Marching on

I think we all can agree that reading Cat’s Cradle was a new experience for everyone, particularly how the reader can be turned around and pulled in so many different directions and still find a meaning in the text. Now that we’ve moved on to The Things They Carried, we shouldn’t be surprised that we are seeing the very same interactions within the text as we saw in Cat’s Cradle, particularly the presence of contradictions.

Very early in the book, it’s clear that the act of remembering is a central action within the book. I first picked up on this action in the middle of the first chapter, where the narrator continually brings up the shooting of Ted Lavender. At first, the shooting is only alluded to as the narrator describes what Lavender carried with him “until he was shot in the head” (2). This occurrence is repeatedly brought up, revealing itself to be a pivotal moment in the text. It is, as it were, the recalling of a memory, here a particularly painful one that slowly surfaces in the memory of the text. Slowly, small details about Lavender’s death are revealed to us—that he was shot in the head (2), that he fell like a rock (6), and that he was coming back from peeing (12). Slowly, as the details of the shooting are placed together, the text acknowledges it as a complete memory when Lieutenant Cross begins to deal with aftermath of Lavender’s death.

Ultimately, we readers experience the act of remembering not only throughout the first chapter, but throughout the book as well. It is one of the central actions of the book, but what makes this action all the more intriguing is what the narrator acknowledges about the action of remembering. As you remember things, “[the] memory traffic feeds into a rotary up in your head, where it goes in circles for a while, then soon imagination flows in and the traffic merges and shoots off down a thousand different streets” (33). In other words, the narrator has acknowledged the fact that remembering involves a certain amount of fabrication. All memories, therefore, are corrupted by falsehood and lies. Yet somehow, these memories, or stories, are presented as “the facts…on paper” (37).

Herein lies the contradiction. The narrator accepts partial lies as complete truths and we as readers must question why. Thus far, the reason appears to be survival. In the harsh world of Vietnam, the soldiers convince themselves of illusions, such as Cross pretending that Martha loves him, or the soldiers bringing a mine detector to create the “illusion of safety” (9). As in Cat's Cradle, all of this is done just so the cruelty of war, life, and reality itself are made a bit more bearable and so that man can march on.