Expressing the Inexpressible:
Representation of War and Trauma in
Redeployment by Phil Klay and
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Sanne van Opstal S2222515
Supervisor: Dr. I. Visser 27-06-2016
Word count: 14249 words
Master’s Dissertation Literary Studies. Programme Writing, Editing, and Mediating.
Table of Contents
Abstract
3
Acknowledgements
4
Introduction
5
Chapter One
15
Historical and Social Context
Chapter Two
24
The Things They Carried:
The Invisible Enemy
Chapter Three
36
Redeployment: The Hurdles of Homecoming
Conclusion
46
Abstract
War has dominated the majority of the 20th century as well as the beginning of the 21st century. Especially the Vietnam War and the Iraq War left a lasting impact on American contemporary war literature because the wars affected the lives of soldiers and civilians significantly. The number of people suffering from trauma increased, which sparked literary critics to analyze how trauma is portrayed in the context of war. The novels The Things They
Carried (1990) by Tim O’Brien and Redeployment (2014) by Phil Klay revealed how both
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. I. Visser for her guidance and support throughout the process of writing this dissertation. Her extensive feedback and encouraging words made the experience of researching war and trauma more enjoyable and educational.
In addition, I would like to thank Dorian Smilda because he was there for me when I needed someone to listen to my ideas. However, I would also like to apologize to him for all the times I was unable to stop talking about why I enjoyed the novels.
Introduction
Literature has been an invaluable form of creative expression during times of war throughout history, especially in the twentieth century which was dominated by war. In the last century the world witnessed, for instance, World War I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, civil wars such as the Afghanistan Civil War, and wars with decolonization as its aim such as the Indonesian Independence War. All these confrontations sparked literary portrayals and critical responses from various fields of research.
influence on war, and society’s opinions on veterans. All these aspects are also present in the two American war novels discussed in this dissertation, namely The Things They Carried (1990) by Tim O’Brien and Redeployment (2014) by Phil Klay.
This dissertation focuses on three main aspects. I analyze how the characters in two American war novels reflect and comment on the American social and historical context of the Vietnam War and the Iraq War through their interaction with each other. I also show how the literary features of narrative structure and narrative perspective express the inexpressible, namely trauma and war. The third aspect that I explore is whether or not the differences in the novels’ portrayal of trauma could perhaps be explained by the considerably different social contexts that the novels comment on. I utilize a methodology that consists mainly of close-reading with support from various concepts of trauma theory such as fragmented narrative structures as well as shifting narrative perspectives. By doing so, I am able to bring the differences between the two novels to light with regards to their portrayal of trauma whilst staying as close to the literary work as possible.
fellow platoon soldier and the experiences O’Brien shared with him or it centers around a particular story that O’Brien heard about his friends from other veterans. The Things They
Carried is a dedication to and a remembrance of the men with whom O’Brien fought in
Vietnam for the duration of a year. O’Brien stated in a radio interview that the novel “seemed to be a book about storytelling and the burdens we all accumulate through our lives (“‘Things They Carried’ Back from Vietnam”). This is partly the reason why the novel received critical acclaim and became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1991 as well as for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 1990. Although the novel is classified as fiction, it is also regarded as a semi-autobiographical work since various events are based on O’Brien’s own experiences. This is underlined by the fact that the characters in The Things
They Carried bear resemblance to the ones in his memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me
Up and Ship Me Home (1973).
behaviorally unstable men, traumatized from their experiences. Redeployment received critical acclaim and won the National Book Critics Circle’ John Leonard Award in 2015 for “outstanding first books in any genre” (“National Book Critics Circle”) as well as the National Book Award for Fiction in 2014. It also received the W.Y. Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction in 2015.
Both novels provide valuable insights into the emotional aftermath of both wars and how society responded to the war and the homecoming of the veterans. Both O’Brien and Klay have been recognized as influential authors in the genre of war literature by judges of acclaimed literary prizes. For instance, the judges of the National Book Award state about
Redeployment that “this brutal, piercing, sometimes darkly funny collection stakes Klay's
claim for consideration as the quintessential storyteller of America's Iraq conflict” (“2014 National Book Award Winner, Fiction”). Similarly, Tim O’Brien received the Pritzer Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing in 2013, which made him the first fiction writer to win the prize. Both novels have been compared to each other on numerous occasions due to similarities in narrative devices like their frameworks, but also in how they both reflect the social contexts of the wars and how veterans deal with returning home after a life-changing experience. All these aspects contributed to the selection of these two novels for this dissertation.
