Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” is ostentatiously a story about the Vietnam War.  Instead, there are different stories going on at once that are all intertwined about First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross.  A soldier was shot, which Lieutenant Cross, possibly rightfully, blames himself for as he is obsessed with a girl that barely knows he is alive.  The story also focuses on what the soldiers carry in their packs, either what they are given by the Army as part of their job or what they have brought from home or collected along the way.  What the soldiers carry, what Lieutenant Cross carries, was made much heavier by the emotional attachment to it thus what they carry is more than the sum of their packs, it is the sum of their hearts and psyches.
Character development in “The Things They Carried” can be summed up in the imagination and memory of Lieutenant Cross.  His “relationship” with Martha is 99.99% in his head.  He took her to the movies once.  He has two pictures of her in his wallet-one another suitor of hers took and she gave to him, and the other, was of her playing volleyball that he cut out of her yearbook.  His imagination was obsessed with her virginity.  He kept her letters wrapped in plastic as if they were a holy object, even though they were superficial and vague.  One could argue that it was his carefully constructed memory of Martha that helped him make it through the war.  For the time that he carried her pictures, her letters, and the pebble she sent him, he was made so much heavier by those few ounces.
The Vietnam War took a toll on all who served.  This story demonstrates this by having the setting there.  “Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or ground sheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the pon- cho weighed almost two pounds, but it was worth every ounce”.  The mercurial weather in Vietnam, where the days were so hot that some soldiers would risk walking around shirtless but the nights were bitterly cold, shows in what the men carry physically in their packs and mentally in their minds because of the weather.  The setting is also vastly different than what any American G.I. would have experienced at home.  There are no jungles in the United States, and unless a soldier spent all of their time in a swamp it is unlikely that they would have to deal with “jungle rot”.  Once they reached Vietnam, the soldiers didn’t just carry their packs with their gear and memories, they literally began to carry around the country.  “They carried the land itself — Vietnam, the place, the soil — a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity”.  Vietnam itself soon clung to them and made them even heavier.
O’Brien crafted a tale of loss and grief with “The Things They Carried”.  It would be difficult to say which would weigh heavier with Lieutenant Cross- the death of Ted Lavender or the faux relationship with Martha.  Either way, he will carry both, as all the other soldiers will carry their packs with them, long after the weapons and rations have been emptied out.

