The voyage of life is experienced in varying levels of depth, and this idea is very well described by the short story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien.  This story tells of a battalion stationed in Vietnam during the war and the physical and emotional toll of all of the things they carried.  By looking at “The Things They Carried” we see how the use of the internal and external things carried and the macro to micro structure of the story amplifies the theme of the story which is the physical and mental toll the things they carried put on them.

During the course of life there are many things that are expected of us; the loads that we have to carry on our shoulders, and even down to how we carry ourselves. These things can be external as well as burdens within a person’s own mind.  The author uses a very macro to micro way of describing the items in varying levels to show the actual importance of the specific items.  O’Brien begins with the very broad topic of essential items for their journey where he states “necessities or near necessities that were P-38 pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, matches, sewing kits…” (O’Brien).  He gives no description for these items as he just lists off a multitude of items with no real explanation of the need for them.  The author doing a complete 180 degree turn then spends an entire paragraph talking about the two pictures Lieutenant Cross carried of Martha.  He goes into deep detail about the pictures separately as well as describing Lieutenant Cross’ feelings toward Martha and her pictures.  This very random long description inserted between two very undescriptive paragraphs gives the pictures a sense of importance and alludes to them being brought up again.  The author goes on to talk about the items the people needed for their specific jobs, and even though he went more specific, he still didn’t give a description of the items and there is not really a sense of importance to these material items.  How they carried themselves was a bid part of the mental toll the war put on the soldiers. O’Brien really describes this in the passage “For the most part they carried themselves with poise, a kind of dignity. Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when they 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 the earth…” (O’Brien).  There is a very big difference between the description of the material items and more mental burdens placed on these men.  The author gives a very intense description of these to show the toll and importance of the way these men carried themselves. The author really emphasizes that the struggles that you cannot see tend to be some of the most difficult to deal with and take on a life of their own. In this passage “They carried all the 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.” (O’Brien).  In this story the author really puts a lot of emphasis on the mental burdens and internal conflicts of the soldiers.  This allows the reader to dive in to the theme of discovering the toll that the things the soldiers carried had on them 

The term “macro to micro” is the common man’s term for going from the big picture to looking at small details.  In the terms of the structure of this story it goes very macro to micro in the way that it goes from very exterior focused to more introspective.  For example, the story starts with a basic overview of the actual items they carried, and the story ends with lieutenant Cross examining his own behavior and feelings in the passage “Among the men there would be grumbling, of course, and maybe worse, because their days would seem longer and their loads heavier, but Lieutenant Jimmy Cross reminded himself that his obligation was not to be loved but to lead” (O’Brien).  The varying length of the paragraphs shows the interesting differences between how the author describes the items that were held within the story.  The longer paragraphs tend to ramble on and consist of listing off supplies or having intense deep thought, and the shorter paragraphs do not contain many words and are very short and to the point.  The sentence structure in this story is very important to the theme of this work of literature. There is really no variety in the sentences they are all very long run on sentences or short and choppy little statements. The run on sentences tend to be in moments of stress or frustration.  For example, “Over and over—there it is my friend, there it is—as if the repetition itself were an act of poise, a balance between crazy and almost crazy, knowing without going, there it is, which meant to be cool, let it ride….” (O’Brien) this sentence is very confusing and rambles on in contrast to this sentence “He understood” (O’Brien).  The structure of this story is very important because it gets intensely differing as the story goes on which emphasizes the theme of the toll that the physical and mental burdens put on the soldiers in this passage. 

In conclusion, this story was very interesting in the way that it seemed to gradually change focus from the beginning where it was mostly based on the physical things they carried, and then it switched more to the mental and internal conflicts of the men.  The elements of the actual things they carried gave the reader a point of reference to understand the toll the objects took on the men, and the structure alluded to the slight macro to micro view of things within the characters.
