After closely reading O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, I have come to consider the significance of what it was those soldiers really were carrying with them while they were in Vietnam. Of course we can consider the literal significance of what they carried, and the weight of these items: Assualt rifles, ammunition, radios, mine detectors, and personal belongings such as bibles or photographs. However, the most significant element of this story would be what the soldiers carried internally. The soldiers carry emotions that prove to be a heavier burden than their weapons or equipment. They bear the conscious weight of their actions, whether that is losing a friend, burning down a village, or killing someone in combat. This is significant because unlike their rifles and their radios, the burdens the men carry internally cannot be set down when they feel like they need to rest. They will continue to carry these burdens with them through the duration of the war, and thus for the rest of their lives. These experiences, which are carried more as scars than external baggage, will continue to haunt the men who fought in the war long after they set down the rest of the things they carried.  Through the story, O’Brien tells us about the experiences of the platoon and how they carry different things on different missions and how their experiences affect them. The real story does not come from the tools of war and the personal items these men carry, it comes from what each one of them carry within themselves as a result of fighting in the war. 

After analyzing the text, we find that Jimmy Cross carries strong emotions for a girl with him for the duration of his time in the war. Cross faces an emotional conflict within himself over his love for the girl back home, and his knowledge that she doesn’t share his feelings.  This character’s experience in the war was dominated by his feelings for this young woman.  He often does not find himself focused on his responsibilities of leading, or even on the war effort at all. He would be slipping in and out of daydreams of the girl, not paying attention to the war he was fighting in. Eventually, his fear that she did not share his same affection had shaken his hope, removing him completely from the war effort, and stripping him of his motivation. He was simply focused on the thought of this woman and the love he had for her. He removed himself and detached himself from his surroundings, until his obsession for the girl is the only thing on his mind. This becomes Cross’s heaviest burden.  The conflict between participating in the war and his dreams of the girl he will go home to is his heaviest burden because it stripped him of his hope, his motivation, and his drive to fight. Thusly stopping him from being able to keep himself and his men safe.  

This becomes evident in one particular instance, where his distraction leaves him off guard, and then ultimately responsible for the death of one of the men under his command. He was too caught up in his thoughts that he wasn’t focused enough to lead, putting his men at risk. Early in the story, we learn that Cross, (an officer in the Army) was the leader of their platoon. The text stated that he “carried the responsibility for the lives of his men.” (O’Brien 330). However this does not seem to be the case, as we know he was daydreaming about Martha (The woman he had fantasized about) moments before Ted Lavender was killed, and we know that he now has to carry the guilt of being responsible for Lavender’s death because he was in love. It immediately becomes significant that his infatuation with a girl who existed in his dreams was impairing his ability to lead successfully. He’s obsession caused him to lose focus, and this mistake is what caused Cross to lead his men into the ambush that killed Lavender.  “He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war,” (336). The description of his death being referred to as a stone in his stomach represents the significance of the internal burdens over the physical one. In the beginning of the text, each item is described in detail and given a weight. “Most of them were common grunts, and carried the standard M-16 gas-operated assault rifle. The weapon weighed 7.5 pounds unloaded, 8.2 pounds fully loaded.” (330) The weight of Ted Lavender’s death wasn’t given a weight. The burdens the men carried internally weighed far more than any assault rifle, they were immeasurable. Cross would have to carry that burden with him for the rest of his life, he would never be able to lift that stone like he would be able to set down a weapon come the end of the war. The internal burdens were greater than the physical ones the men had to bare because they would not be able to live without those burdens when the war ended. The development of this character, and the short, quick description of Lavender’s death in the text shows us that O’Brien wanted us to focus more on the effects the events had on the men more than the events themselves. 

Lavender’s death and the way it affected the members of the platoon is another way the story emphasizes the importance of the mental state of the soldiers and the way the war has changed them. The men in the platoon all handled the death differently, yet it was something they would carry with them for the rest of their lives. The author took the moment of Lavender’s death as an opportunity to reveal just how much the war had dehumanized the men up to this point. This was achieved by the way the death was described. O’brien offered a very short, almost trivial description for one of the most influential events in the text. “The poor bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down. Nothing else. ” (330) The text offers a description akin to how it was felt by the men closest to him. They did not glorify his death, or frankly think much of it. Lavender was not the first man to die in the war and these men knew it. They had become desensitized to the killing and the death because they had been fighting the war for so long, and had been through so much. The internal burdens these men carried after their experiences in combat had all but removed them from reality. O’Brien even writes “when someone died, it wasn’t quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their lines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself” (338).  This passage reflects the dehumanization these men experienced as a result of being in the war for so long. These men had been so worn down by the weight of their own experiences in the Vietnam that they had lost their sense of reality. The routine exposure to conflict, killing, and the ever-present fear of death had broken the men. They didn’t view what happened to them or what they were doing in a realistic light anymore, they had simply become pawns. These soldiers were going through the motions of deployment, and these motions over time took their respective tolls on the men psychologically until there was nothing left. This is even evident in the way they spoke to one another or the commentary they’d offer. For example, the men were describing Lavender’s death using terms that didn’t recognize the fact that he had died. The language the men used was unique as it allowed them to hide the truth that he had died. The soldiers didn’t accept his death, so they chose not to recognize it, and if they did discuss it, they used language that separated them from the fact that he had died. “They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness. Greased they’d say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping. It wasn’t cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors” (338). Stating that the soldiers were just actors, and that their vocabulary represents how detached they were from themselves and from the reality of their circumstances. The experience of the war and the life of a soldier in the war had been carried with each and every one of those soldiers until they did not even realize the reality of their circumstances. The text continues to show through the events that occur, and the way the author tells the story that the most important element to this text was the way the things they carried within themselves affected them.

After closely reading this text, it is evident that O’Brien focused the story around the deteriorating condition of the individual. It can clearly be argued, then, that the way the war (and all of their experiences in it) affected and stayed with the soldiers for the entire story. As the author writes from the point of view of one character, he describes how the things they had to do in the war has eaten away their humanity. “It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do.” (340). This passage stood out particularly as it recognized the transition these men had gone through as a result of what they witnessed and what they did in Vietnam. Overall encompassing the concept that the internal burdens and events the soldiers endured were the intended "things" rather than the tangible objects themselves.