Revenge in The Things They Carried

While one may associate revenge in war with one side vowing to get revenge on the enemy for a friendly casualties in battle, in the short story “The Ghost Soldiers” Tim O’Brien exacts revenge on a friendly medic for his incompetence when O’Brien needed him when he was shot. The seeds of hatred came from the idle time which O’Brien had as a result of being injured. While the injury was not fatal, having to spent countless nights in the Vietnam summer sleeping one’s stomach because of the wound resulted in revenge festering in the mind of O’Brien. Jorgenson can be seen as a scapegoat for O'Brien’s feelings of anger caused by being reject by Sanders as not being part of Alpha Company. When Sanders says: "People change. Situations change. I hate to say this, man, but you're out of touch. Jorgensen-he's with us now" (O'Brien 188), it struck a serious blow to O'Brien's pride and it furthered his hatred of Jorgenson because it was Jorgenson's fault that he was removed from Alpha Company. This introduces the question: what is the role of revenge in wartime? In the case of O'Brien, revenge served as a motivator. When O'Brien says, "The nights were miserable. Sometimes I'd roam around the base. I'd head down to the wire and stare out at the darkness, out where the war was, and think up ways to make Bobby Jorgenson feel exactly what I felt" (O'Brien 183), he is expressing how helped him recover and proceed forward. It gave him purpose and gave him a cause, to see that the wrong that Jorgenson caused be righted. Thus for at least O'Brien, seeking revenge was a necessary part of his recovery period as it gave him the strength to heal and the will to carry on. Therefore, the role of revenge in war can have both positive and negatives consequences as it can allow a soldier to recover due to a sense of purpose, or it can hinder a soldier by making them blind to what is important.