The Things They Carried Reflective Essay

In the book, “The Things They Carried,” there are many things that I like, and some that I dislike. I like how the story took place in a third world country, instead of Europe or America itself. For the setting to take place somewhere else really captured my attention, because most war books takes place in Europe or in the United States. Another key factor that I liked about the book is the character development. This book really explained the characteristics of each character, how they act, and what they experienced. It even explained what was going through the minds of the soldiers, and put their emotions into great detail. The character development in “The Things They Carried,” is really descriptive. Not only is the character's’ development phenomenal, the scenes and experiences of each soldier was greatly described. It provided different types of figurative language, such as simile, metaphor, personification, symbolism, etc. Also, the way that the violent scenes were described was very descriptive, to the point where

When I first read the story, it was very slow. The way it started in the first chapter did not really catch my attention, and it is also because I am not into war stories. Usually when I read books, it would immediately catch my attention, in which this book has not. Another key factor that I did not like about this book is that there should be more fighting scenes, or more experiences. A good fight scene between the soldiers and the Vietnam people would have catched all of our attention, because everyone likes a good fighting description. The last key factor that I did not really enjoy was that, since this book is half fictional information, then parts of this book is unbelievable. This will lead us into being confused on which parts were true and which parts weren’t. These are the dislikes that I have in the