notice for he was an “outspoken supporter for diplomacy” and he “marched in protest against the war” (Smith 4). In an effort to not disappoint his family, he became an infantryman from 1969 till 1970 in the fifth battalion, 46th infantry (5). His battalion was stationed in Vietnam near the area where the My Lai and My Khe massacre occurred the year before he arrived. He and his platoon faced increased hostility from the Vietnamese civilians as a result of the murder of well over 300 unarmed civilians committed by a different platoon (Oliver 1). O’Brien received a “Purple Heart for a shrapnel wound sustained from an exploding grenade” (Smith 6). After returning home from deployment, he started writing memoirs. When he was a young boy, his passion for literature sparked when he discovered that his father had published small personal accounts of his experiences as a World War IIsoldier in The New York Times. O’Brien continued his father’s legacy as he published his own accounts of the Vietnam War in the same newspaper when he returned home. He has written numerous novels ever since such as his debut memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home (1973) and the war novel Going After Cacciato (1978) which also won the National Book Award Prize for Fiction in 1979. Since 2003 he has held the position of endowed chair in creative writing at Texas State University- San Marcos (Smith 7).
creative writing programs in 2009 (Silverstein). As a writer, he wishes to bridge the gap between American society and soldiers because “for us as a country it’s very important to see what war means on a human level” (Asoulin). His aim while writing war literature is to open up conversations about war policy in general and about the current war in Iraq. He and other veterans “felt very keenly the disconnect between coming home and being a part of this huge mission that then doesn’t get as much attention state-side as you would want it to” (Silverstein). Redeployment is Klay’s debut novel, but the title chapter “Redeployment” was also published in Granta and was included in a short story collection, Fire and Forget: Short
Stories from the Long War. He has also reviewed fiction for the New York Times and is
currently working on his second novel.
therapy for veterans was essential because “by 1997, the number of veteran outreach centers had in fact doubled as PTSD diagnoses reached the one million mark” (Luckhurst The
Trauma Question 59). The Vietnam veterans aided the increase of awareness of trauma in
Western society. Victims started to speak out about their traumatic experiences and the diagnosis of PTSD was also given to non-veterans, such as domestic abuse survivors.
The word ‘trauma’ underwent significant refinement after extensive research. The meaning of the word ‘trauma’ originates from ancient Greek and it denotes a physical wound rather than a psychological one (Luckhurst The Trauma Question 2). Physical wounds are easily recognizable and do not require further clarification; however, the same does not apply for psychological trauma, for it can have different interpretations. Yet, a consensus has been reached in modern trauma theory about what trauma signifies, which is inspired by the DMS of the American Psychiatric Association. Judith L. Herman formulates it as follows: “traumatic events generally involve threats to life or bodily integrity, or a close personal encounter with violence and death”, causing the brain to be unable “to fully assimilate or ‘process’ the event” (33). The brain then responds to this confusion via “various mechanisms such as psychological numbing, or shutting down normal emotional responses” (Suleiman 276). The shutting down of normal emotional responses can have both inward (panic, disassociation) and outward (shaking, pacification, anger fits) manifestations.
The nature and formation of trauma has been a widely explored topic from the early stages of trauma theory onwards. One of the researchers associated with trauma theory is Cathy Caruth who, in her influential book Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and
History (1996), built on existing ideas of trauma derived from Sigmund Freud and created the
how trauma is an unresolvable paradox or an aporia because “the most direct seeing of a violent event may occur as an absolute inability to know it” (Caruth 91-92), which links to Herman’s explanation of the brain being unable to comprehend the event as it occurs. At the time of the event, the experience is often so bewildering that the witness of the event as well as those close to him or her fail to detect a change in their behavior. However, the symptoms of suffering from a traumatic experience can manifest themselves a considerable amount of time later due to the belated nature of trauma. Nightmares, fits of anger, flashbacks, unease, discomfort at the touch of others, and self-medicating via drugs, medicine or alcohol are only a few of the symptoms that can present themselves at a later stage. All these emotional and behavioral aftereffects are now commonly associated with PTSD.
In literature, trauma theory is a growing field of research in the developing genre of trauma novels. Beulens, Durrant and Eaglestone describe trauma theory as “a critical-theoretical way of attending to and addressing the representation of human suffering and ‘wounding’, both literal and metaphorical, both personal and communal” (12). This implies that trauma is representable in words; yet, in the past some critics like Caruth have felt that trauma is inexpressible as it goes beyond human understanding and beyond what words are able to express. In 1981, Adorno was one of the philosophers who stated that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” (34) as he felt that conventional language would be inadequate to fully describe the horrors of the Holocaust. In the beginning of the 21st century, however, researchers such as Eaglestone or Vickroy disagreed with this idea and emphasized the idea of narrative possibility instead by formulating various literary elements that could form a trauma aesthetic.
utilized rather than using trauma theory as a framework for the whole analysis. One of the aspects of the trauma aesthetic would be to represent the “uncertainties of trauma within the consciousness and structures of these works” (Vickroy xiv) by, for instance, using non-linear plots or disclosing new information about a traumatic event in segments. Eaglestone adds that “interruptions, temporal disorder, disjunct movements in style, tense, focalization or discourse, and a resistance to closure that is demonstrated by compulsive telling and retelling” (42-65) are also all elements that would represent the trauma aesthetic. Although Eaglestone applied this list to Holocaust literature, it provides examples of how trauma can be portrayed. It can thus still be relevant to modern trauma novels. Another literary device that aids in the portrayal of trauma is narrative perspective. Narrative perspective can reveal sudden shifts in focus, gaps in memory, and disruptive recollections of traumatic experiences. Trauma theory aids in creating narrative possibilities for trauma through these literary features. These particular elements of the trauma aesthetic are utilized in this dissertation to assist in the analyses of how war, its impact on individuals, and its social and historical context have been presented in the two novels.
