What makes a Hero?

Traditionally, we think of a hero as one who will sacrifice his own personal desires or safety for that of another or the greater good. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien considers himself a coward because he can’t muster up the courage to defy the US military draft. He states in pages 56 and 57,

“I remember staring at the old man, then at my hands, then at Canada… I could’ve jumped and started swimming for my life… I couldn’t decide, I couldn’t act, I couldn’t compose myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity… I would not be brave. The old image of myself as a hero, as a man of conscience and courage, all that was just a threadbare pipe dream…“

Traditionally, he would have been considered heroic for choosing to go to war, but from his point of view it was the opposite. Because he chose not to follow his gut instinct, because he chose not to escape the draft, he saw himself as a failure. The reason being, he simply did not believe in the motive behind the war. He thought his life was more important than the cause. He may very well have been right. He stated in page 44,

“There were occasions, I believed, when a nation was justified in using military force to achieve its ends, to stop a Hitler or some comparable evil, and i told myself that in such circumstances i would’ve willingly marched off to the battle. The problem though, was that a draft board did not let you choose your war.“

Furthermore he explains, “Beyond all this, or at the very center, was the raw fact of terror. I did not want to die. Not ever. But certainly not then, not there, not in a wrong war.”

Here we see a dilemma that many faced during the Vietnam War. A moral split. Many felt disconnected from the motive fueling this war and therefore wanted nothing to do with it, unless it involved extracting all military aid from the area. Who’s to say whether Tim O’Brien was a hero for going to war, or a coward for desiring a way out?

In this section of the story, O’Brien aims to twist the mood of the story. He wants us to feel torn for him; to be against his deployment to Vietnam, to feel his entrapment. O’Brien does this by appealing to our emotions as well as human logic.He describes the moral struggle he faces with such detail, that we can almost feel the shear force of his affliction. He expounds in pages 44 -46,

“I feared the war, yes, but i also feared exile… I feared losing the respect of my parents. I feared the law. I feared ridicule and censure…it was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple, and you were a treasonous (pansy) is you had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons.”

Furthermore, his image aside, he argues,

“I was drafted to fight a war I hated…Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law…America was divided on these and a thousand other issues… and smart men in pinstripes could not agree even on the most fundamental matters of public policy. The only certainty that summer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don’t make war without knowing why.”

These facts alone tug at our logic. Why go to a war when you don’t even know what you’re truly fighting for? Through his commentary Tim fundamentally states that the war he’s been drafted into is futile. As history played out, we know that this war indeed made no progress to halt communism, and so did O’Brien. This endorses his argument as valid and causes us to feel empathetic towards his situation.

Courage is defined as the ability to face your fears with bravery, confidence and a resolution of spirit. Heroism is conducting one’s self with courage and bravery. In some aspect, O’Brien’s decision was heroic. His decision and the commentary surrounding it manifests within the reader a solid compassion for him. Figures of his past flash before his eyes: himself, his family, his friends which morphed into figures of his future and grew to include a conglomerate of historical figure such as Abe Lincoln and LBJ, and various people he knew or would know throughout his life. He paints a picture of these people, some lining the Canadian shore and some lining American, all calling out to him.

“It was as if there were an audience to my life, the swirl of faces along the river, and in my head i could hear people screaming at me. Traitor! they yelled. Turncoat! (Pansy!) I felt myself blush. I couldn’t tolerate it. I couldn’t endure the mockery, or the disgrace, or the patriotic ridicule. Even in my imagination the shore was just twenty yards away, I couldn’t make myself brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that’s all it was.
And right then i submitted.
I would go to war- I would kill and maybe die- because i was embarrassed not to.
That was the sad thing. And so i sat in the bow of the boat and cried.”

Although O’Brien convinces himself he is a coward. I believe he is too hard on himself; after all it takes courage to go to war as well as to avoid it. But then again, that’s the mood O’Brien strives to create.