The Impact of Settings in War Stories

The Impact of Settings in War Stories

        In order to give readers a true understanding of a war story, one must be able to envision the events taking place in a meticulous way. The setting of a story is what creates this vision in a readers mind and is an extremely important aspect in creating a truly effective and interesting war story. The setting in the stories vary depending on the author’s style of writing “The Things They Carried” by author Tim O’Brien, “The Wave That Takes Them Under” by Brian Turner, and “Cold Day, Cold Fear” by Eugene Burdick are all stories which contain deep detailed settings. The settings and environments in each of these stories are all unique, as a result of the various different styles of writings from these three authors. These detailed settings both affect the story themselves as well as the reader’s experiences.

        An essential war story to focus on for this topic is “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. Tim O’Brien is an author known for his descriptive settings and strong imagery.  Literary critic Daniel Robinson makes a good point about O’Brien’s writing by stating, “What O’Brien prefers are the images that make the stomach believe” (Robinson 258).  As you will see through O’Brien’s work this is a very accurate way to define his style of writing. O’Brien does indeed wish to make a large impact on the readers by creating immense deep descriptions, to make you feel like you are experiencing it yourself. “The Things They Carried” is not just set in one specific time or place, in fact, it is a set of various different moments from O’Brien’s life in combat. The settings vary throughout the story but most of them take place in Vietnam during the nineteen sixties. This story is a collection of flashbacks and short stories.  One of these stories is titled “Spin” and has tremendous instances of in depth settings of the Vietnam war. This story jumps from time to time and is a bit chaotic, which serves as a way of symbolizing how O’Brien’s mind wanders as he relieves these difficult memories. Here, O’Brien explains how he remembers his time in Vietnam and the boredom he and his fellow soldiers felt each day, “I remember the monotony. Digging foxholes. Slapping mosquitoes. The sun and the heat and the endless paddies. Even in the deep bush, where you could die any number of ways the war was nakedly and aggressively boring” (O’Brien 33). The details O’Brien use to describe the setting creates an image for the readers, and they truly feel the boredom and stillness that the soldiers felt; almost as though they were living in that moment in time.   He recalls how he and the soldiers would pass the time, “I remember Mitchell Sanders sitting quietly in the shade of an old banyan tree. He was using a thumbnail to pry off the body lice” (O’Brien 31). As the story progresses, the author remembers how “They would dig a foxhole and get the board out and play long, silent games as the sky went from pink to purple” (O’Brien 31). He considered this time and setting as a peaceful one. He believes there was something reassuring and comforting about the men playing checkers during dusk, and watching his buddy sit under the banyan tree quietly, while keeping to himself. O’Brien then goes into detail about the checkers by stating that, “There were red checkers and black checkers. The playing field was laid out in a strict grid, no tunnels or mountains or jungles” (O’Brien 31). This symbolizes the current environment that he and the men are living in, the different colored checkers are the different countries of the Vietnam War and they are each placed on separate ends of the board, just as a battlefield is set up in combat. After describing some comforting aspects of the war at this time, he then moves on to explain some painful images of his dead friends, “Kiowa sinking into the deep muck of a shit field, or Curt Lemon hanging in pieces from a tree” (O’Brien 31), followed with another disturbing image to readers, “I remember these things too. The damp fungal scent of an empty body bag” (35). These images O’Brien illustrates to readers explain the gruesome, horrifying settings that come along with war and he is successful in doing so through his complete use of imagery.  

        Another story that is a part of “The Things They Carried” is a section called “How to Tell a True War Story” this story specifically explains what aspects are needed for a war story to be entirely true, and it compares actual experience to storytelling. This story contains a series of scattered images and memories just as “Spin” does. The storytelling the author writes about makes readers believe that they are indeed true, since O’Brien is very successful in providing deep details and imagery, making it feel real to the readers. In this story he describes multiple different settings and environments that he encounters while travelling in Vietnam. On page sixty-seven he explains, “I still remember that trail junction and those giant trees and a soft dripping sound somewhere beyond the trees. I remember the smell of moss. Up in the canopy there were tiny white blossoms, but no sunlight at all, and I remember the shadows spreading out under the tress where Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley were playing catch with smoke grenades” (O’Brien 67). Here the author is using sound, smell and sight to explain his visions and memories of that specific day, and it is very effective in showing the readers the environment of Vietnam. The statement above is a peaceful and delightful description of the atmosphere, here is another instance that gives readers the same emotion “It was near dusk and we were sitting at my foxhole along a wide muddy river north of Quang Ngai City. I remember how peaceful the twilight was. A deep pinkish red spilled out on the river, which moved without sound” (O’Brien 68). When O’Brien chooses the words “pinkish red spilled out on the river” it gives readers an image of the sun setting and the various beautiful colors reflecting on the quiet slow moving water. As “How to Tell a True War Story” progresses O’Brien decides to share a weird feeling the soldiers experience while being up in the mountains. He states “You just go with the vapors- the fog sort of takes you in… And the sounds, man. The sounds carry forever. You hear stuff nobody should ever here” (O’Brien 69). While this may not seem like a quote that has anything to do with the setting it indeed does. It is being described that up in the foggy mountains it is so quiet for such a long period of time that the human mind begins to play tricks in the soldiers minds, causing them to hear things that are not actually occurring in reality. The description continues with “The rock- it’s talking. And the fog, too, and the grass and the goddamn mongooses. Everything talks. The trees talk politics, the monkeys talk religion. The whole country. Vietnam. The place talks” (O’Brien 71). This is a very significant quote because it is describing the atmosphere, using various different details and explaining the affect it has on the soldiers and ultimately the story itself. Along with the details which make a war story a true story come the emotions and feelings which make it believable, O’Brien shows yet another soft side of his experiences by recalling another image, “You admire the fluid symmetries of troops on the move, the harmonies of sound and shape and proportion, the great sheets of metal-fire streaming down from a gunship, the illumination rounds, the white phosphorus, the purply orange glow of napalm, the rocket’s red glare. It’s not pretty, exactly. It’s astonishing. It fills the eye” (O’Brien 77). This quote is describing negative aspects of the war such as napalm, fire and bullets but forming all these into a positive way of looking at these terrible things. The atmosphere O’Brien is constantly surrounded with is terrible, but he looks at it with an open mind and tries to make it seem beautiful.