Unpredictable War Story
We've talked a lot in class about how Tim O'Brien "breaks our trust" by writing fiction (can you tell I'm biased?). And though I don't necessarily agree with this, I do agree that Tim O'Brien breaks our trust in the course of this work of short stories. Before "Ghost Soldiers", we take Tim to be almost our friend in telling these stories. His role in most stories is either minimal or empathetic. But in "Ghost Soldiers", his role takes a turn.
The story sets up a predictably empathetic situation: Tim's been injured and has had to step out of an "adventurous" company in the war, and now spends his time restocking the supply helicopters. At fault is Bobby Jorgensen, the medic who replaced Rat Kiley and mistreated Tim's wound, leaving him with borderline gangrene. And justifiably, Tim is upset with being separated from his "brothers". So when Bobby comes with the Alpha Company to where Tim is stationed, we expect Tim to be upset. But we also expect that Tim will eventually sympathize with Bobby, and they'll make up, and the story will be false in facts and true in sentiment. Or at least that's what I expected.
When Tim and Bobby interact for the first time since the incident, and Tim proclaims he hated Bobby for making him stop hating him, I thought that would be it. I did not expect Tim's need for revenge. I did not expect him to ask Azar, the most seemingly morbid member of the Alpha Company, to help him exact revenge on Bobby. Even when they were sitting waiting to scare Bobby, I expected Tim to not go through with it. The traps seemed too elaborate and cruel for Tim's character. Even as Tim realized what he was doing was wrong, I expected him to try harder to stop Azar, and as he put it he "was there with him" and "understood what terror was". That is, he was with Bobby, and still did little to stop his torture.
But after all this, was still the ending I was expecting. Bobby and Tim call it even and they go on. But has something changed in the way we see Tim? According the rest of the stories he's been empathetic with the other side, not really enjoying war, only enjoying time he spends with his war "brothers". We expect him maybe not to do the right thing, but to do one that isn't completely malicious. I think this story transforms the rest of the stories. Tim isn't exactly the person we thought he was, and in that he breaks our trust. Maybe, though, that's the point. Because we know this isn't real, or maybe it is. But do the facts matter? It just calls attention to how he wants us to think of war. It's confusing, and you do things you wouldn't do otherwise. So despite this "betrayal" of trust, maybe this story was necessary.
The story sets up a predictably empathetic situation: Tim's been injured and has had to step out of an "adventurous" company in the war, and now spends his time restocking the supply helicopters. At fault is Bobby Jorgensen, the medic who replaced Rat Kiley and mistreated Tim's wound, leaving him with borderline gangrene. And justifiably, Tim is upset with being separated from his "brothers". So when Bobby comes with the Alpha Company to where Tim is stationed, we expect Tim to be upset. But we also expect that Tim will eventually sympathize with Bobby, and they'll make up, and the story will be false in facts and true in sentiment. Or at least that's what I expected.
When Tim and Bobby interact for the first time since the incident, and Tim proclaims he hated Bobby for making him stop hating him, I thought that would be it. I did not expect Tim's need for revenge. I did not expect him to ask Azar, the most seemingly morbid member of the Alpha Company, to help him exact revenge on Bobby. Even when they were sitting waiting to scare Bobby, I expected Tim to not go through with it. The traps seemed too elaborate and cruel for Tim's character. Even as Tim realized what he was doing was wrong, I expected him to try harder to stop Azar, and as he put it he "was there with him" and "understood what terror was". That is, he was with Bobby, and still did little to stop his torture.
But after all this, was still the ending I was expecting. Bobby and Tim call it even and they go on. But has something changed in the way we see Tim? According the rest of the stories he's been empathetic with the other side, not really enjoying war, only enjoying time he spends with his war "brothers". We expect him maybe not to do the right thing, but to do one that isn't completely malicious. I think this story transforms the rest of the stories. Tim isn't exactly the person we thought he was, and in that he breaks our trust. Maybe, though, that's the point. Because we know this isn't real, or maybe it is. But do the facts matter? It just calls attention to how he wants us to think of war. It's confusing, and you do things you wouldn't do otherwise. So despite this "betrayal" of trust, maybe this story was necessary.
I think that this story can tell us a lot about Tim and about the way the men in the war view war stories. In this story, we see Tim acting in a way that he hasn't in any of the other stories. We see him venting his anger at Bobby, and at the same time reliving his horrible experiences getting shot. Tim shows us the worst version of himself in this story. We can also see how important stories are as the first things the returning soldiers do is tell Tim stories and try to make him understand what they were going through without him.
ReplyDeleteGood post! I agree that over the course of the collection, Tim O'Brien does seem to be doing everything in his power to make us NOT trust him. For me, the last two chapters just seemed very theatrical and it was harder for me to imagine the people saying the lines O'Brien wrote than it had been in previous chapters. But as you pointed out, part of the point is that this is how Tim wants us to think about the war, so he could simply be changing gears slightly in style to convey a different angle. If nothing else, Tim's revenge definitely knocks him off of his pedestal (if he's still somehow on one by the end). This is the first time Time is shown in a really harshly negative light. Even the story about Canada is less incriminating than "Ghost Stories" (because most of the blaming that happens in that story is just Tim blaming himself). In "Ghost Stories" Tim doesn't make any mention of an alternate POV that might help us to reconcile his behavior--he simply comes across as a pathetic, blood-thirsty ahole, and allows us to see him in that light (not leaving his guilt ambiguous as he does in the case of Kiowa's death). Maybe it's not so much an anecdote as an interruption, to remind us that he's guilty as well as damaged.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that Tim's actions in this story didn't fit with the character O'Brien had spent all his time building up. Most of the time he's just a passive observer, or like in the story where he almost escapes to Canada, someone that we can all relate to and admire for his honesty. But this almost bloodthirsty version of Tim was kind of weird and unexpected. Good post!
ReplyDeleteI like this post! Throughout most of the book, I was fixated on the fact that most of the facts were untrue (Kathleen, the Alpha company in general), so I didn't really think about how this out-of-characterness was also a break of trust. It does seem really out of character because in most of the stories, you see that Tim doesn't really do anything to engage in the war other than just "be there" (eg. most of the stories are about his friends, he doesn't actually kill anyone, etc). But I wasn't super aggro at this story because I do like his point that "[war makes] you do things you wouldn't do otherwise." as you pointed out.
ReplyDeleteThen again we cannot say that Tim is O'Brien. This story again may be another way of O'Brien describing Vietnam to his readers. This story is outlandish enough that like Mary Anne is crazy enough to be believable to Vietnam veterans, and not necessarily to his readers. This book has made me more and more cynical and since this story is towards the end of the book, I am just seeing this as another outlandish story to prove O'Brien's point, that Vietnam was a crazy place where anything could happen.
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