The Things They Carried: Enemies

Question: What can be learned from this story about soldiers during the war?

Answer:

            The chapter “Enemies” in The Things They Carried tells of two soldiers in the same platoon, Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen getting into a fight over a trivial reason. It results in Strunk having semi-serious injuries involving a broken nose and Jensen gets so paranoid that Strunk will retaliate that he goes crazy and paranoid. At one point he begins screaming and shooting off bullets into the sky. Eventually, Jensen breaks his own nose in an effort to even the score between himself and Strunk, which ends Jensen’s paranoia. This chapter shows the high tensions and pressure on the soldiers in a war. They’re wound very tightly and their anxieties are heightened. A small fight between two men over something unimportant would normally result in a few punches and maybe some distance between the men for a while in a normal setting. However, during the war, the same situation causes actual injuries for the one man and the other man becomes increasingly paranoid due to how tightly the soldiers are wound. It also shows that in a place like war where the soldiers are surrounded by enemies on all sides, the men need to know that they can trust the other soldiers to protect them and keep them safe. Once Jensen lost that feeling of trust, he was driven to the brink of his sanity.