The Things They Carried
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Nick Grainger
Eng 112
March 16, 2004
The Things They Carried
Tim O’Brien was an infantryman in during Vietnam War. He used those experiences to write many short stories including The Things They Carried. The story portrays how, “the things they carried” were weightless in comparison to their feelings of love and loss, fear and shame, and the torturous memories of death. “They all carried emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.”
The things they carried were determined by superstition and personal desires. In the beginning of the story we are introduced to Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. Cross is in love with a girl named Martha, and carries letters and pictures she has sent him. He also carries a good-luck pebble he received from Martha, and daydreams about her during their long marches. One day the Lieutenant and his men are marching through Than Kae, Cross is daydreaming as usual, when Ted Lavender is shot in the head and killed. They then “carried” Lavender to a helicopter. Before Lavender died he carried six or seven ounces of dope, which the men smoked after Ted was killed. Other men carried canned peaches, comic books, condoms, bibles, as well as personal weapons like slingshots, brass knuckles, and hatches. They shared the responsibility of carrying a 28lb mine detector. The detector was not extremely useful because of the shrapnel embedded in the ground, but it was still carried for the “illusion” of safety in a dangerous environment. All these things were to either help remind the men of home and what they were fighting for, or help them forget where they were and what they were doing.
The things they were required to carry depended on the mission, job title, as well as standard necessities. “Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, code books, binoculars, a .45 caliber pistol, as well as a strobe light.” The RTO (radio transmissions officer) carried a 26lbs PCR-25 radio. The machine gunner carried an M-60 which weighed 23lbs, loaded. All of them carried standard M-16s with around 20 rounds which weighed 17lbs. They carried silent awe for the terrible power of the things weapons they used. “In the heat of early afternoon, they would remove their helmets and flak jackets, walking bare, which was dangerous but which helped ease the strain. They would often discard things along the route of march. Purely for comfort, they would throw away rations, blow up their Claymores and grenades, no matter, because by nightfall the resupply choppers would arrive with more of the same thing.”
The emotional baggage they all carried, in many cases, were the things they wanted to lay down the most. Jimmy Cross carried the responsibility for his men. Cross blamed himself for the death of Ted Lavender. They all carried Ghosts. They all carried the weight of their memories. They carried each other, the wounded and weak. By daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but it was not in battle, it was just an endless march, village to village, nothing won or lost. They marched for the sake of the march. They carried their own lives. For the most part they carried themselves with poise, a kind of dignity. Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when the squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn’t, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said “Dear Jesus” and flopped around on the ground and fired their weapons blindly and cringed and sobbed and begged for the noise to stop and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and fathers, hoping not to die. They carried the