O'Brien tends to use a long list of physical objects that the soldiers carried while in the war. He describes the objects as an emotional burden that haunts the soldiers. These objects give the soldiers strength and willingness to confront the tension between reality and fantasy. Also when the soldiers did not fight they had nothing to do but look at these objects and have their free time. The soldiers had nothing better to do than remind them of the emotional burdens that they were trying to run away from. "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. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice...Men killed, and died because they were embarrassed not to."
             The title of this short story brings a lot of meaning. It signifies all the heavy and personal baggage that the soldiers carry with them during their time at war. The story was based on the items that they were carrying. The significance was not as important to the emotional battle that the men seemed to carry during their time of service. The emotional burdens that the soldiers bear are expressed by their young age and inexperience. O'Brien uses graphic detail to help give us an illustration of what the experience was like for these men.
             While doing research I came across an article by Alix Wilber. Wilber describes the story as a blurred line between truth and reality. "Every story in The Things They Carried speaks another truth that Tim O'Brien learned in Vietnam; it is this blurred line between truth and reality, fact and fiction that makes his book unforgettable. -- Alix Wilber (1)". Wilber describes The Things They Carried as a subtle but "definitive" line of demarcation. This comes together with the fact that O'Brien's earlier work about Vietnam. The Things They Carried seems to play with t...