Tim O 'Brien's The Things They Carry'

A book 's title is something that no matter what you read, has significant meaning. The book The Things They Carry by Tim O’Brien, is no different. It has meaning on all levels, from physical, to mental, all the way to spiritual. A a book 's title goes much farther than just the words on the cover, all books have a title with a meaning much deeper than most would choose to believe. The soldiers carry much more than physical objects, and these things they carry affect them in many different ways and levels.

One of the more obvious things they carry, are physical objects. From pantyhose to pictures, all the way to M16’s, the things the men carry, in this book, vary greatly. When it came to actual military equipment, they had a great deal of

The third and final type of thing the soldiers in this book, and war, carry, is the mental weight of war. One of the more obvious portrayals of this is when Rat Kiley started to lose his head a little, but there are much more than just this once specific part. This part of the book shows how much pressure the war is on their heads, and some men, just cannot withstand the pressure. There is also the part where Mitchell Sanders, on page 13, gives Norman Bowker a boys thumb as a gift. This shows how the war has almost started to dehumanize the soldiers. They are starting to become less and less of themselves, war, and Vietnam itself is changing them. They are doing stuff that, if they were not in the middle of a war, they would never do.This is also depicted when it talks of the men talking and shaking hands with the dead, which is something that anyone, with a rational human mind, would never do. One way that they try coping with this mental weight or pressure is telling the “true” war stories. They make up, or do not make up, stories that for even a little bit, can take their mind off the war. They are desperate for an escape from all the death and the war, that any story, can be a true war story to them. These stories help them forget about it all and just escape through words and through stories, which sometimes, is just enough to stay sane enough to return to their family, friends, and in essence, the real