The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien was very helpful in starting to examine the literature of the Vietnam War more closely. This book is a good example of a piece of literature about the Vietnam War. It is important to see an archetype of the literature before an analysis of the literature, as a whole, can be made. Not only was this book an excellent example of the literature of the Vietnam War in the story-telling sense, but it also included sections that explained how and why the literature was assembled, which relates very much to the topic at hand.
             The Things They Carried is an excellent model of the literature of the Vietnam War in the fictional short-story form. Story-telling is a very good way to bring the reader into the war and help him or her really understand the war from a soldier's perspective. Tim O'Brien is an outstanding story-teller. The stories that Tim O'Brien tells deal with love, hate, fear, pain, friends, enemies, and confusion, and he makes the point that all of these issues are burdens that a soldier must carry even after the war is over.
             This book is notable, especially for those readers who did not experience the Vietnam War, because it was written with much emotion and in a way that touches the heart of the reader. The quality of the story-telling forces the reader to feel what the soldiers were feeling and thinking, and brings a much better understanding to how the men and women involved in the war dealt with the horror that they saw. For example, O'Brien will describe a certain death scene in a way that is horrifying to the reader, as an example of what the soldiers had to endure on a day to day basis. He then goes on to describe the numbness that a soldier is forced to feel towards these types of things if he is to remain sane.
             The topics that O'Brien chooses to write about also make this book very interesting. As an example, love and hate are very powerful emotions in all people, and O'Brien
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