essay 4

Struggle for Preservation of Self and Conscience
Colleen Dolan
“What kind of war is it that begins and ends this way, with a pretty girl, cushioned seats, and magazines?” [pp 207]

On September 26th, 1959, the burning orange sun rose East of Vietnam to light up the massacre of the first American troops in what would become a six-year war. Culminating in April of 1975, the Vietnam War claimed the lives of over 50 thousand Americans and 3 million Vietnamese. Nixon drafted countless Americans to battle on the rough terrain of Vietnam, giving them no choice but to fight or flee the country, which many chose to do. Tim O’Brien was one of the many drafted to fight on the battlegrounds of Vietnam, and he remained there for over a year in Advanced Infantry Training. In his personal memoir of his time in Vietnam, If I Die in a Combat Zone, O’Brien grapples with his own personal moral and ethical struggle in dealing with the war. O’Brien clearly feels that the war is unjust, and this is shown in his reference to editorials he has written opposing it. It is his visceral opposition to the war that leads him to an immense emotional struggle regarding his time in Vietnam. O’Brien’s emotional struggle is highlighted by his trouble in defining courage as well as his lack of faith in his own actions. It is with letters to Erik, a close relationship with Captain Johnson, and an experience with Callicles that O’Brien is able to come to terms with his emotions and unique courageousness, allowing him to make it through his time in Vietnam.
Tim O’Brien’s disdain for staying in Vietnam develops into emotional trouble throughout his first few months there because of the struggle he endures in defining courage and what it means to truly be a courageous soldier. O’Brien describes his first days on the front as “waking up in a cancer ward…nothing to hope for, no dreams for daylight.” [pp 9] This pessimism and disrespect that O’Brien goes into the war with- scrawling words of hatred on cardboard and planning to flee the country- are setting him up for failure. “It is hard to know what bravery is,” [pp 23] he reflects upon departure, and it is this lack of understanding of this quality in himself that leads him to question his intentions and the intentions of those around him. Unable to separate his lack of support for the war personally from being a soldier leads O’Brien to think that he does not belong, and more than that, that he is anything but a hero of war. O’Brien finally begins to realize his own potential as a soldier when he abandons his plans to flee the country; “I could not run,” he says, “I was a coward” [pp 68] and it is this that causes him to begin defining courageousness in his own terms. When Mad Mark first hands him a weapon on the battlefield, he acknowledges feeling brave for the first time, and this is because he is allowing himself to feel like a part of something- he feels as though he is part of a group fighting for a common cause and this mindset propels him forward. He finds later that laughter “makes you believe you are brave.” [pp 109] The war begins to make him thankful for what he has, as the battles bring unity to his group; “we felt confident and…brave. Simply surviving the assault was blessing enough,” he says when he becomes closer to group. O’Brien is able to stop overanalyzing his reasoning behind being in Vietnam because he is distracted by the battles, which leave him with feelings of bravery that come naturally and boost his morale through the rest of his time at war.
O’Brien is again confronted with the definition of courage immediately after watching his fellow men torture the innocent Vietnamese, and this is because he cannot see himself as courageous when he sees his fellow soldiers as cowards. It is Captain Johansen that renews O’Brien’s confidence in his own courage after the troubling sight. “Proper courage is wise courage,” he says, “it is the endurance of the soul in spite of fear.” [pp 136] Johansen goes on to quote Socrates in specifying that “only the wise endurance is courage” [pp 137] which causes O’Brien once again to question his intentions of being present in Vietnam. Confronted with the situation of the shot cow, O’Brien notes that he does not shoot, but he endures- which is reflective of his own courageousness. It is the courage of his own convictions that O’Brien ends up questioning, leading him to the understanding that it takes a truly special man to be courageous. Johansen teaches him that “men must know what they are doing is courageous and know that it is right…courage is more than dying or suffering the loss of a love…it is temperament and, more, wisdom.” [pp 141] O’Brien must, however, take war as a unique situation in relation to courage, and when he discovers that it is the fact that fear is a taboo that takes the meaning out of courage in the battlefield, he is left disappointed. It is Captain Johansen’s courage that saves O’Brien and is used as a model for his own courage, allowing him to redefine the word itself. “It is more likely that men act cowardly and, at other times, act with courage…the men who do well on the average, perhaps with one moment of glory, those men are brave.” [pp 147] Johansen is the only one in his entire squad that O’Brien thinks has any concern with courage, and O’Brien finds deep respect for him because of this. “I found a living hero,” he says of Johansen, “and it was good to learn that human beings sometimes embody valor.”
