Things they Carried
When reading Tim O’Brian’s “The Things They Carried,” many audiences wonder what the significance of the title holds. However, once students read the story, they will find the title’s importance; it is about both the tangible and intangible things; the physical and emotional burdens that each solider carried. Although many of the physical burdens carried weighed heavily on each soldier, it was the emotional burdens, love, terror, longing, and grief, “the things they carried” inside, although intangible and somewhat immeasurable, that weighed the most. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried the letters from Martha, a college friend from back home who he had fallen in love with. ... He wrapped them in plastic and carried them around in the bottom of his rucksack wherever he would go. ... His constant thoughts of Martha ultimately led to his guilt over jeopardizing the lives of his men and the missions they were supposed to be carrying out Kiowa, as a hedge against bad times, carried his grandmother’s distrust for the white man.