Personifying the Paradox

Written for my ENC1102 class:

Personifying the Paradox

What is the true face of war? War can be glorious: men fighting valiantly against the opposition. War can be horrific: people slaughtered unjustified and peace shattered by the screams of the dying. War can show the characteristics of humankind, from the most valorous to the cruelest. In literature, authors have portrayed war in countless manners. Tim O’ Brien’s The Things They Carry shows war in a detached, detailed manner. The war in Dulce et Decorum Est is nothing but nameless death, filled with destruction and the false belief that to die for one’s country is valorous. However, war is an abstract concept, both solid in its existence and paradoxical in its meaning, and being such it is difficult for an author to write about war without delving into the characteristics of the soldiers who make up and personify the war itself. In the story The Things They Carry and the poem Dulce et Decorum Est, characteristics and personalities of the soldiers are what truly define each literary work’s differing depiction of war. Each author’s treatment of the soldiers, including their naming, portrayal of reactions to death, and interpersonal relationships, give vibrant color or paint monotone the author’s personal vision of war. The soldiers in The Things They Carry find their identities by the gear and emotional burdens they each carry. In Wilfred Owen’s poem Dulce et Decorum Est, the soldiers are nameless faces and have very few defining characteristics. The namelessness of the soldiers in Dulce et Decorum Est gives rise to one perception on war while the named soldiers in The Things They Carry create another.


The soldiers in The Things They Carry are individually named and given distinct personalities by the author. Soldiers in Dulce et Decorum Est remain nameless. This loss of individuality conveys to the reader only the slightest hints of personal identity, giving a sense of a conformed and unioned sense of self. The namelessness of the soldiers in Dulce et Decorum Est alienates the reader to the soldiers. By making the soldiers nameless, the author has not given the soldiers any sense of personal identity, but has in fact left them open to be described by other generalizations such as “boys”, “old beggars”, “men”, “lame”, and “all blind”. This namelessness gives war the ability to kill people by stripping them of individuality, making them another nameless face crushable upon the bloody battlefield.
In The Things They Carry, each soldier has his own distinct name and titles associated with him. For example, Kiowa is a young Native American soldier with a religious upbringing. His comrades, such as Norman Bowker, often refer to him as “Indian” and it through their usage of such monikers and nicknames that personality can be found. It is through the names of these soldiers and their monikers for each other that war is also found and defined. The war that is portrayed in The Things They Carry is not just physical but is also psychological as well. By learning the names of each of the soldiers in The Things They Carry, the author allows the reader to discover a sense of personal identity and the interpersonal relations of each character. By knowing their names and personal nicknames, another type of war becomes evident. There is a war of emotions and personal conflict in the mind of every soldier. The revelation of their names cleans soldiers’ battle and blood smeared faces, exposing them as real, identifiable people. They have a sense of identity just like the real people around us. These soldiers have been dropped into the middle of a war that is brewing all around them but it is the unseen enemy that lurks within that is the main type of “war” in the story.

The titles and names that are given to the soldiers in each piece shows that two very different types of war are happening. The soldiers in Dulce et Decorum Est are given titles such as “old beggars” and “lame”. This conveys a sense of defeat. War is further defined as a destroyer of men and killer of hope. However, the soldiers in The Things They Carry are called “devout Baptist”, “big man”, and “very gentle person”. These personable, positive names show that war is the one that is defeated and mortal. These names are the names of good qualities that kindhearted individuals possess: the kind of qualities that war would not be associated. These titles do not suggest any sort of conflict. However, later on in the story, the reality of war unfolds for the characters in The Things They Carry. Ted Lavender, one of the soldiers in Alpha Company, is killed and his fellow soldier, Kiowa, gives him label of “dead weight”. This term defines war as something that will kill without warning, leaving the victim unidentifiable and able to be objectified by those who once knew him by his true name. It is through this name and concept of war that both literary works share a similar meaning of war. Through the usage of names and titles in both pieces, war has been given definition. War also has more traits that can be further expounded upon by examining the soldiers’ reactions to certain situations that happen throughout both pieces.

The soldiers in both pieces have created even more insight into the concept of war by reacting to death in a diverse and descriptive manner. Death is a common occurrence in both Dulce et Decorum Est and The Things They Carry. It is through death that war is brought into a realistic perspective. In Dulce et Decorum Est, death is shown in the form of poisonous gas. The warning of “Gas! Gas!” is shouted by a nameless soldier and the other fellows of his company struggle to get their gas masks on, which is described in the passage as “An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets…”. Regardless of their efforts to get their gas mask on in time “…someone still was yelling out and stumbling and flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…” and later on in the poem that same soldier is found “…guttering, choking, drowning.” The narrator of the poem describes the scene of him and his comrades watching in horror as their fellow soldier died horribly as “…the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of air…the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud.” Death is shown in the form of a gas that literally turns the victim inside out. The soldier died horrifically and his fellow soldiers could do nothing but stand by and watch as he slowly passed away. Humankind created the tool of war that directly resulted in the nameless soldier’s hideous death. War is thus characterized as being without remorse and a terrible creation of man that does nothing but kill and destroy lives. The soldiers are horrified by their comrade’s death and their reaction is explained when the narrator says “…you would not tell with such high zest…To children ardent for some desperate glory, The Old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” Belief that a path to glory lies in death for one’s country is nothing but a lie; war will bring nothing but death to those who partake in its horrific rites. War is shown here to be something in which nothing good can come out of and that dying for one’s country in a war is foolishness. The death of Ted Lavender in The Things They Carry is very different from the vividly described death of the soldier in Dulce et Decorum Est. Ted Lavender’s death is conveyed in several passages throughout the story. One such passage is

…right then Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back…he lay with his mouth open. The teeth were broken. There was a swollen black bruise under his left eye. The cheekbone was gone…the guy was dead.

