Metaphors, Oh So Many

Clint Kadera

Mrs. Hurlbert

Juniors Honors English

November 10, 2010

Metaphors, Oh So Many

                A letter to a deceased best-friend’s sister, an ominous mountainous opera, and a “…tall big-boned blonde” are just a few metaphors that author Tim O’Brien explains in The Things they Carried chapters How to Tell a True War Story through Stockings.  The first pages of How to Tell a True War Story introduce a character named Bob Kiley, or Rat.  Within a week after his closest friend dying, Rat chooses to write a “…beautiful fuckin’ letter” to his companion’s sister.  The letter to the sibling reminisces over multiple thrilling and bedlam events the two soldiers experienced together.   To his letdown, “…the dumb cooze never writes back.” 

Not only is How to Tell a True War Story chockfull of explosive dialect, the unanswered letter O’Brien writes about is a direct analogy of might.  Though Rat never received a response from the sister, it wouldn’t have mattered.  By writing, Rat was attempting to gain closure over his friend’s death.  He wanted to recite why Rat and his friend were so close, tell her about “…the good times they had together, how her brother made the war seem almost fun.” Rat almost “…bawls writing it.”  Not once does Rat show any curiosity about the emotional state the sister is in.  Rat’s goal wasn’t attempting to create communication with his best friend’s sibling.  How would she respond to a letter of that type?  With this passage, O’Brien tells the reader that though a person may experience events which never feel fully completed or resolved, one must continue on to create the best future for themselves, instead of dwindling away within the past. 

Later, O’Brien explains of a six-man patrol sent into the mountains on a listening-post operation.  After a few days the troop begins to hear soft music, “…faraway, sort of, but right up close, too.”  Eventually the sound increases into a concert, adding chimes and xylophones.  Naturally, the men become disturbed as they are the only humans anywhere on the mountain.  A cocktail party and chamber music add to the mix.  Finally, a “…terrific mama-san soprano” becomes audible, giving leeway to almost every type of choir imaginable.  The men eventually demand weapons, destroying the mountain itself.  After a few days of blown money, the noises continue, forcing the insane patrol back to base.  As seen on page 74, Tim O’Brien utilizes syntax to simulate the rhythm of music.  While maintaining powerful dialect throughout the story, using phrases and words like “…they’re pretty fried out,” “…real hoity-toity,” and “…strange gook music,” the author develops un-compared audio imagery, as seen on pages 73 through 75.  However, the true mission behind the written story is to convey a message to the reader that a person’s greatest strength is also his greatest weakness.  

In this case, the mountains are a symbol of a secluded, isolated place.  They symbolize loneliness and a difficult mental, emotional, and physical state.  Through ingenious irony, by making the patrol men experts technically on sound and having their downfall be sound, O”Brien points out that characteristics people excel at are the same characteristics people take for granted and as being harmless.  Electricians never expect to die from electrocution.  Taxi drivers never expect to die from a car crash.  Rifling men never expect to die from an errant bullet.  Yet, with the acceptation of natural death, these activities have perhaps the greatest chance of killing that person.  Mankind’s biggest weakness may be believing they are invincible within their own element.

In the chapter Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong a young soldier, Mark Fossie, arranged for his young, blonde girlfriend, currently living in the United States, to come visit him.  With intense white legs and blue eyes, the girlfriend, Marry Anne Bell, had “,,,a complexion like strawberry ice cream.”  Marry was also deeply curious about all things around her, including the troops’ explosives, guns, and hobbies.  Though things started off positively between Fossie and Marry Anne, the two grammar school sweethearts, she began to evolve into a new, different character.  The constant giggling evolved into a thoughtful face, the playful flirting became a compressed body.  She was now “too stiff in places, too firm where the softness used to be.”  One night she went with the quiet and queer Green Bureau unit nearby on a night ambush.  In attempt to prevent further change, Fossie made Marry Anne his fiancé, as always planned by the two, except now, it seemed anything but planned.   One morning Marry Anne was gone.  Though Fossie had expected it to occur eventually, the prediction didn’t help with the pain.  O”Brien personified the grief, saying it “…took him by the throat and squeezed and would not let go.”  About three weeks later, in the midst of night, Fossie heard Marry Anne singing.  After following the noise, he arrived at the Bureau’s tent.  He walked in to see a mirrored, antithesis version of the Marry Anne that Fossie once knew.  Green glowing eyes had replaced Marry’s beautiful blue ones, she held a gun close against her body, a necklace of tongues hung around her neck.  She was different. 

Marry Anne’s new appearance symbolizes many things.  In the middle ages, green was thought to represent calamity and evil.  In western cultures, green is associated with fate, instability, and uncertainty.   A tongue itself is used for communicating, the ability to know when to speak and when not to speak.  Thus the tongue necklace is a symbol of how deep down Fossie knows he has lost Marry Anne, but still feels he should attempt talking her out of her new self.  Fossie can’t do anything and is helpless.  In a way, the tongues are Fossie’s words.  Though centered around Marry Anne, they are dead and have no true purpose or function. 

O’Brien tells the reader that for every action there is a reaction.  One can also always find a way to blame himself for anything.  Though Marry Anne’s transition wasn’t directly Fossie’s fault, he took it as if the occurrence was.  The reader is forced to ponder the possibilities of a Marry Anne that never saw Vietnam, how Fossie and Marry Anne’s “…fine gingerbread house near Lake Erie…” would have been, how their “…three healthy yellow-haired children…” would have been, how they would have grown old together and died “…in each other’s arms and buried in the same walnut casket.”  What would the couple be if she had never seen Vietnam?  So, in the end, a letter to a deceased best-friend’s sister, an ominous mountainous opera, and a “…tall big-boned blonde” are metaphors used by author Tim O’Brien in The Things they Carried chapters How to Tell a True War Story through Stockings.