The Things They Carried Journal

So much can be written about this novel; the effects of war, the consequences of actions, the burning iron of love, the twisted way of Fate, the way we cope with death. Going to war is evil. Forcing people to go is evil. Not going to war can also be evil. All our actions and lack of actions have both severe and minor consequences. Love is the deadliest aspect of humanity, deadlier than cruelty and greed and addiction, because love is the first step towards hatred. The most dangerous type of hatred is the evolved, corrupted, and mutated form of strong love. Fate always plays games with us. Fate attacks us when we are climbing up the steps, knocks us down them, then kicks us down the steps we still grip for. Fate toys our minds with the foreshadowing of an upcoming tragedy, and once we start to recover from the foreshadow it throws the real tribulation to us, burning with the heat of the sun, yet causing us to freeze and shatter. Fate gives us death, and tells us to accept it or become it, while the horrid truth of the matter is; we aren’t alive, we are pre-dead.
Thus death becomes the main theme here. O’Brien copes with death by pretending, by deluding himself into resurrecting them in his stories, reviving them in his mind. “Those who are dead are not dead; they’re just living in my head…” are lyrics by Coldplay in their song “42”. If you can make this work, congratulations in your gift. I cannot delude myself into reviving the dead, they are gone forever. I can’t hear their voices, I can’t feel their hair, I can’t caress their hands, I can’t hold them close, I can’t feel their warmth, I can’t kiss their lips, I can’t tell them I love them because they are dead. They are gone; they don’t exist with me anymore. They left and every attempt I give to bring them back causes aftershocks that rival the original earthquake, and they test the half-asleep volcano within me to see if it will ever explode. “Those who are dead are not dead; they’re just living in my head. And since I fell for that spell I am living there as well…” It’s a delusional trick that sucks you in and makes you live in the realm of the dead. But is that so bad? You are, after all, only pre-dead. I don’t know anymore. All I know is that there are great forces at work which can’t be entirely explained, forces that lurk in the darkest nights, in the dark shadows of the jungle, in the hazy fog of the mountains. I know evil and good are not exact. I know black and white do not exist in their purest forms. I know God and Satan are two hands working for the same purpose, parts of the entity I call Fate. I learn more and more from the literature we study. I recognize the same hands toying with the characters, and when I look up from the pages I see the same hands, only larger now, playing the instruments and pulling the strings of my own show tune marionette life. I see the pain of O’Brien losing his young lover to cancer, and not more than an hour after I finished this novel, the person I love more than everything else in the world combined and multiplied a thousand times over contacts me with news of a possible cancerous cist that she has had for years, only discovered now. I hear Fate utter a low horrible laugh in the way the car drives, the way the wind blows. I see Fate shake with joy in the clouds, in the trees. I’m just a doll who cut his strings, but without them I don’t know how to move, and so the puppeteer laughs and uses this old child for the final tricks he can play. “Those who are dead are not dead; they’re just living in my head. And since I fell for that spell I am living there as well. Time is so short and I know there must be something wrong.” Something most definitely is wrong. It’s this game of chess I hint to. The game that Nathan Price, Gregor Samsa, Othello, Huckleberry Finn, Abigail Williams, John Proctor, John the Savage, Faber, Beatty, Edna, O’Brien, Bowker, Cross, Sanders, and all the other characters we have read about are pawns in. But not the fictional game, the real game, the game that you and I are pawns in. Pre-dead, that’s all we are. From conception, we are developing up to die.

Living in the darkness; what a cold and lonely night. Voices in the darkness sing a sweet sweet lullaby. Something’s coming nearer; anyone to join in a game? A game? Welcome to the attic, hospitality’s my name. Eyes; so alive. I’ve been feeling dead for quite a while. Give me a smile! Dead and alive, come a little closer. You and I affiliate forever more and I’m alive; death is just a feeling. You and I swapping finitude and love for diamonds. I’m just a little pale. Don’t hesitate to sign right here, don’t be afraid to come with me. Specialized in temporizing, dead to faulty love and time, faulty time; we’ll be dancing here forever and a while day by day. Dead and alive, come a little closer. You and I affiliate forever more and I’m alive; death is just a feeling. You and I swapping finitude and love for diamonds. Value by value, I’m gonna turn into breath after breath. Love we traded for silver. Defy what they used to call death. And dust covered treasure will shine again, an unseen accolade. Larger than life, a memory, death will be just a charade. Dead and alive, come a little closer. You and I affiliate forever more and I’m alive, death is just a feeling. You and I swapping finitude and love for diamonds. I’m just a little Pale.

This is the song “Death Is Just A Feeling” by Avantasia. Love and hatred, wealth and dearth, death and life; all are assets used by Fate in the stories we read, and in turn assets used by Fate in our own conformed reality.