The Things They Carried
The book is filled with stories about the men of Alpha Company and their lives in Vietnam and afterwards back in the United States. O'Brien captures the reader with graphic descriptions of the war that make one feel as if they were in Vietnam. The characters are unique and the reader feels sadness and compassion for them by the end of the novel. One of the significant concepts in The Things They Carried is that of the importance of certain objects or feelings used by the soldiers of Alpha Company to survive the war. Some examples of these items are the picture of the girl carried by Jimmy Cross, the Bible carried by Kiowa, and the stockings carried by Henry Dobbins. All the items helped the respective soldier to survive from day to day and to continue fighting the war. One of the most important things that helped the soldiers is their friendship with each other. The bond that men form with each other in the heat of battle is incomprehensible to those who have not experienced warfare for themselves. It's a hard thing to explain to som
The friendship and kinship that grew in the jungles of Vietnam survived and lived on here in the United States. The Narrator feels like he is not part of the group anymore. O'Brien, 220) This bond of friendship helps the men of Alpha Company survive on a day to day basis. If this happened while he was in the battlefield, the Narrator might not have survived the war. The Narrator not only feels like he is not part of this special bond of soldiers in the field, but finds out that he is replaced by another. ebody who hasn't felt it, but the resence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. And as a result his friend Kiowa was dead. These men looked to each other for emotional support and reassurance since none was coming from the homefront. (O'Brien, 192) This trust of the soldiers in each other with their lives created the friendship and bond that helped them survive each day in Vietnam. The men trusted each other to make no mistakes because one mistake could cause someone to lose their life. At one point, the boy remembered, he'd been showing Kiowa a picture of his girlfriend. The men of Alpha Company trusted each other with their lives.
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