The Things They Carried, written by Tim O'Brien, tells the story of Vietnam War through the eyes of a soldier. O'Brien himself fought in the Vietnam War, and after he returned to his hometown, he began to write about his experiences. He was named "The Best American Writer of His Generation" by the San Francisco Examiner. 

In the beginning of the book, Tim O’Brien talks about what the objects the soldiers are actually carrying, which corresponds to the title of the book. He describes all the equipment of the soldiers in his squad, and how heavy were the things one man would carry. The soldiers are experiencing a trial of nature: wet air and muddy ground in the jungle makes it difficult to walk; the rain and sweat mean that their clothes and flack jackets are constantly soaking; and malaria and dysentery sweeps through the squad and threatens their health.

As the story progresses, the “things they carried” are not only the weapons and physical equipment, but also complex emotional feelings, such as hope and expectation. For example, Lieutenant Cross always carries a picture of his girlfriend Martha, and he wants the war to end quickly so he can return to her. All of them carry the feeling of fear. Some soldiers kept religious or superstitious objects or feelings to “protect themselves”, such as Kiowa’s Bible, or Dave Jensen’s rabbit’s foot. Aside from weapons, some people carry “whatever presented itself, or whatever seemed appropriate as a means of killing or staying alive”, like an extra pistol or a submachine gun with rounds of ammunition that they think will be enough for them to shoot. Sometimes they carry a 28-pound mine detector, and even though they know it’s nearly useless, they keep it “partly for safety, partly for the illusion of safety”. Comparing to the physical weight they would carry, soldiers prefer to comfort themselves mentally. Kiowa once told Tim: “I enjoy not being dead.” 

Some of them are carrying negative emotions, such as guilt and regret. After Lieutenant Cross receives a letter from his girlfriend about how she missed him, he can’t concentrate on the war anymore. However, Tim Lavender’s death pulls him back to reality; he thought it was his mistake that caused Tim Lavender to die. He felt shame, and hated himself.  Lt. Cross loves Martha more than the men under he command, and he must carry this feeling like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war, and even for the rest of his life. Tim O’Brien mentioned in the book that there is nothing worse than watching a friend to die and having no way to help. At another point in the book, Kiowa sinks into a mortar crater and is smothered by mud; Norman Bowker tries to save him but cannot, only succeeding in pulling out Kiowa’s moccasins, which are the only things that aren’t lost. Decades after the war ends, Bowker hangs himself in his basement. The war hurts people both mentally and physically, and they carry the mental pain to the very end. 

O’Brien emphasizes that “imagination was a killer”. When they are performing tasks, especially the ones that require concentration, they must ignore all other thoughts and keep their eyes only on what they need to do. It is very difficult for one to not think about something else when he is doing tasks requires hundred percent carefulness, but this imagination might lead him to the death at last. Imagination can also make people unstable and worried. When Tim’s teammate crawls into a tunnel to check if there are still enemies inside, the waiting makes him sick with worry, and puts himself in a sullen mood for the entire day, before he finally realized how odd the things he was worrying about were. After he kills a young man attempting to attack them, Tim begins to imagine the dead man’s life before the war. When he starts to imagine the man’s wife and children, he suddenly feels sorry, because he realizes that he may have destroyed a family. He struggles to rid himself of this feeling, which nearly destroys him mentally. Mitchell Sanders, a team member, once tells him: “You want my opinion? There is no definite moral here.” Tim felt better about one he had killed, but he still can’t get rid of the image of the corpse in his mind. 

One interesting thing about this book is that it barely uses pronouns “I” and “we” when describing scenes of the war; instead, O’Brien uses mostly the third-person perspective, which is more like telling a story of someone else’s experiences instead of one’s own, even though “Tim” himself is a character in these stories. In my opinion, the depiction of Tim’s trip after the war best explains the reason for this choice. When Tim took a trip to Vietnam with his daughter as tourists and visits the field where Kiowa was killed, he feels nothing, as if the events in his memory didn’t actually happen to him. He has already freed himself from the shadow of the war, and he doesn’t want to allow the memories to be real again. He might want to believe that he has changed a lot: that the young boy trembling on the battlefield no longer exists, and instead, he is an experienced man who is telling the story of the boy. But when he tries to remember the stories, everything seems unfamiliar to him, as if they were someone else’s memories. In the muddy field, Tim walks into it and lets himself sink into the muddy water, but can feel nothing like before. He writes that at that time, he hoped he could find someone with whom to share his war stories, to allow him to bring back the feelings he had thirty years ago, but he could not. Next to the field, farmers are working on their crops, while his nine-year-old daughter stands looking at him. Tim “didn’t know what to feel”; he realizes that time has changed whatever he was familiar with back then. Everything seems different for him now, everything except himself. 

In the book, Tim talks about the word “courage”. Norman Bowker had written him a letter in the spring of 1975, mostly about the hard time he had after the war, and also about the accident that killed Kiowa. Bowker tried to comfort himself by believing that he would also have sunk and been killed if he had gone in to help Kiowa. He told Tim that he was still struggling to pull himself out of the grief and sadness he felt. Bowker’s letter hits Tim hard, because during those years he was always talking about how easy he made the transition from war to peace. 

What is “courage”? What is sure about this is that it does not mean avoiding the truth. Tim says that he finally realizes how spineless he was after the war; he just didn’t want anyone to find out about his fear. After a period of time, he became desensitized to the war, and to the things that should never be forgotten. What is “courage”? Bowker was invited to contribute to a magazine article called Speaking of Courage, and felt guilty because he felt he had no courage at all; if he had, Kiowa would be alive. This event may have led to his suicide. What is “courage”? Tim keeps asking himself this question, but, he doesn’t know. No one ever knows, not even the soldiers. He believes that thinking about courage can only make people feel ashamed: one might consider his own action “courageous”, but when he looks back, he realizes that it might not have been as great as he imagined. 

I learned in psychology class last year that a great number of soldiers, not only those who fought in Vietnam, have experienced a period of mental suffering after their experience, which is sometimes caused by the feeling of shame. When they go back to wherever they lived before the war, everyone accepts them as brave men, welcoming them as war heroes. Only they know what they actually experienced, and they feel sorry and guilty about the admiration imposed on them, because in their own opinion, they are not the ones who should be honored. Bowker is one of these people, because he never forgot the war and the pain of it, while Tim was able to make the adjustment faster than others. In my opinion, this is not evidence that Tim’s heart is not strong enough, but rather, Tim's ability to move forward took a kind of courage as well. 

In conclusion, this book is not only an important piece about the Vietnam War, but also a great work of literature. When reading, one can learn a lot about both history and writing. This technique  is a very interesting and creative way to write a book. In my opinion, it should be interpreted as an anti-war book, in that it is trying to warn everyone else about how cruel war can be.