Chapter One
Historical and Social Context
“War is life in the grip of death” – Joseph Remenyi in Psychology of War Literature
The Vietnam War
The origin of the Vietnam War is a debated and complex topic, one to which historians still do not have a clear answer. Some say that the roots of the war can be traced back to the time when France colonized Vietnam. Others feel that the conflict truly arose when Vietnam became of interest to Russia and the USA in the 1940s during World War II or when America deployed more troops to Vietnam in the 1960s (Lawrence 7). All these occurrences in history contributed to the unrest in Vietnamese society that ultimately lead to the Vietnam War, which lasted roughly from 1955 to 1975.
thus they requested support from Western countries in order to do so.
However, the Cold War became the catalyst of the USA and the Soviet Union to involve themselves with Vietnam’s situation. The USA felt troubled after World War II when they observed how Russia and its communist ideology gained influence in Vietnam, partly due to Ho Chi Minh (Hall 6). Lawrence reflects how the situation in Vietnam functioned as “a vital front in the global confrontation between democratic capitalism and international communism” (28). To avoid an escalation between two powerful nations, America treaded lightly and decided not to intervene with France’s conviction to claim Indochina once more. Yet after reaching a military stalemate in 1948, France requested help once again and China, the Soviet Union and the USA all declared to intervene. For America, the decision to intervene originated from the fear of Soviet expansion and the danger that communism would spread globally instead of democracy. In an attempt to soothe the situation, the Geneva Accord was formed in July 1954 which divided North and South Vietnam via a demilitarized zone (Lawrence 50; Hall 9). However, peace was short-lived as the Vietcong was formed after which a long-lasting guerilla war initiated. When the Vietcong ignored the Geneva Accord, the American public and government were irritated and dissatisfied with the new situation. From America’s point of view, it seemed as if Vietnam was not aiming for peace, so an intervention would be a waste of American resources. It fueled the discontent that the American public had with regards to the Vietnam War. This negative opinion about the Vietnam War is of importance to the character of Norman Bowker in The Things They
Carried because it implicated his chance of communicating about his experiences.
enemy to beat as they dug tunnels to be able to conceal themselves and attack from blind spots. President Kennedy, therefore, deployed Green Berets to Vietnam in order to start “counterinsurgency” (Hall 12). They would train the Vietnamese troops in guerilla warfare. However, in 1965, America initiated operation Rolling Thunder which entailed continuous, heavy bombing in northern Vietnam in an attempt to stop the guerilla war with sheer force (Lawrence 89). It signaled a significant change in America’s involvement in the war because America deployed troops of their own to Vietnam instead of only training Vietnamese troops via special forces or military advisors (Hall 28). The American troops consisted mainly of inexperienced young men of around 19 years old who were untrained in guerilla warfare and were strangers to the rough terrain of Vietnam, while the Vietcong knew the area like the back of their hands. The impact of fighting in a foreign country is reflected in the story of Kiowa. The Vietcong also employed villagers to fight the Americans, which caused American soldiers to distrust Vietnamese civilians. The sheer fear of being attacked from a blind spot increased the tension and distrust between civilians and soldiers, which is reflected in The
Things They Carried in the chapters “The Man I Killed” and “Field Trip” when the characters
encounter Vietnamese men.
The American population placed significant pressure on its presidents to bring an end to the war. At the start of America’s involvement in the war, society followed the presidents’ policies, partly because of the lack of interest in South Vietnam’s developments (Lunch and Sperlich 22). Around mid-1966, popular opinion changed to regard America’s involvement as a waste of resources and time (22). Nevertheless, the American public decided to give the war another chance and they supported an increase of deployment of soldiers to South Vietnam. This, however, was a short-lived support as a wave of shock emerged amongst the population when it was revealed that half a million soldiers were stationed in Vietnam, a billion dollars were spent per month, and that there still was no end in sight (30). Support for the Vietnam war plummeted and antiwar demonstrations flourished all over the country, draft notices were burned, and a significant percentage of young American males fled to Canada to avoid deployment (Lawrence 134; Hall 46). The emotions of not wanting to be fighting in this war is reflected in Tim O’Brien’s story “The Man I Killed”.
misfits” (172), which is considerably different from how World War II veterans were welcomed home. This indifference of society contributed greatly to veterans feeling alienated from home and feeling abandoned by the government; it obstructed them from recovering from their traumatic experiences quickly as they felt unheard and misunderstood. The discontent of the American society with regards to the Vietnam War as well as the feelings of alienation from home are explored in The Things They Carried in “Notes” through the character of Norman Bowker.
