Superstition as a Survival Technique

Belief is one of those words that might mean something different to every person asked. The Oxford Dictionary of English gives the definition of belief as – “Trust, faith, or confidence (in someone or something)” (151). There are many beliefs that we see practiced by the characters of the book and still practiced today that have ties to a much older time – a time before science. In that time much knowledge was actually what would today be referred to as cultural knowledge, based on patterns sensed in life and nature, including the unseen and the unproven. The rituals and beliefs based on these patterns are what we refer to today as superstition. O'Brien tells us, “The things they carried were determined to some extent by superstition” (O'Brien 12). Janet Goodall provides an updated overview of superstitious action, “such actions are attempts to exercise human agency in situations where other avenues of influencing outcomes have either already been taken or are not available” (Goodall 310). Some categories that are based on cultural knowledge (superstitious beliefs) and these patterns to be discussed are fated, fated but fixable, rituals of avoidance, positive superstition and folklore.

In the The Things They Carried it seems like most of these young boys believe that they are facing the fate of death. The difference between fated and fated but fixable in the article "Superstition And Human Agency" is that “Human agency is able to circumvent fate” (Goodall 313). Henry Dobbins is an example of someone engaging in fated but fixable superstitious action in that he is trying to avoid the fate of death by wearing his girlfriends stockings around his neck as a protective talisman. O'Brien tells us about Dobbins, “Dobbins felt the pull...

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