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The Works of Melissa Danko

The Reality of Beliefs

Throughout The Things They Carried, O’Brien breaks down the typical image of a soldier and shows that despite their tough exteriors, there is softness and vulnerability inside.  The short story “Stockings” shows Henry Dobbins and his obsession with his girlfriend’s pantyhose, highlighting the ritualistic behavior of Dobbins, despite its impracticality.  The soldiers, while certainly tough, have imaginations, and they often pretend so that they can more easily swallow the harshness of war.  O’Brien speaks of the fear and emotion that the soldiers carried, saying that “they carried these things inside, maintaining the masks of composure” (21).  Throughout “Stockings,” the character Henry Dobbins serves as an example of all soldiers who have different sides to them and who use their beliefs, though sometimes irrational, to carry them through the war.

It is important to see that throughout the short story, O’Brien uses descriptions that are seemingly contradictory; these contradictions help to show that however irrational things might be, they still make sense in the big picture.  Opening the short story is a description of Henry Dobbins as “a superb soldier…big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly” yet he is later compared to “the way an infant sleeps with a flannel blanket, secure and peaceful” (111).  These two statements, polar opposites, show that Dobbins has a softer side to him, a side that is brought to life with the stockings.  O’Brien hints that despite a soldier’s hard exterior, there is more than what is initially seen.  He states that with the stockings, “Dobbins was invulnerable” (112).  The word invulnerable suggests that without the stockings, Dobbins would be vulnerable, which is contradictory to the descriptions of him as “big and strong” and a “superb soldier.”  The whole idea that a tough soldier can abolish his vulnerability through the protection of pantyhose is entirely contradictory, but that is the point that O’Brien is trying to make.  Not everything the soldiers do makes sense, but it doesn’t have to.  If it feels right to them and is real to them, then it becomes reality.

O’Brien also describes Dobbins as “slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him…” (111).  This description seems to paint Dobbins as a man of consistency and dependability.  However, after mentioning that he can still see Dobbins’ pre-ambush pantyhose ritual, O’Brien says “It was his one eccentricity” (111).  The fact that the fairly consistent and practical Dobbins does something so out of the ordinary shows that the stockings are very important to him. Important enough to momentarily shed his tough soldier image, and important enough to reveal his more intimate side.  The softer side of the soldiers tends to be the result of something sentimental and personal, and it is these memories that help the soldiers keep their sanity during the insanity of war.  This idea manifests itself in another of O’Brien’s characters, Jimmy Cross.  In his first short story, “The Things They Carried,” O’Brien explains how Cross carried letters from Martha, hoping they were love letters but knowing inside that they were not.  Cross would “spend the last hour of light pretending.  He would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire.  He would sometimes taste the envelope flaps, knowing her tongue had been there” (1).  Cross uses Martha as his escape, and it is daydreams of her that provide a way out of his foxhole and into a stable—although pretend—life.  Cross relies on the stability that security from home can provide him, as does Dobbins with his stockings.

O’Brien explains that Dobbins “liked putting his nose into the nylon and breathing in the scent of his girlfriend’s body; he liked the memories this inspired…” (111).  Dobbins, delicately wrapping the stockings around his neck before an ambush, feels the need for comfort before something as uncomfortable as battle.  Although Dobbins passes it off as mere good luck, it seems reasonable that what he really needs from the stockings is not luck, but the idea of luck, helping to bring him feelings of comfort and safety.  O’Brien tells of Dobbins that “[the stockings] gave access to a spiritual world, where things were soft and intimate, a place where he might someday take his girlfriend to live” (112).  However, one sentence later, O’Brien states that Dobbins thought the stockings “were like body armor” (112).  Even something so soft and delicate can serve as something so tough and strong when there is faith behind it; Dobbins’ faith in his stockings is contradictory to the harsh reality of war, yet it is the balance of these two things that is crucial to his psychological well-being.

Interestingly enough, in the brute force environment of men and war, O’Brien explains that the men did not ridicule Dobbins’ nylon ritual of “carefully tying a knot, draping the two leg sections over this left shoulder” (112).  Such delicate actions with a girlfriend’s pantyhose would seem to warrant infinite teasing from a platoon of soldiers, but O’Brien gives no mention of this and says instead that the men made “some jokes, of course, but we came to appreciate the mystery of it all” (112).  In fact, it appears that O’Brien defends Dobbins and his ritual by attesting to the stockings’ incredible power to keep Dobbins out of harm.  It is more than mere appreciation of Dobbins’ personal ritual and respect for his individual beliefs—like the men who have their own personal sentiments to hold onto, it seems that all of the Alpha Company holds onto Dobbins’ belief in the stockings.  O’Brien says of the stockings, “It turned us into a platoon of believers.  You don’t dispute facts” (112).  However, O’Brien leads into this short paragraph using the word “magic” and stating that “[Dobbins] just slipped the pantyhose over his nose and breathed deep and let the magic do its work” (112).  The use of the words “magic” and “fact” so closely related shows that for the soldiers, and for Dobbins specifically, beliefs became as real as any other concrete thing.  Belief in the unexplainable allowed the men to feel protection in a so heavily dangerous environment, and it is this sense of comfort in something so unexplainable that allowed the men to maintain their tough façades while also catering to their feelings of unease.

