Tim O’Brien’s book, “The Things They Carried” displays how life was like as a soldier during the Vietnam War. Specifically, it shows us how being a leader is much more than leading yourself. As a leader you have to cancel out distractions that may get you, or your men killed. By analyzing the theme of physical burdens, emotional burdens, and the balancing of responsibilities, we see the change in tone, the transitioning into a soldier, and that a lot more is carried than just gear by First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and Alpha Company. 

At the beginning of the story Cross lists off all the gear that him and his soldiers had to carry on the field of battle during the Vietnam War. He starts off with the things that are essential for everyday life, these necessities include P-38 can openers, pocketknives, and some type of firearm ranging from M-16 gas operated assault rifles to M-79 grenade launchers. On top of these things that were given to them from the U.S Army, soldiers carried their own belongings that were thought to be essential to survival. Things like chewing tobacco, marijuana, and M&Ms candy were just some of the things found on the soldiers within Alpha Company. The gear that these men carried weighed twenty to fifty pounds on the backs of teenagers and young men in their early twenties. With fear striking the young men and most looking for the easy way out. Yet to take the easy way out you had to face the fear of being a failure and a quitter.  O’Brien shows they would do anything to go home, by saying, “… They spoke bitterly about guys who had found release by shooting off their own toes or fingers. Pussies, they’d say. Candy-asses. It was fierce, mocking talk with only a trace of envy or awe, but even so the image played itself out behind their eyes.”  Marching around every day with this much weight made the soldiers very irritable, with the added in factor of being shot at, Lieutenant Cross had to maintain a level head as an example to the rest of his Company. 

Soldiers during the Vietnam War were kids, they were eighteen, nineteen year olds who got drafted and sent to fight a war, even though they had no idea what they were fighting for. Cross, who was twenty-four, had psychological baggage of Martha, a girl who was back home in Jersey attending college. He thought about her all day and he dreamed about her all night. He was a distracted leader at the beginning of the story. At first Cross was a laid back Lieutenant, he let his soldiers drop gear in-between destinations on their marches. When deciding who had to clear our crawl holes they drew numbers and the number seventeen was the unlucky person who got the honors of clearing them out. This quickly changed after Ted Lavender was shot in the head on his way back from relieving himself. O’Brien states, “Ted Lavender, who was scared … he went down under an exceptional burden … plus the unweighted fear. He was dead weight.” O’Brien also adds, “It was a bright morning in mid-April. Lieutenant Cross felt the pain.” After they called in a helicopter to pick up Lavender’s corpse Cross had some added weight to his psychological baggage. “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.” O’Brien says this to show the extent of the emotional baggage a soldier had to carry and with Cross being the leader of Alpha Company this burden fell heaviest on his shoulders. Cross wasn’t the only one who felt the burden of Lavender’s passing. Kiowa, a soldier in Alpha Company, saw Lavender get shot. He kept saying “Boom, down. Not a word.” Kiowa follows up with, “Still zipping himself up. Zapped while zipping.” An image that Kiowa can’t hold back as he keeps reliving the death of Lavender. At dusk after the men demolished the village of Than Khe, Kiowa explains how Lavender died and Lieutenant Cross has to hold himself back from crying.

After Cross burned his letters and pictures Martha had sent him, in an attempt to start fresh and become the officer his men needed him to be, he started implementing strict field rules and confiscated the remaining dope that Lavender had left behind. He knew that he had memorized the letter and could easily bring up the pictures through his memory, but he promised himself no more fantasies about what could not be. O’Brien refers to Cross, “He was a soldier, after all.” Cross decided it was time to act like one. He took full blame for Lavender’s death and decided to deal with it like “a man.” From the beginning of the story Cross is laid back and can only thing about Martha. As the story advances and takes an unfortunate turn of events, Lieutenant Cross accepts his role as a leader and puts his men before his own self.

First Lieutenant Cross and Alpha Company have to face physical burdens, emotional burdens as well as balancing their responsibilities all in the hardships of the Vietnam War. These themes help the soldiers learn how to transition into a soldier, in war there is a change in tone, and gear is not the only thing they have to carry through the trenches and the foxholes of Vietnam.