O’Brien leaves for Vietnam with little to no attachments or support at home, and this results in him having little faith in himself, something that truly scars him and provides as a central emotional obstacle at war. “I went away…and the town did not miss me much,” [pp 15] O’Brien says upon leaving his home, and this having nothing to go home to gives him nothing to fight for on the battlefront. O’Brien confronts his emotional concerns early on in the war with Edwards:
I believe human life is valuable because, unlike any other species, we know the good from the bad. I believe that a man is most a man when he tries to understand what is good. I believe that a man cannot be fully a man until he acts in the pursuit of goodness. [pp 56]
In this passage, O’Brien is referencing his own insecurities vested in the fact that he does not believe in the war but finds himself absorbed in it, still. Edwards admonishes O’Brien for his arrogance and tells him that faith is the answer. “You’ve got to have faith in somebody” he says, and because O’Brien cannot even begin to have faith in himself, it is difficult for him to vest any trust in himself when fighting. O’Brien continues to lose faith as he witnesses massacre after massacre; seeing no point in the war. The Alpha Company lights a small town in Pinkville on fire, and as the rest of the squad is reveling in victory, O’Brien refers to it, as “good, just as pure hate is good.” [pp 119] He cannot get over the innocence of the victims, and battles go by with little notice to who has died. It is “certain blood for uncertain reasons,” [pp 168] and O’Brien cannot get over the fact that with each bullet shot, a human life is lost for something that he does not even believe in. The juxtaposition between O’Brien’s beliefs and what he must do cause his lack of faith, and the inevitable question- what is the point? And it is only the letters that O’Brien receives from Erik that provide as intellectual standards and give him something to truly believe in, allowing him to fight on.
The letters O’Brien receives from Erik serve to corroborate O’Brien’s own views on the war and life itself as well as to express a position from which O’Brien must keep his distance in order to explain what he is witnessing. With Erick’s offering of Lawrence’s book The Mint, he sees himself as “becoming a soldier…tak[ing] on a friend betraying my wonderful suffering.” [pp 34] O’Brien, however, continues to let his position as a soldier be surpassed by that of his conscience. Erik helps O’Brien to rationalize their plight in terms of various philosophies as well as literature. It is these letters from Erik that act as a stabilizing force for O’Brien’s emotional instability in Vietnam. Erik details his introspective thinking of his experience away from the front lines of the war, quoting Horace “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” [it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country] and it is not until O’Brien is transferred to Quag Ngai that he is able to begin to comprehend how much he has been affected by the fog of war. Erik says often, through philosophy, that which O’Brien cannot seem to put his finger on, and this is the most key in helping O’Brien make it through the labors and tedium of war.
Callicles provides as the symbolic representation of the mentality and culture of war which O’Brien so vehemently struggles against emotionally throughout the memoir. Callicles has been given the task of taking investigators to view the results of the My Lai massacre, and with such strong conditions, he makes it very clear that he sees the event as an unfortunate but necessary result of the war. After O’Brien reports him, the major must leave Vietnam. Callicles provides O’Brien with a new definition for courage shouting that courage is “not standing around passively hoping for things to happen right; it’s going out and being tough and making things happen right.” [pp 195] Callicles gives O’Brien hope that the warlike mentality that he represents is not tolerated, even in the pits of Vietnam. Callicles’ indiscriminatory violence and claims of “all it takes is guts!” after forcing O’Brien to be put to the test, suggesting he fire at incoming men in the middle of the night, going against everything that O’Brien believes and has developed faith in. This jolt of reality leaves O’Brien forever changed, in that he is now ready to hold on strongly to his convictions and what he believes in; while also being able to take blame for the war away from himself.
O’Briens instinctive resistance towards the war and what he is fighting for cause him to spend his time in Vietnam struggling with his emotions regarding the war and leave him stuck in between being a hero to his country and doing what he thinks his right. O’Brien is unable to separate what he must do from what he believes he should do and it is Erik that provides as O’Brien’s emotional cornerstone through his journey, there to provide guidance as well as a pillar of friendship. O’Brien is unable to allow himself to succeed in Vietnam at first because he has no faith in his own actions and he struggles to define what it means to be courageous. Captain Johansen presents just the role model that O’Brien needs, giving him faith that there are good people in the war, and that courage has to do with wise endurance. Callicles provides the opposite representation, that of O’Brien’s worst fears confirmed; unorganized and random violence without care or regard. This also provides O’Brien with a model, though, a model to show the effects of war going too far. O’Brien finally finds himself giving in to the uniformity of experience for a means for survival, but he never stops questioning himself or his conscience. His overanalysis of morality and courage as well as apprehension towards those around him end up working to his advantage, as he leaves Vietnam with more faith in himself and a knowledge that he possesses his own type of courage; “you promise to do better next time,” he acknowledges, “that in itself is a kind of courage.”