Tim O'Brien's story, The Things They Carried, is a short narrative about a platoon of military soldiers sometime during the Vietnam War. The story is narrated from the third person and mainly focuses on the many thoughts of Jimmy Cross and his obsession with his love interest Martha during the course of the story. However, the story also focuses on many of the physical and emotion burdens that the soldiers carry throughout their time in Vietnam. This story attacks many difficult themes such as the futility of war and the stress and lives of the men in it.
Tim does this through listing the many items that each of the platoon member carry and the item's corresponding weight. As most of the items they carry are necessary for the groups survival, the items that are brought that are not necessary alludes to each of the men's character throughout the story. Ted Lavander, who has much fear and anxiety from war, carries along with him tranquilizers and a bag of marijuana to combat his fear, while Jimmy Cross, who has an obsession with a girl named Martha, slugs around with him various photographs and letters from her. However, Tim also includes the actual weight of objects to juxtapose them against emotion strains that the soldiers must also carry with them along Vietnam, which shows how both types of problems add additional "weight" for each men to carry.
Although Tim depicts these men to have various personalities with hopes after the war, Tim also shows how the very nature of war can twist the lives of these men. For instance, in one paragraph the narrator states that the war they are fighting is "an endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won or lost" which blatantly states that their presence in Vietnam serves no purpose, and every new mission is just another repetition of that.
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