The Things They Carried Critical Analysis

A Safe Harbor

It was the summer of 1968, at the young age of twenty-one Tim O'Brien received a draft notice to fight in a war he did not even support. Tim was thrown into a sea of chaos, he was too good to go to war but could he face his family if he ran away, chickened out? He was only a boy, a boy with hopes and dreams. He knew nothing about guns or killing. Yet could he run aways and leave his country and family behind forever? Tim writes, "It was a kind of schizophrenia. A moral split. I couldn't make up my mind"(44). He needed to escape to a neutral place that allowed him to be alone and decide his own fate. Elroy Berdahl and the Tip Top Lodge offered just that. As shown in Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried, Elroy offered Tim a safe harbor, a place to collect his thoughts, he never pushed him any which way in the decision. Elroy was ultimately a passive bystander at the crossroads of a young man's life.

Before arriving at the Tip Top Lodge Tim O'Brien is an emotional wreck. When he recieves his draft notice his world begins to unravel. A million thoughts fly through his head. He is a smart, young adult who was student body president, has a full ride to Harvard grad school and enjoys playing golf. He is not a soldier, he doesn't even understand the war. Why should he have to fight in a war he doesn't belive in. Tim recalls, "The only certainty that summer was moreal confusion"(40). His life turns into a downward spiral, and his mind is constantly racing on what his future holds. Tim begins to feel as if he were paralyzed. He states, "All around me the options seemed to be narrowing...the whole world squeezing in tight"(43). Tim was torn between choosing to follow his concise and run, or listen to everyone around him and fight. He did not want to die, he did not want to kill or destroy. Yet Tim could not stand to lose the respect of his family and his hometown. He imagined the "people sitting around a table down at the old Gobbler Cafe...zeroing in on the young O'Brien kid, how the damned sissy had taken off for Canada"(45). Until one day something changes inside Tim. Something "[broke] open in my chest...a physical rupture"(46). All the pressure finally hit Tim with full force, and he made a run for it. A run to find answers, a run to make a decision.

Tim's run takes him closer and closer to Canada. He is still uncertain of his decision and winds up in norther Minnesota. He drives to theTip Top Lodge owned by Elroy Berdahl. Right off the bat Tim states, "[Elroy] is the hero of my life...he offered exactly what I needed, without questions, without any words at all"(48). Elroy saw a lost young boy who was in trouble and needed help. He was simply there as "a silent, watchful presence"(48). Tim needed someone simply to be there, not to say anything or influence him in any way, simply to be there. Tim already heard so many "voices" pulling him towards the war or towards Canada, he simply needed to be with someone but in silence. Elroy and Tim spent six days together yet in all those hours Elroy never questions Tim. He is simply a bystander offering a place to stay and food to eat while Tim figures out his options. Tim suspected that Elroy knew he was running from the war, yet Elroy never mentioned anything about it to Tim. Tim needed time and space to truly listen to his own heart and decide for himself, without the pressures of others if he would go to Vietnam or not.

Tim comes to his decision while sitting in a fishing boat on the Rainy River with Elroy. At first Tim did not know where they were going, until Elroy cut the motor clsoe to the Canadain shore. This was it, Tim had arrived at the final threshold, the point of no return. Still Elroy doesn't look or say anything to Tim. Elroy cut the motor and they sat and waited in silence. Tim says, "I think he meant to bring me up against the realities...to take me to the edge and to stand a kind of vigil as I chose a life for myself"(56). He sits there for a long time looking from Elroy to Canada then down at his hands. He has to make a decision and he has to make it now. It is now or never. Elroy sits quietly at the front of the boat fiddling with his fishing rod. Tim breaks down into tears, loud sobbing and Elroy sits and waits it out. Elroy is "simply there, like the river and the late-summer sun"(60). Tim decided on that river, through the flow of tears, and Elroy's silent presence that he would go to war. He would fight and maybe die but he would go to Vietnam.

Tim came to his decision completely on his own. Elroy simply made it real, his presence served as a bystander or witness for Tim. O'Brien needed to escape from the pressures of society and the people around him. He needed to have a place to be alone and sort through the million thoughts swimming through his head. Tim found that place, a small resort in northern Minnesota. Elroy was simply the presence that made his decision real. That small comfort to help him through his crisis and finally decide on a decision.