas death. Tim seems to bring out the point that everyone who was there was responsible for his death. This is also an example of the theme of responsibility by association. What I want to know still is who is the boy which O'Brien was so vague about in the chapter 'In the Field"
ReplyDeleteThe end of the chapter that you mentioned in your post kind of blew my mind, it made me wonder how many events reflecting in someone else are actually from O'Brien's point of view.
ReplyDeleteI liked this chapter because it shows how specific things that mean one thing to one person, can mean something completely different to someone else. The way the place meant so much to Tim O'Brien and didn't mean anything to his daughter. Also the way that he sees the field as something so different than what is actually is today. The way that an experience, like the war, can change how you see everyday things.
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