The Iraq War
As with the Vietnam War, it is difficult to pinpoint one particular catalyst that caused the Iraq War as the USA and Iraq have had a complex relationship for decades that contributed to the escalation.
with a new military operation called Desert Storm to drive Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait, and they succeeded quickly. In the years that followed, Hussein tested the USA continuously, for example when he attempted to retake Kuwait, causing the United Nations to uphold the sanctions that they gave him during earlier invasions (Murray and Scales 34). One of the sanctions for Iraq was to disclose their plans for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and dismantle those weapons they already possessed (Lansford 8). A few years later, however, the inspection teams were obstructed on many fronts, causing tension to grow between Iraq and the United Nations.
In the same period, in early 1988, Osama Bin Laden created a worldwide terrorist group called Al Qaeda, which operated from Afghanistan. Bin Laden believed that the “Islamic revolution” would spread by forming an organization that would fund and enable terrorist operations globally (Lansford 12). They relocated their operations from Afghanistan to Sudan in 1991 after Bin Laden funneled a significant amount of money to numerous groups and organizations. After the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, Al Qaeda planned to make a move to also defeat the remaining global power: the USA. After Bin Laden was expelled from Sudan, he returned to Afghanistan where he allied himself with the Taliban, another political-religious group (14). The Taliban rapidly gained power and as a result of this they gained control over 90% of the opium produce in the country, the profits of which were used to fund the terrorist groups.
amongst soldiers but also amongst civilians. This confusion about the cause of the Iraq War is of importance to better understand the characters’ rationale and behavior in Redeployment, especially for the character Waguih.
Chapter Two
The Things They Carried:
The Invisible Enemy
In this chapter I will demonstrate how the narrative structure and perspective in The
Things They Carried represent the Vietnam War, symptoms of trauma, the difficulties of
coping with traumatic memories, and the interaction between soldiers and civilians. Where possible, I will expand on the connection between the representation and the historical and social background of America during the course of the war. Throughout, the main focus lies on the experiences and representations of soldiers at war with a lesser focus on the homecoming aspect which will be explored in the next chapter.
Each chapter represents the different internal struggles soldiers face. The function of the perspective of the meta-character of the book, the writer O’Brien, is to reflect on veterans’ struggle to recollect and voice what they have experienced in Vietnam. In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story”, O’Brien in his writer persona states that “in any war story, but especially a true one, it’s difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. [...] When you go out and tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed” (O’Brien 67-68). A violent, possibly traumatic, event can occur within a second, yet for a variety of soldiers the same event can be experienced differently. The manifestations of trauma can thus vary considerably. In order to make sense of what happened, the mind will reconstruct “those odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end” (34) and fill in the gaps to construct a new, full memory in order to make sense of what occurred.
fragmented way and the process of reconstructing a memory are represented through the narrative structures and the narrative perspectives of the novel. By dividing a story into various segments spread over several chapters, the narrative structure mirrors the disruptive, fragmented nature of trauma. Luckhurst concurs that “no narrative of trauma can be told in a linear way; it has a time signature that must fracture conventional causality” (The Trauma
Question 9). In The Things They Carried, the story of Kiowa is divided into several small and
reflecting how the memory of a friend’s death can suddenly appear in a veteran’s mind. Moran explains that “intrusive fragments of ‘past time’ frequently rupture the narrative ‘present’ and thereby compel characters to reexperience vivid, unwelcome disasters” (5). This is especially true for Bowker, who relives the disaster while in the middle of a mundane task like driving home, and his story of driving around the lake is disrupted by the memory of Kiowa’s death.
Bowker as well as for the O’Brien persona, this particular event can be seen as the embodiment of the Vietnam experience. The writer-narrator underlines this as he states that “for twenty years this field had embodied all the waste that was Vietnam, all the vulgarity and the horror” (O’Brien 176). After hearing about Bowker’s death, O’Brien decides to narrate the story again, this time including all the horrific details to properly commemorate their time in Vietnam and to bring homage to the life and traumatic experiences that Bowker faced. It also implies that O’Brien hoped that the audience would listen to Bowker’s story properly this time.
The insight into a soldier’s thought process sheds light on the sheer impact of a traumatic experience and its inward manifestations. The narration conveys the thought process of an individual and highlights sudden shifts in focus, heightened emotions and repetitive thoughts. This process reflects the confusion of the human mind when confronted with a traumatic event as the mind is trying to make sense of what just occurred. In “The Man I Killed”, veteran O’Brien is confronted with the body of the first human being he killed. Consider the following segment:
There was a slight tear at the lobe of one ear, a sprinkling of blood on the forearm. He wore a gold ring on the third finger of this right hand. His chest was sunken and poorly muscled- a scholar, maybe. His life was now a constellation of possibilities. So, yes, maybe a scholar. And for years, despite his family’s poverty, the man I killed would have been determined to continue his education in mathematics. (O’Brien 122)
Slowly, our eyes move from the man’s face down towards his arms and zoom in on the right hand as we notice the gold ring on his third finger. The boundaries between the narrator and the reader fade. As Tegmark notes: “it is his interior monologue, conceived as he gapes at the dead body, that the reader is confronted with” (226). The narrator offers a close, personal insight, which allows for a better understanding of human emotions and the impact of such a confronting moment.
