经典小说《他们携带的东西》由丹尼斯总结和分析

《士兵的重负》（英語：The Things They Carried）是提姆·奥布莱恩的一本有关越南战争的半自传性短篇故事集。该故事围绕着越战中美国军队的一个排而写。本书最早于1990年出版。[1]

因为作者坚信他的信念与真諦能通过这种方式更好的传达，本书是一本明显的后设小说。书中很多人物都是半自传性。Some readers get a little muddled while reading Carried. They get handed a novel—fiction!—and then all of a sudden a character named Tim O’Brien, a writer, is talking to them about his service in Vietnam. Then we look it up and, lo and behold, O’Brien was in the Vietnam War. Sometimes O’Brien pulls back from the story, like the wizard in Oz: pulls back the curtain and we see the machinery of the story. Or do we? The fact is that The Things They Carried is a novel. It is fiction. It is set up to read like a collection of short stories by a character based on O’Brien’s experiences. The fact is also that many of the names, places, and perhaps even some of the events are real. But here’s the thing: one of the main messages of the book is that fiction can be truer than fact. There are chapters of the novel that address that very thing, head on (“How to Tell a True War Story” among them). While O’Brien, the man, has been pretty evasive about what exactly is fact and even about whether or not he meant to address fact versus honesty, this is how the book is typically read and it is one of the things I love about it. Love. Stop asking about the facts, people, and learn from the truth in fiction. Sometimes it can be more truthful than the facts. Blew my mind when I read it in college, for the first time (as an English major hell-bent on becoming a writer, no less).

The other, and most obvious, theme of the book is war. Specifically the Vietnam War, but also war in general. And there is no rosy side to this portrayal of war. None. At. All. Which is, as far as I could tell, the main beef people have with this novel. Look, O’Brien went to war and he clearly didn’t see a rosy side there, so I say let him have his say. We have enough Private Ryans and Captain Americas. Jimmy Cross is an antihero, for sure, and this is the book of antiheroes. O’Brien paints the Vietnam War in the worst colors, though he’s not talking politics as much as human depravity. He digs a little bit into life after the war, too, and there is no bow on top, no closure, no happy ending. In fact, he challenges meaning and heroism in war, full stop. “If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie” (p76). He also says (keep in mind, this is fiction, but still), that a true war story is gut-level emotional, unbelievable, and never seems to end.

It is difficult, in the end, to separate Jimmy Cross (and the character Tim O’Brien) from Tim O’Brien when we talk about The Things They Carried and what it means. But honestly, even if you don’t agree with the futility and unredeemable horror of war or with the idea that fiction can be truer than fact, it’s still an amazing book. Several of the chapters are down-right poetic, and there are scenes that sear the memory and phrases that take the breath away. True, there are things you can’t “unsee,” and the book is bleak. No, disturbing is a better word. So if you can’t look a fictional first-person account of the Vietnam War in the face, then this book wasn’t really meant for you. Even though I complain about books with no “likable” characters, I take exception with this one, because the characters are despicably flawed, but also real and very compelling. And you are moved by Jimmy Cross, who is, essentially, making his case, begging you to accept that no one would have done differently in Vietnam, no one did. It was just too much for everyone, especially all the teenagers who were sent there, many forced to go by the draft. And war, by nature, is a destroyer, so stop asking it to be something else.
Image copyright Devon Trevarrow Flaherty 2021