The Things They Carried

Survivor’s guilt is the psychological experience in which an individual feels guilt or distress after surviving a situation in which others did not. During the Vietnam War, this phenomenon was prevalent among soldiers who returned home while their comrades died in combat. Survivor’s guilt is not limited to wartime experiences and can also occur in various contexts where individuals survive traumatic events, such as accidents or natural disasters, and feel a profound sense of responsibility or remorse for being spared.

The experience of survivor’s guilt abounds in The Things They Carried. At both the beginning and end of the collection, Jimmy Cross blames himself for the deaths of men in his company. After Ted Lavender dies, the narrator reflects that “[Cross] hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead” (16). Then, much later, writing a letter to Kiowa’s father after Kiowa’s death, he thinks he would say it was “[m]y own fault” (162). Ironically, at the end of “In the Field,” the young soldier near Jimmy also blames himself for Kiowa’s death since he used a flashlight: “Like murder, the boy thought. The flashlight made it happen. Dumb and dangerous.