The Things I Carry Essay

As humans, we carry around many tangible objects in our daily lives. Whether it is a bag filled with what is needed for the day or just our phone, we rely on certain things to navigate us through our days. There are also intangible things which are the traits that make us up, that we carry around with ourselves every day. Personally, I try to carry as little as possible when I go out. I will most likely grab my phone, keys, money, and chapstick and be out the door. In most cases, the difficulty of carrying the weight of our personal lives can seem to outweigh what we are physically carrying. As for abstract things that I carry, I have a lot going on. I am an extreme overthinker and find it almost impossible to stop myself from thinking, no

Like most my age, I am always equipped with a smart phone. Many would deem it necessary in this day and age. Some people get them as young as 10 years old. I only carry one per my parent's request. Not to say that I don’t enjoy the perks of having it with me: access to any answer for any question that might be asked, the capability to talk to my family and friends at any given moment throughout the day, and plenty of applications to screw around with if I find myself with extra time. It weighs almost nothing, so light that at any given moment I will panic because I worry I lost it. It holds a different kind of weight though. It is heavy in the moments that it is “lost”, when there is a fear that it is not with me,

Every day we go through, a million and one things occur. We either completely forget about it in the next instant or we carry it with us for the rest of our eternity. It’s possible to carry the memory of the generous tip the nice women gave you or the exact moment the wrong words came out of your mouth. We can carry these things called burdens, either physically or emotionally.

The Things They Carried offered a unique and personal look into the life of one soldier’s experience. It showed how the war held obligations to its soldiers and expectations for each of the men to follow. The Things They Carried also showed a side of war that was not always seen in other documents and accounts such as Tim O’Brien thoughts and feelings during the war. However, many of the things O’Brien stated throughout his book is very similar to the experiences shared by men in the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. Moreover, despite some similarities, each war is unique and have their own distinctive causes and effects that have solidified their importance in American history. When it comes to war, it seems that most experiences

In the list of all the things the soldiers carried, what item was most surprising? Which item did you find most evocative of the war? Foot powder was most surprising to me. This also shows us how much these soldiers had to travel in the war.

"The Things They Carried," is a story about drafted soldiers during the Vietnam era who were sent to the Vietnam War. The author, Tim O’Brien, describes the things that the men carry during their tour of duty. The items carried are both physical and impalpable items and what these things are is subject to the individual soldier. They carry the necessities for survival in the jungles of Vietnam as well as the personal things each soldier feels necessary to make life as comfortable as possible. Additionally, each of the men carries the memories and fears of past and present experiences. The heaviness of the impalpable items is as tangible as that of any physical item, and not so easy to cast away. The literary argument in which the novel

The memories that a person makes throughout their lifetime creates amazing stories. The book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien was based on memories from the Vietnam war. The protagonists in the novel is all the men that served and faced many obstacles throughout the war. The novel was written in parts of his memories from the war making the book nonlinear. O’Brien’s intended audience was soldiers and men, while discussing storytelling/memory and morality throughout the novel.

The text, ‘The Things They Carried', is an excellent example which reveals how individuals are changed for the worse through their first hand experience of war. Following the lives of the men both during and after the war in a series of short stories, the impact of the war is accurately portrayed, and provides a rare insight into the guilt stricken minds of soldiers. ‘The Things They Carried' shows the impact of the war in its many forms: the suicide of an ex-soldier upon his return home; the lessening sanity of a medic as the constant death surrounds him; the trauma and guilt of all the soldiers after seeing their friends die, and feeling as if they could have saved them; and the deaths of the soldiers, the most negative impact a war

Thematic Statement: “The Things They Carried”- The mental and morale that a person go through is intense because it becomes the fundamental that will be throughout the whole story.

     How does death affect the behavior of people? Although death affects everyone's behavior differently, knowledge of one's imminent death is a main force behind behavioral changes. This knowledge causes emotions that motivate people to act in ways that they normally would not. In Tim O'Brien's 'The Things They Carried,'; the knowledge of death and its closeness causes the men in the story to alter their behavior by changing they way they display power, modifying emotions to relieve guilt, and by exhibiting different actions to ease anxiety.

In The Things They Carried, every soldier carried something different; different equipment, different memories, and different guilt. Their equipment would change as they travelled through the book, but one common thing that the soldiers would all be forced to carry is the weight of losing one of their own. Though it might weight differently from man to man, changing depending on how well they knew the soldier, it is a weight they all felt. Though several soldiers died in The Things They Carried, the loss of a soldier named Kiowa was different from the others. But why? What impact did Kiowa have in The Things They Carried, and why did his death affect the other characters differently than the previous deaths in the novel?

     In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, numerous themes are illustrated by the author. Through the portrayal of a number of characters, Tim O’Brien suggests that to adapt to Vietnam is not always more difficult than to revert back to the lives they once knew. Correspondingly the theme of change is omnipresent throughout the novel, specifically in the depiction of numerous characters.

“The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is a short story written about the Vietnam War. The title has two meanings. The first is their duties and equipment for the war. The second, the emotional sorrows they were put through while at war. Their wants and needs, the constant worry of death were just a few of the emotional baggage they carried. During the Vietnam War, like all wars, there were hard times. Being a soldier wasn’t easy. Soldiers always see death, whether it be another soldier or an enemy. In “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien explores the motivation of solders in the Vietnam War to understand their role in combat, to stay in good health, and accept the death of a fellow soldier.

Jonathan Lam carried carried his backpack and all of his supplies throughout the school day. He had pretty standard equipment: a Swiss Army backpack, a digital watch by Swatch, a Pilot G-2 pen, and an orange notebook cram-packed with school papers in between the pages that had not been ripped out.