Not only does such a narrative allow for the possibility of imagining the predicament of the soldiers through their eyes, this inner monologue also reveals in great detail how isolated this soldier became from the real world, and thus demonstrates the sheer impact of this traumatic experience. Throughout the entire chapter, the narrator is stuck in his own mind and does not process the pleas of a fellow soldier:
He knew he would die quickly. He knew he would see a flash of light. He knew he would fall dead and wake up in the stories of his village and people. Kiowa covered the body with a poncho.
"Hey, you're looking better," he said.
"No doubt about it. All you needed was time - some mental R&R." Then he said, "Man, I'm sorry."
Then later he said, "Why not talk about it?" Then he said, "Come on, man, talk."
He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole.
The narrator is so dazed by the sight of his first murder that he endlessly gapes at the body even after it is covered by a poncho. This is accentuated by the fact that throughout the chapter, just like in the previous two segments, the narrator remains mute and stands still whilst daylight is fading. This emphasizes the impact of the traumatic event because, as Tergmark argues, “Kiowa’s many consoling and encouraging words as he tries to stop the protagonist from staring are all ignored, implying that the protagonist’s mind is lost in contemplation” (226). His inner-thoughts are overflowing, yet the narrator feels that words are inadequate to vocalize his experience to another person. The complete psychological and physical standstill of the narrator illustrates the sheer life-changing impact of a traumatic event. Accordingly, the very absence of spoken words from O’Brien underlines this as it implies that words fall short to describe its effect.
narrator remained in the same location throughout, repeatedly contemplating the dead young man as if only ten minutes passed.
Trauma can also manifest itself in outward, physical manifestations. The narrator describes the dead man’s face as being “neither expressive nor inexpressive” (O’Brien 124), which is how Kiowa perceived O’Brien’s face. One way of explaining this is that it reveals how emotionally dead he himself feels on the inside after killing a young man in close quarters. Mott, in his book War Neuroses and Shell Shock, explains this outward appearance as follows: “it will be found that his mind is in a state of confusion; there is both anterograde and retrograde amnesia. He has little or no idea of time and place, and his powers of recognition and comprehension are greatly impaired” (80-81). Mott also states that he has encountered many veterans whose mind is reflected on their face, for they have “a dazed, stupid, mask-like, mindless expression (80-81). This dazed, mask-like expression is reflected in Kiowa’s consoling words as he tells Tim: “maybe you better lie down a minute” (O’Brien 120), or to “stop staring” (122), which indicates that Kiowa was concerned about his state of mind since O’Brien never took his eyes of the corpse.
entirely automatic” (O’Brien 126) and that “there were no thoughts about killing. The grenade was to make him go away – just evaporate” (127). He goes into a state of survival and kills the young man without thinking. This act haunts him to this day as the Vietnamese man was no immediate threat to him nor his platoon. The whole experience of the Vietnam War and the constant state of fear triggered the soldier inside him to eliminate possible danger. Another implied connection is that he saw the young man as the embodiment of the Vietnam War; he simply wanted the war to end, to go away – just evaporate.
In an attempt to come to terms with his guilt, the thought process of the character O’Brien reveals how he is imposing his own identity onto the deceased by constructing an imaginary life for the young man. The narrator imagines that the young man might have “covered his head” and would be “lying in a deep hole whilst closing his eyes and not moving until the war was over” (O’Brien 121), but that “beyond anything else, he was afraid of disgracing himself, and therefore his family and village” (121). This almost fully refers back to his own struggle when he received his draft notice in “On a Rainy River”. Tegmark reflects that O’Brien is giving a face to “his faceless responsibility and faceless grief” (203) by projecting himself onto the boy who just started fighting in the war. Also, by projecting himself onto the dead body, O’Brien is confronted with his own mortality which is continuously tested during war. He reflects that the young man that he has killed, who might have had similar plans for the future as O’Brien did, could have been him.
confrontation between the narrator and his first kill reoccurs frequently. In that chapter alone, the description of the corpse being “a slim, dead, almost dainty young man” (O’Brien 118) is repeated three times, and the observation that his eye is a “star-shaped hole” (118) is mentioned four times in a span of only six pages. Even more striking is the fact that the phrase of the young, dainty man is mentioned throughout the book on eight different occasions, not including the numerous references to ‘the young man’. The haunting image of the corpse with the star-shaped hole for an eye in addition to O’Brien’s compulsion of retelling the particular details is, according to Eaglestone, a signal for a “refusal of closure” (66) in the hope of finding a “hidden truth, a vague hope of salvation” (Wiesel 67 qtd. in Eaglestone 66). Retelling and revisiting can, therefore, be seen as a representation of human suffering since the nature of trauma forces the victim to relive the moment until the mind has caught up and made sense of what has occurred to him or her.
