The Things They Carry In Class Essay

Every one of us carries a weight, whether it be emotional or physical or a combination of the two. In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, each of the soldiers carries their own weights. The physical objects often lend themselves to their own emotional weights, connecting the things they physically care about to their emotions. All of the weight, whether physical or emotional, affect the soldier’s actions.

Every soldier has a personal object that they carry; tranquilizers, the New Testament, a diary. In the chapter “Stockings”, O’Brien describes Henry Dobbins carrying his girlfriend’s pantyhose around his neck all the time. He uses it as his good luck charm and as a connection to his life at home, “More than anything, though, the stockings were a talisman for him. They kept him safe. They gave access to a spiritual world, where things were soft and intimate, a place where he might someday take his girlfriend to live” (O’Brien 111). This physical piece that Dobbins carries means more to him than just the pantyhose. It is his past and future with his girlfriend. They gave him confidence and a reason to survive the war. He never got hurt, and survived many close calls with ambushes. When his girlfriend broke up with him, he never lost that connection with the pantyhose, “No sweat,” he said. “The magic doesn’t go away” (112). The language is careless, even though we know that he was affected by the loss of his girlfriend. Even though he had no future to come back to with her, the pantyhose still gave him hope and perseverance.

In the war the men keep up a persona. They must be brave and fearless at all times, otherwise they are not men. Cowardice was certainly present, but they felt as if they couldn’t show it, “They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down” (O’Brien 20). The men felt like they could not be afraid of anything, even though it is human nature to have fear. The way that O’Brien talks about the weight of the ‘common secret of cowardice’ as if it was a physical object that they ‘could never [put it] down’ gives the emotional weight a more tangible feel, like something more real. Keeping up the act of being unphased by the terrible things that occurred all around them was the hardest thing for them to do, “They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing” (O’Brien 20). The soldiers felt that they could not have human emotions for fear of seeming weak to their peers.

In The Things They Carried, each of the men has something specific that they carry. Some carry physical things to remind them of their home or past that have a larger meaning to themselves. However, all the soldiers carry the fear of being constantly brave and never letting the horrors of war affect them like the war should.