Tim O’Brien, American novelist and Vietnam War veteran, in his narrative “The Things They Carried” tells us about commander Jimmy Cross, who is leading group of the soldiers through out the Vietnam War. Although, the narrative is related to the Vietnam War, author leads the story not about the hostilities, but about the rarely hard life of the soldiers involved in the war, where as like in the usual life they have death, love, laughing, jokes, friendship, emotions and this life has its own rhythm. According to the name of the story, author uses the structure of the sentences “They carried…” in order to familiarize us with the all things which fill out this specific life of of soldiers and what these things mean for them at this time.

Mostly in every chapter author lists things carried by soldiers, these things are not only essentials stuff of soldiers like guns, bulletproof vest, ammunition and food, which are super heavy; These young men also care through the war emotions and responsibility for each other, their pride before each other. Throughout the entire story, the soldiers go and march, what might represent the sense of life: we move forward, carrying out all happiness and misery. Frequently, author point at the weight of the everything they carry in order to show us how those soldiers are burdened by the heavy weight of all world and war things, which sometimes they don’t even need and they are not necessary in the war. Author also tells us about the death of one of the soldiers, Ted Lavender, who was sort of coward and cared a lot of soothing and was armed armed much more than the others, he wore helmet for self peace, however was killed by shoot in his head. O’Brien compares how things like grenade, guns and so forth, which Lavender cared  and super light loving letters written by Martha to the commander Jimmy Cross, which give him not a protection, but the enormous motivation to survive in this war to come back to Martha and do everything he has not done when he had the chance. This love feeling, which Cross cares through the war, helps him to survive, however, it also distracts him out from concentration on the platoon and war, because of which, he blames himself for the death of his soldier. 

Very often author mentions Martha in Cross’s thoughts, telling that he and Martha live in completely different worlds. Life of the guys on the war very differ from the life of usual people in the world, where are no needs to care anything, where all have everything they need, however these guys try to fit everything they could have in the normal life, except they have to care in order to survive. Jimmy Cross is young commander, he is 24 years old, that hints us that all of the soldiers, who are not older than their leader. They live in the world where one could die so fast like Ted Lavender, “once-boom”, what tells us author thousand times in speech of one of the soldiers. The story as a whole is made of the very short sentences, in my opinion, author use that in order to show us super fast rhythm of the soldiers’ life, where anyone could stop carrying all the things. They didn’t choose that life as written in one of the paragraph, they were sent here, they didn’t have choice rather than go through the Vietnam burning and destroying all villages and people on their way. In spite of that they are like a machine for killing, they also care human qualities like pride, valor, honor dignity before the comrades and they don’t have the way back. They can’t give up and they can’t fail, they are scared of the death, however more than that they are scared of being disclosed in their fear in front of each other and loose the honor and respect. Life of the soldiers might be different, sometimes it seems like normal life, where they joke and laugh at each other, but sometimes there are moments when the life is like hell and they want to scream and run because of fear. They also have peculiar rude lexicon showing that their world is another world.

The main feagure of this story is Jimmy Cross, in whose thoughts the author compares the life which he could spend with Martha and the real life on the erge of death which he also cares through the Vietnam War. In his mind, Jimmy Cross recollect lost opportuinities with Martha, what he regrets about now. By looking at the photos,which Martha sent him, he imagines that somwhere there next to her a guy, which could be Jimmy, but then he realizes that she doesnt love him and all of that is his imagination. He realizes that he will never be the guy next to her, however this young man wants to love someone and be loved by someone, like an other guys in his age, that is why he keeps these letters and photographs from Martha to have love at least in his imagination, what so helps him and support through these hard days of the war. However, after the Lavenders death he conscious that he, as a commander of these group, cares responsibility for those peoples life and his imagination full of Martha endanger it. He has to choose between artificial love and real life of his soldiers. As a result, he burns out everything about Martha and tights the rules and discipline among soldiers in order to don’t incur big losses.

In this story about Vietnam War, author in details reflect the deep meaning of the real war. The war sometimes could be real life for someone, where men, the same as other guys, live their own specific life, which is dangerous, similar to death, however for them it is still life, where they can love, they have friends, emotions, pride and honor. In this life they can only dream about to take off all these heavy things they carry and live normal life like others.
