Weight In The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried: Weight Through his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien, shares his insider’s perspective on the Vietnam War. O’Brien retells his experience and adventures as a soldier of the Vietnam War’s Alpha Company, through a collection of short stories in which all seem to be connected. In chapter one—The Things They Carried—O’Brien introduces many characters and includes the object(s) in which they carried, literally along with the figurative things they carried during their time in Vietnam. Each of the men carries heavy physical loads while they also all carry heavy emotional loads, composed of “grief, terror, love, longing […]” (O’Brien 20). The men carried necessities and near-necessities which included objects and

He “[carries] letters from a girl named Martha” (1) until he later in the event that he burns them. He also “[carries] his good-luck pebble” also from Martha. Though these items Cross physically carries brought a sense of hope to him, they also brought him anger and guilt. Due to his obsession with Martha and her photographs, Cross lost sight of what was more important at the moment. “He had difficulty keeping his attention on the war.” (8) His ultimate job was to be a leader for his men and carry the responsibilities, yet instead, he was focused on himself and his possible future with Martha. In addition, Cross carried “phantom jealousy” (8). He loved Martha—“He loved her so much.” (8)—yet at the same time, “he wondered who had been with her that afternoon.” His awakening came along with the death of Ted Lavender. Because of Lavender’s death “Jimmy Cross led his men into the village of Than Khe” (15) where he led them in burning everything and shooting other innocent things such as chickens and dogs. His physical object in which he carried led to a physical uncarry-able object—guilt. Note, “this was something he would have to carry […] in his stomach for the rest of the war.”

The platoon’s medic, Bob “Rat” Kiley carried his comic books and candy, “morphine and plasma, […] and all the things a medic must carry” (5). Dave Jensen “carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and hotel-sized bars of soap.” (2) Henry Dobbins carried a pair of pantyhose once worn by his girl as a comforter along with his M-60 and “between 10 and 15 pounds of ammunition draped in belts [.]” (5) The Native American soldier, Kiowa carried his Illustrated New Testament and a hatchet given to him by his grandfather. The men, “they carried each other often, the wounded or weak” (14) they carried “chess sets, basketballs, Vietnamese-English dictionaries [.]” Mostly what they carried was inside. They carried little emotion and sickness. “They carried diseases, among them malaria and dysentery. They carried lice and ringworm and leeches and paddy algae and various rots and