The paper introduces "The Things They
Carried" by Tim O'Brien, a collection of stories all involving the heavy emotional
burden
soldiers carry into the Vietnam War. It discusses how the book reads more like the memories of an old man, not ordered by chronology, but rather by the experiences of pain, tragedy and death that overcome a person in the moment. This paper explores O'Brien's description of the soldiers' lives before, during and after the Vietnam War, as well as examines the real things that these soldiers
carried with them into battle.