defunctos in memoriis tulit

8/7/2019 Defunctos in Memoriis Tulit

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Thomas Bailey

Dr. Michael Hobbs

10-610: Intro. to Practical & Theoretical Criticism

November 8, 2010

Defunctos in Memoriis Tulit

In the beginning was death, and death was with OBrien, and death was OBrien. Death

was in the beginning with OBrien. All things came to be through OBrien, and without death

nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the

human race. The end of Tim OBriens The Things They Carriedholds the key to unlocking the

value of the work. As a writer now, I want to save Lindas life. Not her body her life. [I]n

a story I can steal her soul. I can revive that which is absolute and unchanging (OBrien

236). Who is dead? Who is alive? Is death the end or the beginning? What makes us dead? Is

there life beyond?

On the Rainy River the narrator/protagonist is offered a choice flee to Canada or fight

in Vietnam; the choice he made, which, by his own admission, was the wrong one. He simply

froze in fear. The imagery that OBrien employs to describe the experience is related to death.

OBrien felt the pressure in his chest heart attack; an overwhelming sorrow depression and

suicide; a drowning sensation; and his life flashing before his eyes the moment of death

(OBrien 56-57). The narrator has ceased to exist, ceased to be alive. Within the construct of

The Things They Carriedit is the telling or retelling the story that gives life and truth to the

event. The stories that are told more than once are always those of death, bringing the dead to

life, at least briefly (OBrien 236) for the remembering is turned into a kind of rehappening

(OBrien 32). Whether it is to honor the dead, to alleviate his guilt, or to just make a buck, the


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scenes of the dead are highlighted, remembered, anamnesized, made important. Elroy Berdhal is

not telling the story of Tim OBrien. Who is telling that story the means by which we live? I

realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmys life with a story (OBrien 246); but Tim does not

because the stories are of others not himself. Timmy is dead and forgotten.

The complex interrelationship between death, life, and storytelling is solidified in

Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong. If storytelling is the capturing of the soul and anamnesis of

the person, then the ending of Rat Kileys story is a clarion call of lasting life. OBrien allows

for the temporary resurrection of the dead, but in the manner of all good stories they are never

told only once. Mary Anne walked into the jungle and that was enough for Rat, it is Mitchell

Sanders who demands more (OBrien 114). When pressed, Mary Anne simply joined the

missing and did not die because Rat told her story, the Greenies continued her story, Tim

OBrien has forwarded us the story, and now we tell the story. Mary Anne lives! And between

the tellings, she and all the dead simply wait (OBrien 245).

OBrien demonstrates the centrality of death/life in The Things They Carriedthrough the

device of reiteration. When we are first introduced to Ted Lavender, the reader is told that he

carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head (OBrien 2). On the following page, OBrien

again describes Lavender as always carrying 6 or 7 ounces of premium dope prior to being

shot (OBrien 3). It is such a short span of time before retelling the descriptors. Why the need?

OBrien fears that Lavender will be ensnared by Pluto and Hades forever if the reader forgets.

Even in his reallife, Lavender did not live as he walked in a haze of existence, a drug-infused

mellowness. Lavender can therefore have meaning in a retold life, perhaps even a moral.

We hear a similar description of the dead Vietcong soldier on the side of the road, [h]is

jaw was in his throat [h]is one eye was shut [the] other a star-shaped hole (OBrien 124;


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126; 180). The death of Kiowa is related three times, once attributed to the helplessness of

Norman Baker (OBrien 149), the other attributed to the helplessness of an unnamed young

soldier (OBrien 170-71), and the third attributed to the helplessness of Tim OBrien (OBrien

186). In the same way Curt Lemons death is told as both an eyewitness account and as a letter

written by Rat Kiley to Curts girlfriend. All of them are dead. It matters not to OBrien if the

dead was a friend, an enemy, a luckless man at the wrong place, or a childhood love he wants

them all to live again and for eternity. So he tells their story.

The prehistoric inhabitants of Orkney Island routinely visited the burial mounds of their

ancestors, handling their bones to reanimate them. The Greek gods, demigods, and heroes were

placed into the heavens as reminders of their deeds. The ancient Chinese left offerings to their

ancestors so that they would aid them in the corporeal world. The central act of Christian

worship, the Eucharist, is done in remembrance of Jesus Christ. Even modern wakes, are filled

with the tales of the deceased to stave off mourning and to show how they changed or affected

us. OBrien therefore carries on the tradition.