As numerous researchers have underlined, trauma is not only confronting in the moment itself, but can linger and haunt the soldier for long periods of time if left untreated. The chapter called “Field Trip” illustrates how trauma can linger and remain difficult to formulate into words even twenty years after the traumatic experience. In a similar fashion to “The Man I Killed”, the first-person perspective reveals the inner workings of a character, but this time it is through the eyes of Tim O’Brien who visits the scene of Kiowa’s death together with his young daughter Kathleen. Here he wishes to commemorate Kiowa’s death by placing his moccasins in the mud. As he walks into the water he feels a sense of recognition and reflects:
is’. My voice surprised me. It has a rough, chalky sound, full of things I did not know were there. (O’Brien 178)
As he envisions the horrific scene of Kiowa’s death, he is at a loss for words. After twenty years, he is finally able to face his trauma and perform a kind of ritual where “the writer-character tries to literally bury his haunting memory of Kiowa dying in this very field” (Tegmark 211). This is another form of coming to terms with his trauma and lessening its grip on his life. However, the narrator realizes that “still, it was hard to find any real emotion. It simply wasn’t there […] I’d seemed to grow cold inside, all the illusions gone, all the old ambitions and hopes for myself sucked away into the mud. Over the years, that coldness had never entirely disappeared” (O’Brien 176). This particular reflection of the narrator exposes what an impact trauma can have on human being, as the narrator is still unable to fully face his trauma and talk about it.
mutual understanding between them about the horrors of the war and that, twenty years later, he still has not forgotten the war, just like O’Brien. O’Brien and his daughter Kathleen reflect on this as they walk away: “‘is he mad at you or something?’ ‘I hope not.’ ‘He looks mad.’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘All that’s finished’” (179). This signals that O’Brien was able to close off this chapter of his life and move on now that he has commemorated Kiowa’s death and revisited the place he saw as the embodiment of the horrors of Vietnam.
Finally, the haunting nature of the memories of those that have been lost is another aspect of trauma aesthetic. One particular aspect that is related to the haunting nature of trauma is what Eaglestone calls “the memory of the dead” (53). He explains how “many testimonies end with specific acts of remembering individuals who were murdered” (53), which is exemplified by the aforementioned scene of O’Brien commemorating Kiowa’s death. In the last chapter and thus, according to Eaglestone, the place to remember all those who died, the narrator states: “I keep dreaming Linda alive. And Ted Lavender, too. And Kiowa, and Curt Lemon, and a slim young man I killed, and an old man sprawled beside a pigpen and several others whose bodies I once lifted and dumped into a truck. They’re all dead” (O’Brien 213). All those with whom O’Brien bonded during the Vietnam War and whom he lost because of the aftermath of the war are named and remembered to give weight and names to O’Brien’s loss. The embodiment of his guilt, the young dainty man, is especially emphasized in this memorization of the dead as O’Brien reflects that
smile at some secret thought and then continue up the trail to where it bends back into the fog. (O’Brien 128)
Chapter Three
Redeployment:
The Hurdles of Homecoming
Returning home after deployment should be a joyous happening for all veterans; however, this was not the case for countless Vietnam and Iraq War veterans. As was demonstrated in chapter one, the Iraq War was muddled with polarized opinions of society and of the government about America’s involvement in the war. The changing political views were confusing for all involved parties, which caused soldiers to be viewed as victims of “a merciless military-industrial complex or of a dastardly Arabic resistance, but also simultaneously as ignorant ‘grunts’ and the perpetrators of uncountable deaths among noncombatant civilians” (Luckhurst 721). This caused soldiers who returned home to struggle with expressing their traumatic memories because the American public had strong opinions about the veterans and the war. They had to face their family, loved ones, old friends, and society who regarded them as ‘broken’ or, at the very least, troubled.
of them are troubled by a sense of having lived two lives” (xv); life as they knew it before deployment and life after coming home from deployment felt as if they were in a new war, namely a war of readjusting. In the title chapter “Redeployment”, Sergeant Price experiences coming home as confusing and uncomfortable, especially when he is forced to go shopping at the mall downtown by his wife. Through his first-person perspective, the marine inside him “went down the side of the road, checking ahead and scanning the roofs across from him” (Klay 12). He reflects that in Iraq he was protected on all sides by his squad who were trained to leave no openings for attacks, but “in Wilmington, you don’t have a squad, you don’t have a battle buddy, you don’t even have a weapon […] You’re safe, so your alertness should be at white, but it’s not” (12). Even though Sergeant Price is hundreds of miles away from Iraq, his memories of the war impede him from readjusting to his old life. He also realizes that readjusting might be more difficult than expected since he thinks “it’ll be a long fucking time before you get down to white” (13). It reveals the profound impact the whole experience of being at war has had on his functioning in society.
deal. People who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died. People who’ve spend their whole lives at white” (Klay 12). It demonstrates how disconnected veterans feel from their old environment and how misunderstood they feel as they are surrounded by people who have not experienced war.
shit. Except me” (15). It reveals the sheer impact the view of a man submerged in a barrel of liquid shit had on the narrator and how traumatic it was. The first-person perspective also emphasizes this impact due to revealing Sergeant Price’s disrupted thought process.