O’Brien further makes clear the soldiers’ need for something to believe in through the words he uses to describe the stockings.  Diction like “good-luck charm” and “power” and “magic” all serves to show that the belief in the stockings is great; for Dobbins, the stockings are more than just a comforting smell and fond memories.  To him, their power is real. This fine line between reality and belief is blurred for the sake of preserving his sanity, and the language of this passage helps to show how faith in something supernatural kept Dobbins going.  O’Brien explains “More than anything, though, the stockings were a talisman for him.  They kept him safe” (112).  The word “talisman” enforces the idea that the stockings’ power is imagined, yet when it is followed by such a factual sentence as “They kept him safe,” the power becomes real.  To Dobbins and the rest of the Alpha Company, beliefs became reality.  Trust in the irrational felt better than fear of the explainable, and O’Brien goes on to say that “Like many of us in Vietnam, Dobbins felt the pull of superstition, and he believed firmly and absolutely in the protective power of the stockings” (112).  This is not O’Brien’s first mention of superstition as an important part of life in Vietnam, as he speaks of it earlier in the short story “The Things They Carried.”  O’Brien tells how “The things they carried were determined to some extent by superstition” (12).  They carried all kinds of sensible things a soldier would carry—signal flares, C rations, and ammunition—yet they also carried the little comforting things, like stockings, that held much more of their faith in protection than any helmet ever did.  The balance of these two ideas, real and imagined, played an important role in how the soldiers lived their lives.

Even when the balance was thrown off, Dobbins remained a believer in the stockings.  O’Brien says of Dobbins that “near the end of October, his girlfriend dumped him.  It was a hard blow” (112).  Had the stockings been purely about memory and sentimentality of his girlfriend, Dobbins would have been expected to abandon them after the break-up.  Instead, “Dobbins went quiet for a while, staring down at her letter, then after a time he took out the stockings and tied them around his neck as a comforter” (112).  This enforces the idea that Dobbins, while still a sentimental guy, is instead purely invested in his belief in those stockings.  While he may have begun wearing them for the “scent of his girlfriend’s body” and “the memories this inspired,” he clearly made the switch from sentimental to superstitious.  The superstition becomes understandable upon O’Brien’s explanation that Dobbins was “Never wounded, never a scratch.  In August, he tripped a Bouncing Betty that failed to detonate” (112).  However, this proves that Dobbins merely needed something to believe in, unrelated to the memories of his girlfriend.  After this apparent proof of the power of the stockings, there is no way that Dobbins can part with them, break-up or not.  O’Brien tells of Dobbins’ reaction to the break-up in which he says “‘No sweat…The magic doesn’t go away’” (112).  This reaction shows that at this point, Dobbins is more invested in the magic of stockings than their owner and what they originally meant to him; he needs the stockings as his link between belief and reality, and giving them up would leave him emotionally unprotected in the war.  He had transformed himself into a true believer because the stockings provided him with something soft and comforting to hold onto, a rarity in war.  Dobbins’ simple reaction, “No sweat,” shows that the stockings had become much more to him than a familiar scent, providing him with imagined protection and a sense of security more comforting that all the armor the Army could provide them.  While a helmet and pair of combat boots make Dobbins look like the typical tough soldier, a pair of pantyhose around his neck caters to his softer side, in need of delicate comfort amidst the harshness of gunfire and killing.

Although the soldiers always have their war-hardened sides, they often turn to their more intimate sides to keep their internal peace.  They must cling to the more comforting aspects that turn beliefs into reality because that is the only way to cope with the other side.  It is through their methods of coping, however irrational, that keeps the soldiers going.  Henry Dobbins is the prime example of this in “Stockings,” as he develops a strong belief in the magical protection of his girlfriend’s pantyhose.  Draping them around his neck during battle becomes comparable to, as O’Brien puts it, “putting on our helmets and flak jackets” (112).  It does not matter that the stockings are nylon and serve no real protective purpose, it only matters that Dobbins believes in them and relies on the comfort they provide.  O’Brien shows that like his fellow soldiers, Dobbins uses the security of something personal and familiar to cope with the severity of war.  The reality of these soldiers’ beliefs is that without them, true reality would be too much to carry.

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