The Man I Killed and Ambush both relate the story of the death of the same

Vietcong soldier outside of My Khe. The mutilated remains of the soldiers body is described in

horrific detail and certain elements (clean fingernails, slim, non-muscular) suggests to OBrien

that this man was a scholar, maybe (OBrien 124). The author uses the hypothetical maybe

only twice more as he explores the soldiers past. It then slips to fact. He was not a

Communist, but a patriotic man though not a fighter. He was a man who preferred books

(OBrien 125), attended the university in Saigon, where he wrote love poetry and married a

younger classmate in his senior year (OBrien 128-129).


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Despite the obvious carnage and death, there is also a way in which OBrien attempts to

describe the Vietcong soldier that moves him back to the living. There is a technical nature to

the wounds of death, precision in describing the colors and the anatomical elements. Despite

Kiowas demand to look away, Tim only continues to stare. He stares until life-filled features

return to the man. He focuses on the butterfly, the mans freckles, nose, and the smoothness of

his right cheek a beautiful man (OBrien 127). He has humanized his enemy and finds remorse

and seeks now to make amends for the taking of his life. The only means at OBriens disposal

is to tell the mans story. The veracity is not what is important, but that he be resurrected.

The life OBrien creates for the Vietcong soldier possesses parallels to his own life.

OBrien sees in his weakness on the Rainy River no cause for remembrance and so that by

interspersing his life with the soldier he will then live as this soldiers story is told. They share in

common folkloric nationalism, a desire for knowledge, distaste for war, a love for a girl, and a

desire that the fighting would pass them by. Tim OBrien stares into the gapping hole that once

was an eye and is paralyzed, just as he was on the river twenty yards from Canada and unable to

make the right decision. It is the Vietnamese soldier who is alive. He has his books, his wife,

his patriotism, while OBrien sits in his purgatory unable to do what was right because he lacked

courage, unlike this soldier, who despite the knowledge of his inadequacies, fulfilled his duty

with pride. If only he can connect himself to the soldier, then Timmy will live.

A fascinating exchange between Tim OBrien and his daughter occurs in Ambush. The

precocious nine-year-old asks her father if as a soldier he ever killed anyone. His initial response

is negative (OBrien 131); and yet he did and did not (OBrien 180). The jungles of Vietnam

were a kill or be killed atmosphere. But in a story the dead sometimes smile and sit up and

return to the world (OBrien 225).


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Linda, a nine-year-old girl who had died of a brain tumor back in fifth grade (OBrien

58) was the protagonists first experience of storytellings power to resurrect. He recalls his love

for her, his first date, and even his failure to stand up for her (OBrien 228-229; 233-234). He

still vividly recalled her death and its horrific face at the funeral parlor (OBrien 241-242). How

appropriate that their first date together included the movie The Man Who Never Was, which

demonstrated the power, life, ability, and importance of the dead. D-Day succeeded in the movie

because of the discarded corpse dressed in an officers uniform (OBrien 232).

After hearing of Lindas death, he uses the power of storytelling to bring her to life again.

He laid on the floor in his living room and willed her into his mind, where she walked down

Main Street (OBrien 237). In his story he sits down to cry and Linda comes to comfort him and

she touched him (OBrien 238). Again he attempts to have her live following his visit to the

funeral home. He willed his dreams, his unconscious stories to come to him and here Linda was

alive and was merely waiting to have her story told once again. The imagination of a child is a

powerful thing!

Storytelling is a necessity like water, food, and air; without which we cease to exist.

Whether or not it is to guarantee his own immortality or perhaps the altruism of saving others

lives at the expense of his own is unknown. It is something that he cannot stop doing. The well

intentioned, the well meaning, the kind and sympathetic can miss the point of OBriens stories.

Independently they can be the mere ramblings of a lonely man. Or they are the words of a

prophet and savior. To those who wish to tell him to put these stories behind him, to not think of

death and focus on life:


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I wont say it but Ill think it. You dumb cooze. Because she wasnt listening. It

wasnta war story. It was a love story. But you cant say that. All you can do is tell it

one more time (OBrien 84-85).

Allowing Curt, Ted, Kiowa, Linda, Norman, the Vietcong soldier, the baby water buffalo, Mary

Anne, and all the dead soldiers back from the grave, and the many thousands who were later to

die (OBrien 58) the chance to breath again.


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Works Cited

OBrien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1990. Print

defunctos in memoriis tulit

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