At the time, Sergeant Price was unaware that this particular event had such an impact on him and that it would resurface, signaling the belatedness of trauma. Norbury states that “the past intrudes into the present in the form of echoes and memories, to the extent that the initial trauma appears to generate further trauma” (39). Although Norbury writes about the representation of trauma in teen fiction, her observation also applies to other genres such as war literature. In the story of Sergeant Price, the memory of the insurgent intrudes into his consciousness when he aims his gun at his dog. He reflects that “staring at Vicar, it was the same thing. This feeling, like something in me is going to break if I do this” (Klay 15). The moment of shooting his dog, which is an emotional, confronting event, worsened the memory of the insurgent as now Price will remember both the shooting of his dog as well as the shooting of the man.
towards Al Qaeda as America regarded the attack as an inhuman act of terrorism. Sergeant Price is at war partly because of this attack and he is had to survive daily attacks from the Iraqi army, and has lost friends due to improvised explosive devices. The figure of the dog in this story is thus the embodiment of Sergeant Price’s time as a soldier in the Iraq War.
(133). It reveals the unease, the tension that veterans felt when at war and when they suffer from a traumatic experience – something which was brought to light through the observation of the chaplain.
The role of the fellow soldier in “War Stories” reveals the bond that exists between soldiers and the support they receive from it. There is a mutual understanding about war and its aftermath that veterans feel cannot be understood by family members. Brende and Parson state that this is due to the fact that fellow soldiers felt as if they were “linked together as if they were different parts of a single organism” (88). In the chapter “War Stories”, Jenks and the narrator sit down in a pub, waiting for two women to arrive and interview Jenks who was severely burned by an improvised exploding device (IED) during deployment. Jenks and the narrator have a strong connection due to their shared experiences in Iraq and people remarked that they “could be brothers” (Klay 213-214). The narrator confirms this as he states: “He’s me, but less lucky” (214), ‘he’ meaning Jenks. They reminiscence about their time together and remember the blast that scarred Jenks and he says: “Nobody wants this […] Nobody even wants to look past this. It’s too much” (Klay 218). Jenks felt safe enough to drop his masculine, strong front and reveal his insecurity to a good friend and a fellow veteran like the narrator. It demonstrates how traumatic the explosion was Jenks as he used to be confident about his appearance, but he now scans the area constantly to see if people are staring at him. Therefore, the narrator is there as moral support, for Jenks only feels save enough to talk to two strangers about his experiences when he has someone there to protect him from danger– just like they would do for each other during the Iraq War.
were commonly associated with PTSD regardless of whether they showed the symptoms or not. Society quickly labeled veterans as ‘broken’, as described in chapter one, which annoyed veterans who had to face those who were only interested in gruesome stories, like the interviewers in Jenks’s story. When Jenks talks about “nightmares” and “weird reactions when you hear something, smell something”, the interviewer quickly labels it as be “PTSD” (Klay 227). Jenks responds that he is well, that explosions do not startle him, and that it is just that some smells make him remember an unpleasant moment –something which she again labels as PTSD. Jenks responds angrily and declares: “I’m fine. Who wouldn’t have a few weird reactions? It doesn’t mess with my life” (227). Jenks thus critiques the American public for wanting to label veterans without taking time to properly listen to their story. In an interview, Klay remarks on this tendency of society to label people: “either you’re a hero or you must be traumatized” (Kane).
emotions when Zara politely apologizes for not knowing what he has experienced in Iraq. He “ran towards her, […] planting myself directly in her path. ‘What the fuck was that?’ I said’” (180). He reflects that he “was full of energy. My fists were balled tight. I wanted to pace back and forth. But she was still, sizing me up, colder every second” (180). This outburst of irritation or anger falls under the PTSD category of “hyper arousal” (American Psychiatric Association) because Waguih was lost control quickly. The fact that he feels unable to stop pacing back and forth demonstrates how intense his anger is even though Zara only apologized. The sheer contrast of his anger and Zara’s stillness underlines the abnormality of Waguih’s response, and thus portrays how a veteran can change due to their traumatic experiences.
Zara is also the representative of the Muslim religion in this novel, and an embodiment of the American public who opposed the war . The majority of Waguih’s enemies in Iraq were all Muslim. As a pacifist and a Muslim woman, Zara questions Waguih’s actions and thought processes to force him to consider the enemy’s perspective. It compels him to consider “a markedly alternative view of the world” (Norbury 35), which could aid him in making sense of his actions. Waguih states that “every man in his section had killed someone” to which Zara responds: “and Marines think that’s a good thing?” (Klay 185). Waguih replies “Of course” (185), although he realizes that he is simplifying the matter. However, the most confronting question arises after Waguih explains that he once walked up to a blown-up body on an impulse and Zara asks:
“Why’d you look”?
“You wanted to see.”
