Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carrying Martha's letters and two photos of her, Henry Dobbins wearing his girlfriend's pantyhose around his neck as a lucky charm, and many other soldiers treasuring keepsakes from their girlfriends. Girls and women come up later in the book as we read about Mary Anne coming over to Vietnam, Tim O'Brien remembering Linda, and soldiers joking about "mama-sans" (a slang term used by American soldiers for any older Vietnamese women).
At first I thought, The women are what's keeping these guys sane, what gives them strength to fight and not give up. As we got further through the book, however, I realized that for these young and ambitious soldiers, too often girls mess up their lives, their thoughts, and their morals.
In many cases the problem isn't even in the girls themselves, but in the soldiers' psychology. In the short story The Things They Carried, we see Jimmy cross not exactly neglecting his duties, but spacing out in times of combat because his thoughts are full of Martha. For the rest of his life, he blames himself for Ted Lavender's death because he was perhaps "imagining," dreaming about Martha instead of being on his guard.
Henry Dobbins' obsession with his girl's pantyhose seems contrasting to Lieutenant Cross' situation--he doesn't get distracted from his war duties, but instead seems to gain a special invincible superpower with the pantyhose wrapped around his neck. That could've been a positive female influence, but no! By the end of Stockings we find out that the girlfriend dumps Dobbins. "'No sweat,' he said. 'The magic doesn't go away'"(p.112) He seems to keep his positive joking attitude, but it's clear that something that has made life worth living is lost for him.
For Mark Fossie, I'll have to admit that I can neither blame him nor Mary Anne. Close high school buddies and intimate lovers in terms of peace, they have never had a hard trial of their relationship. War changes people. While it left Fossie soft and high-school-like, it made the 17-year-old Mary Anne a true warrior. I feel like their separation was inevitable the day Mary Anne stepped off the helicopter in Vietnam, but seeing Fossie's grief after his girlfriend dumps him and the party-loving platoon and joins the Greenies, I think he would've been better off not having a girlfriend at all or at least not bringing her to Vietnam.
In more minor scenes, we read about Normal Bowker seeing his girlfriend married to another man and a young soldier (very likely Tim?) bringing around enemy fire by lighting a flashlight to show Kiowa a picture of his girlfriend. The only girl who has had a positive influence on one of the soldiers is Linda for Tim, but even she dies and leaves a scar in his life (okay, maybe that's going too far, can't blame her for her illness).
Throughout many of the stories we've read, we see the soldiers craving for female companionship and cherishing memories of girls at home. These girls are the warmest memories the men have to carry with them. Maybe it's because the soldiers are too young for strong lasting relationships, or too vulnerable and not always mature to make wise decisions, but I felt like these guys would've had a lighter weight to carry and could've been happier men without the girls on their minds.
Oh wow, I haven't thought about the role of women in these war stories like that before. But you're right, women do seem to have a more negative effect than a positive one. Seeing all these connections come together like this is eye opening. Though I will say, with Dobbins, even though the break up did hurt him, the fact that he still had his stockings, I think is what kept him going. Because he was able to believe that the "magic" was still there, even if the attachment to his girlfriend was no longer there.
ReplyDeleteAnna, you make an interesting point. The men do seem to be obsessed with their girlfriends back home, and once that relationship is broken off (as in the case of Henry Dobbins), his purpose in life seems to go out. However, when the girls are still distant memories back in America, the concept of them does seem to push the soldiers forward. I guess what we can take away from this is that war changes people, usually for the worse. In fact, the whole book has been Tim O'Brien repeatedly saying that there is no such thing as a happy war story.
ReplyDeleteI definitely didn't think of the women in the stories like this, so you bring up an pretty interesting point of view. While the women may hold some blame for the pain caused on the soldiers, I agree with Pauline's point that war changes people. Throughout the book O'Brien gives us examples of how soldiers have changed as a result of the war. The story of Mary Anne is an interesting example because it shows us that women too can also be changed by war. But I'd have to think that the people present in the war go through larger changes than the people who stay home/aren't directly involved in combat. So while the women obviously have an affect on the men, I might also put the war to blame for the changes in the men that may make it difficult for the women at home.
ReplyDeleteFor most of these women, we can hardly talk about them as "characters" in their own right. As you describe it here, they mainly exist as projections of the men's loneliness, isolation, sense of normality lost, their superstitions and fears and desire to be home again. So, in "Stockings," it doesn't really matter to Dobbins that his "girl" has broken up with him--"the magic still works." It's what he *believes* the stockings represent, his projection of desire and meaning onto them. Likewise, Jimmy Cross's would-be quasi "girlfriend" exists mainly as a photograph and a few letters and isolated memories, which he pores over and obsesses and speculates about--the "real" Martha doesn't matter so much as what Cross *makes of* her (or the idea of her) in Vietnam. As we see, that doesn't translate back to a civilian context, and there really wasn't any "relationship" there to speak of.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree that women in this novel have a profound effect on the psychological state of the soldiers. While you say that "girls just screw things up," I think it would be more accurate to say that the women back home have a profound effect on the psyche of the soldiers, for better or for worse. At war in a foreign land, I am certain that the soldiers often sorely miss female companionship (although prostitutes in Vietnam are occasionally referenced.) Because of this, it is easy for me to understand why the actions of girls back home, or even just stories about girls, so deeply affect the soldiers.
ReplyDeleteGood point! I agree that life probably would have been easier for the soldiers if they hadn't been so preoccupied with girls. Although I understand that these men probably missed female companionship, from a logical standpoint, it seems irrational to spend so much time thinking about these girls when there isn't much chance of getting back together with them. I know that the soldiers weren't trying to be obsessed with girls on purpose, but sometimes, that obsession had serious consequences.
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