Exploration 4 - Harmeet Bhachu

Part One:

Throughout the novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien comes back to the theme of relationships consistently. In each chapter, seen especially towards end of the novel, relationships between two characters or international relationships are seen to grow with the central plot. In the last chapter, The Lives of the Dead, O’Brien was in a ‘romantic’ relationship with Linda, his first love, in his younger years. After the loss of her, O’Brien kept holding on to her ‘aura’ through dreams and daydream thoughts. O’Brien allows himself to remind events in his personal life with Linda. When carrying the dead when in war, there is a connection from their death and the death of Linda. The central conflict of this chapter was his internal fight with her/their story. O’Brien plays with this theme of death from all this death remembrance throughout this chapter. Contrary, O’Brien plays with another theme of live and living, through the events of meeting with Linda in his mind and thoughts. 

Relationships between other two or more characters as well as O’Briens internal relationship with himself grow through other people and events in his life.

Part Two: 

One question I had outside of the plot of this novel was ‘what were the religious values in Vietnam, and how did individuals who were religious feel about the war?’ after reading the chapter Church. After research I had found that the president of Vietnam, Nguyen Van Thieu, at the time was a Catholic. But majority of Vietnamese were Buddhist, as we see in the novel monks were present in a short story. In Buddhism, the first precept is "avoid killing, or harming any living thing”. Killing or harming anything living is against their first value. So why, in the novel, does the monks care and give back to Henry Dobbins when they set up camp in their temple? Within religion, especially eastern or Asian religion, respect and honor is high and will most likely not be questioned or forgotten. The monks in the novel still hold onto the respect they have for visitors in their temple. They care and give back because the soldiers need the help and space they provide. They see Dobbins as “soldier Jesus” because of his respects back to the church. Although this may or may not have been a symbol to religion in O’Briens view, monks in the Vietnam war did not act as favorable to American soldiers and the war all together. Many did self harm by burning their body and sitting out in the street to show their anger and their stance on a war breaking out in their country. 

Thích Quảng Đức was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who burned himself

Citations:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaders_of_the_Vietnam_War

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/buddhistethics/war.shtml

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/31/newsid_2973000/2973209.stm