Her voice was hard, accusing. “Why’d you look?” (187)
Waguih is unable to answer her question as he feels that something was missing from his story that he is unable to realize. In a moment of confusion due to Zara’s sharp questions, he reveals that his generals had various meetings with imams and sheikhs to warn them to “‘stop sending your stupid fucking kids against us, we’re just going to kill them.’ But it wouldn’t change anything” (191). When Wagiuh saw one of the children die, he thought to himself “that was one I was supposed to save” (191). To which Zara critically questions: “‘Save?’ ‘By convincing him not to fight the soldiers invading his home?’” (191). Through Zara, the voice of American society who were against the Iraq war and the Muslims who Waguih fought are represented in order to emphasize that there are always two sides to a war. During the Iraq War, both armies are fighting to protect their homeland at all costs, and the American public is divided as well into pro-war and anti-war parties. By forcing the veteran to confront the other side of his traumatic experience, he is able to come to terms with his actions and start the process of healing from his trauma.
Conclusion
In the previous chapters, I set out to demonstrate how the psychological and physical impacts of traumatic experiences are represented in the novels through the narrative structure and the narrative perspective. I also explored how the characters in both novels comment on their social and historical context via these literary devices, but also through their interaction with each other. I analyzed this with help from mainly close-reading, various aspects of trauma theory such as compulsive retelling, and the literary features of narrative structure and perspective. By doing so, I revealed the various ways in which trauma and war can be portrayed even though it is considered inexpressible, and also how novels can critically comment and reflect on their social and historical context.
fragmentation in the narrative structure and the first-person perspective all come together in the story of O’Brien’s first murder to further emphasize the isolated feelings he experienced. As he is confronted by the body, he closes off from the outside world emotionally and is trapped in his own mind because he is unable to stop retelling the same details of the victim’s body. Kiowa’s pleads were unable to reach him while he was in this state of mind. Thus, both Bowker and O’Brien’s stories portray trauma as a lonely, isolated process.
By doing so, the characters comment on the social context of the Vietnam War, and the emotional impact of facing society’s judgment and rejection after they returned home. Due to the rejection from the American public, the soldiers were left alone with their psychological traumas and received no aid from the government nor sympathy from society during the course of the war, as discussed in chapter one. As Brende and Parson explain “anger and hostility over the war were displaced onto the veteran, and blaming the veteran became the American modus operandi” (48). The veterans were martyred, which caused them to shut down and avoid confrontation as illustrated by the story of Norman Bowker in The
Things They Carried. They became the outcasts of society, which only changed around 1980
when PTSD gained recognition and society started to sympathize with the veterans’ psychological problems.
traumatic experiences frequently. Especially in the story of the shooting of the dog, the first-person perspective reveals the confusion that Sergeant Price feels as he remembers his traumatic memory while in the process of shooting his dog. Also, the confusion that the characters felt after the Iraq War is also underlined in the narrative structure of the novel.
The story of Rodriquez is divided up in order to mirror the uncertainty and confusion that Rodriquez felt with regards to his traumatic memory. He frequently visits the chaplain yet, when he does, he feels confused about whether he needs help or not. Every time that he returns to the chapel, his resolve grows to reveal to the chaplain what occurred to him. Therefore, the narrative structure and the narrative perspective underline the focus on portraying trauma as a confusing process for the one who suffers from it.
In short, the differences in the representations of the war and trauma in the novels can thus be explained via the social and historical context of the two wars. The characters’ portrayal of trauma and war in The Things They Carried focuses on the individual experience without contrasting it to nonmilitant’s behavior in order to show the isolation and loneliness that veterans felt after returning home from Vietnam. This is different from how the characters in Redeployment portray trauma and the Iraq War as the trauma symptoms are brought to light through the interaction with other human beings or animals in order to reveal how war can change lives. The anger and confusion that veterans felt after returning home from Iraq was due to the mixed information with regards to the purpose of war, what occurred there, and why America is even involved.
(“Looking Back at the Vietnam”). Both believe that literature can express emotions and connect human beings in order to increase awareness about the horrors of war, the need for conversation about war and trauma, and what every human being can do themselves to improve the situation for all.
Especially in our growing, globalizing society where confrontation and war is just around the corner, reading war literature can lessen the gap between people. That is where the value of literature lies: in its ability to connect two lives and touch them emotionally and, hopefully, bring forth change. Martha Nussbaum is an active supporter of this idea and states that literature enhances human abilities such as “the ability to think critically; the ability to transcend local loyalties and to approach world problems as a ‘citizen of the world’; and, finally, the ability to imagine sympathetically the predicament of another person” (Nussbaum 7). Being a ‘citizen of the world’ requires any human to think more as ‘us’ instead of ‘I’ versus ‘them’. In order to make this happen, it is necessary to confront readers with new perspectives, opinions, and lifestyles. Literature can reveal unknown sides of our personality by contrasting it with the characters of a story. It can teach readers “the nuances of intersubjective relationships, the strategies, the limits, [and] the possibilities of human interaction” (Roche 211). Reading literature about past events is an invaluable source for learning and self-reflection. It is an “immersion in times that transcend our own. And the greater value we attach to the past, the more we recognize the importance of preserving a future in which these insights can continue to flourish” (Roche 234-235). All the above mentioned effects that literature can have are all vital in the personal growth of any individual, which will be visible on the long and short term.
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“Writer Phil Klay Returns to War and the Strangeness of Coming Home for
