Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried".

Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" (reprinted in Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs, Literature and an Introduction to Reading and Writing, Sixth edition. [Upper Saddle River and Prentice-Hall, 2001] 77-88) is centered on the realism of the types of things the soldiers in the Vietnam War carried. The realism of all the physical and emotional, tangible and intangible things they carried are vividly described throughout the entire story. The realism of the weights of …

…out that the reader can visualize each character, and what they are carrying throughout the war. I truly enjoyed reading "The Things They Carried"; it had me wanting more, to know what each soldier was carrying, or willing to dispose of for the sake of others. This story demonstrates and depicts the capacity, and the limits, of the human heart and soul, and what we endure, if not just in wartime, but in everyday life.