Rat Kiley In The Things They Carried

Words: 512
Pages: 3

Tim O’Brien, the author and narrator of the novel The Things They Carried, uses the Vietnam War to portray a true war story. The narrative depicts a clear image of what the Vietnam was like for many soldiers. No morals and the senseless killing of innocents without purpose. Every soldier is damaged by war and each is affect psychologically by his or her experiences. Yet, like a truthful war story, these experiences are conveyed differently or each soldier. Rat Kiley carries the baggage of death, Curt Lemon carries the fear of being inadequate, and Mitchell Sanders carries the burdens of the stories told. Through symbolic and spiritual items, O’Brien demonstrates that each soldier carries an emotional baggage due to the lack of morals in war.
Rat Kiley’s physical baggage represents how the innocence of people important to him is lost to the violence of war.
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Mary Anne Bell, the girlfriend of a young medic named Mark Fossie, appears at a small medical detachment in the mountains west of Chu Lai where Rat is stationed. She is “an attractive girl. Too wide in the soldiers, maybe, but she had terrific legs, a bubbly personality, a happy smile” (90-91). Her appearance at the facility boosted the moral of the men, lifting their spirits during the war. She represents a light of purity and innocence that is soon lost to the darkness of Vietnam. Once the war begins to consume her, she starts to change. She is “too stiff in places, too firm where the softness used to be. The bubbliness was gone. The nervous giggling, too” (95). Her light is flushed out and her purity is lost and can never be regained. She slips into the darkness of war and never returns. Similar to the candy, Mary Anne represents the sweetness in Rat Kiley’s life. Once that sweetness is consumed by the blackness of war, it never returns. Piece by piece, as his loved ones and friends are taken by the darkness, Rat Kiley slowly losses himself to