The Importance of the Title in Tim O'Brien's
             "The Things They Carried"
             In Tim O'Brien's short story "The Things They Carried," the items carried, both physical and emotional, are what helped to define and sustain each character's life at that given moment. The characters in the story have items they carried which helped them to deal with stress and serve as an anchor, and during quiet times a momentary escape, to a different and safer time in their lives. The importance of the title "The Things They Carried" illustrates the story's theme in which each individual carries mementoes to help them PAA make it through the crisis.
             Tim O'Brien separates the necessary physical items each soldier carried from the emotional or personal items by describing the necessary items with unemotional deliberate precision and personal items with warmth and feeling.
             Tim O'Brien methodically describes each physical object in detail: "The weapon weighed 7.5 pounds unloaded, 8.2 pounds with its full twenty-round magazine" (O'Brien 389) . He describes all the necessary items and places a great
             deal of emphasis on the weight of each object: "Among the grunts, some carried the M-79 grenade launcher, 5.9 pounds unloaded, a reasonably light weapon except for the ammunition, which was heavy" (389). While describing the personal items each man carried, the author places a great deal of emotional and sentimental weight on each item: "As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother's distrust of the white man, his grandfather's old hunting hatchet" (388). Although the author describes physical weight for necessary items verse's emotional weight for personal items, it is interesting to note the story begins with the description of personal items: "First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a
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