Throughout the story, Ted Lavender’s death is conversed about in a rather casual tone, as though the narrator has seen too much death because of war and Ted Lavender was just another face on a long list of dead comrades. The phrase commonly used by the narrator is “before Lavender died.” He uses this phrase as a sort of checkpoint to relate other events and characteristics of the soldiers. Yet before Lavender’s death, war seemed to be a sort of casual outing for the soldiers and even Lieutenant Cross spent most of his time daydreaming. Lavender’s death created the two types of war within The Things They Carry: the personal conflict caused by Lavender’s death within the psyches some of the soldiers and the actual Vietnam War itself. The Vietnam War was what caused Lavender’s death. However, the soldiers in The Things They Carry reacted differently to death than the soldiers in Dulce et Decorum Est. Later in the story, when the soldiers waited for a helicopter to arrive and take Ted Lavender’s body away, they sat around making jokes about death and smoking Lavender’s marijuana. The soldiers in The Things They Carry “were afraid of dying but even more afraid of showing it.” Lieutenant Cross reacted to Ted Lavender’s death differently. He burned his personal mementos of his girlfriend Martha and “sat at the bottom of his foxhole and wept.” These reactions to death show that the war was not only physically difficult for the soldiers but also emotionally and mentally demanding as well. War is portrayed as something that can take life without warning and authors show this through the different reactions of the characters. The soldiers in The Things They Carry saw death as a part of war that one could not show fear of, while the soldiers in Dulce et Decorum Est made no such posturing because war was all too real to them. It is through death and how the characters reacted to their comrades dying that war is defined as a force of destruction.

Character interaction in The Things They Carry and Dulce et Decorum Est is not limited to just interaction with the enemy and death but also applies to the soldiers' relationships with their fellow soldiers. How the soldiers treat each other is crucial in further exploring and understanding each author's concept of war. In Dulce et Decorum Est, the soldiers have only one thing in mind: survival. Because of this, they push their personal emotions aside and allow their instincts take over. The war and the instinct to survive drives them to be concerned only with themselves, their comrades becoming a secondary concern. It is because of this lack of camaraderie which illustrates war as an event that can quickly destroy friendships and make a person more concerned with their own survival than that of their fellow soldiers. Later on in the poem, the author describes how the soldiers watched as one of their own was harmed by the gas and how they got the soldier "behind the wagon" and "flung him in." This passage shows that after all of the death and confusion caused by the enemy attack, the soldiers take the time to try and aid their dying friend. Yet they could not save him and the narrator, who is presumably one of the soldiers, states, "My friend, you would not tell with such high zest...The Old Lie...” This statement shows that the narrator cared for his friend and has witnessed yet another horror of war. War had claimed the life of another comrade. War is death, a force that will take life without remorse. While the interaction between the soldiers in Dulce et Decorum Est is limited to death and the soldiers' reactions to such, the soldiers in The Things They Carry have a variety of interactions with each other and treat each other in a myriad of different ways. Towards the middle of the story Lee Strunk, one of the soldiers in Alpha Company, has "tunnel duty" and goes down into a tunnel, armed with Lieutenant Cross's pistol and a flashlight. The time passes and when Lee Strunk emerges from the tunnel, his friends and he joke about him "rising from the dead” and then "the men laughed." It is through this type of friendly, jovial interaction that war is defined as an event that creates a strong bond between soldiers, a friendship that can last for decades. It is only after Ted Lavender's death that a different type of interaction is found to exist between the soldiers. Kiowa, the Native American soldier of the company, later speaks to Norman Bowker about the events that surrounded Ted Lavender's death. He talks about Lavender's death by saying that it was “Like cement...I swear to God--boom-down. Not a word...Zapped while zipping..." and Bowker, who has become rather annoyed by Kiowa's continuing elaboration of events he has had heard for quite a well, tells him to "shut up." Also, according to Kiowa, "The Lieutenant's in some deep hurt...the man cares.", which is a reference to Lieutenant Cross's behavior after Lavender's death. It is these examples of personal interaction that shows the soldiers in The Things They Carry care for each other and deal with death in different ways. War is once again seen as a force that can take life away yet it also shows that war is the cause of grief, strife, yet also comradeship. The soldiers of both pieces seem to recognize this paradox of war and thusly show that they do indeed harbor some emotional turmoil within themselves.

There is a saying about war: war is hell. However, in The Things They Carry and Dulce et Decorum Est war is much more than simply "hell." War is a terrible creation of humankind that does nothing but destroy. War is a personal conflict that soldiers carry inside themselves and fight emotionally. War is a force that can lead to death or glory. War is overly glorified with false notions of valor and honor. War is something that can create heroes. War is a physical manifestation of death brought to reality through the tools of aggressive humans. These traits of war are illustrated and manifested by the soldiers that take part in the war itself. In The Things They Carry, the soldiers are fighting a war on two fronts: one is the Vietnam War itself, the other war is their own emotional battle inside themselves as they deal with the harsh reality of death and the loss of their comrades. They have their own names and distinct personalities. The soldiers define war through their interactions with each other and through their treatment of each other. The nameless soldiers in Dulce et Decorum Est fight a war that is all too real. Poisonous gas descends from the sky, sent by an unseen enemy and the soldiers struggle to get their only lifeline into place: a gas mask. Their war has driven them to be defeated and desperate. They fight to survive against the gaseous killer, as formless and nameless as they themselves. In both pieces, the word war is manifested in many different incarnations, its many sides shown unashamed and raw. If war is all these contradictions, it is the soldiers who personify the paradox.