O'Brien uses the word “things” in the title because the soldiers do not only carry equipment and supplies, but also emotions of love, terror, grief, and longing. Throughout the book, O'Brien includes many themes and motifs to inform the reader that the physical burdens underscore the emotional. These themes and motifs include: A fear of shame as motivation, an ambiguous morality, and loneliness.

Burdens During the War

Throughout the book, O'Brien tells how the men figuratively carry the weight of their reputations because of the presence of stress, strangeness, youth, and immaturity. However, at times O'Brien tells a specific story about a specific character and their emotional burden that weighs them down throughout the war. For example, in the first story of the book, titled “The Things They Carried”, O'Brien talks about Lt. Jimmy Cross and his burdens of responsibility, the longing for love, and deciding which is more important. Another example is the story “stockings”. In this story, O'Brien talks about Henry Dobbins's longing for love and comfort. To help himself with this emotional burden, Dobbins wears his girlfriend's pantyhose around his neck. By doing this, Dobbin's comforts himself with the superstition that the pantyhose are a good luck charm, and he also satisfies his longing for love by being able to smell the scent of his girlfriend when he wears the pantyhose around his neck. O'Brien shares these stories in order to show the reader that there's more than meets the eye when judging how tough one's burdens are during the war.

Emotional burdens after war's end

Not only does O'Brien share burden stories during the war, but he also shares stories about emotional burdens that continue to define characters after they are released from duty. For example, in O'Brien's story “Love” (which occurred in a post war setting), he informs us of lt. Cross's longing for the love of Martha which hasn't diminished. O'Brien also shares the story of Norman Bowker's post war struggle with guilt in “Speaking of Courage”, and follows up with his eventual suicide in “Notes”. O'Brien shares stories of emotional struggle in various settings to show the readers that war is not a one-time thing, because the emotional burdens may last forever, even when the physical burdens are dropped.

Shame as Motivation

In "The Things They Carried", O'Brien shares the theme of fearing shame as a motivation. This theme is expressed throughout the book in terms of men wanting social acceptance. A good example is when Curt Lemon wants to avoid a negative social status by having a perfectly good tooth pulled. Besides the events in war, the theme of fearing shame as motivation shines in O'Brien's story, “On the Rainy River”. In this story, O'Brien's beliefs put him in the position of either choosing to flee to Canada, and avoiding something he thinks is unjust, or give in to his fear of being labeled as a coward by his community and fight. O'Brien decides to fight, motivated by his fear of shame. This story is meant to show the reader how heavy of an emotion burden this theme truly is.

Morality Issues

Often times, O'Brien shows that the ugliness of war, combined with personal issues and immaturity, can lead to the men practicing an ambiguous morality. That is, the men's sense of right and wrong bend. For example, Cross's sense of morality is absent when he burns an entire village to get even whit what he's done. Also, Rat Riley tortures an animal to death because of the loss of a friend. O'Brien even becomes morally confused when he shares a story of wanting revenge when war is already ugly enough. He wants the reader to ask him “where is the morality and sense in making more enemies than you need to?” O'Brien's exposure of this motif is meant to show the irony of morality in war…there are no morals.

Motif of Loneliness

Another motif O'Brien shares is the motif of loneliness. Often times during a post-war setting, men can become emotionally lost and feel alone. In “Speaking of Courage”, Bowker drives around aimlessly because he feels there is nothing to live life for, not even himself. Also, Lt. Cross's longing for Martha causes him to obsess and, in turn, put himself in an isolated and lonely state of mind. Once again, O'Brien shows that even after the equipment is put down, the emotional burdens live on.

Conclusion

The Things They Carried was an excellent display of true burdens. The themes and motifs O'Brien provided showed the true power emotional longings have on one's thinking, feelings, and beliefs. O'Brien's stories not only educate a reader about alters in psychology, but they also prove the thesis of physical burdens underscoring the virtually impossible emotional burdens.

When the draft notice arrives, O'Brien states “I was too good for this war. Too smart, too compassionate, too everything. It couldn't happen. I was above it” (O'Brien 41).

This describes the emotional truth that O'Brien is going through at the time that the draft notice arrives. Although this does not fit with the definition of truth supplied above, O'Brien attempts to instill empathy in the reader. At the border between the United States and Canada, O'Brien struggles with himself, “I tried to will myself overboard. I gripped the edge of the boat and leaned forward and thought, now. I did try. It just wasn't possible” (59).

Given the choice of whether to go to Vietnam to be a soldier and possibly die, or flee to Canada and be a solider, he is not physically able to run away. There is no verification for the story “On the Rainy River”, because only O'Brien has written about it, and there is no Tip Top Lodge on the Rainy River, bordering Minnesota and Canada.

However, it shows the inner struggle between many men who were drafted during the time of the Vietnam War. which shows the emotional truth of this story. O'Brien, by altering his own experiences, is able to give the reader an idea of how soldiers felt going into Vietnam.

During Mary-Anne's stay in Vietnam, Rat comments, “What happened to her, Rat said was what happened to all of them. You come over clean and you get dirty and then afterwards it's never the same” (114).

O'Brien stresses in this book, that people were different after they have come back from Vietnam, which meant that something changed their mental states in Vietnam. A perfect example is Mary-Anne, in “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, where she enters Vietnam and never comes back. When O'Brien first joins the Alpha Company he is shown how the fellow soldiers treat the dead bodies, “One by one the others did too. They didn't disturb the body, they just grabbed the old man's hand and offered a few words and moved away” (226).

This shows lack of compassion on the part of the soldiers in Vietnam which is another example of emotional truth. “They're all dead. But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world. Story truth is what O'Brien uses to enhance the happening and emotional truths by making the reader feel sympathetic towards the young O'Brien and the dead bodies.

After seeing the countless rotting corpses they have found a way to deal with the anguish. Making the dead man seem alive by shaking his hand helps to relieve some of the pain of seeing a lifeless body felt by all of the soldiers.

After his tour of Vietnam, he heads back to the States a changed person from all of the experiences during the war, “I received a long, disjointed letter in which Bowker described the problem of finding a meaningful use for his life after the war” (155). Some people were not able to integrate into society as well as O'Brien, such as Norman Bowker. The strain of re-entrance into a changed society caused Bowker to end up committing suicide (160).

O'Brien says at the end of this, “Norman did not experience a failure of nerve that night. He did not freeze up or lose the Silver Star for valor. That part of the story is my own” (161). O'Brien admits to the reader that he has made up the ending and perhaps this is designed to show the emotional truth of the soldier's lives after Vietnam. Some were able to adapt, and some could not handle the strain.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien is filled with what some people call truth, and others, lies. O'Brien must lie about events in his life to show the emotional and happening truth of the Vietnam War. He explains why he does this by saying, “The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head” (230).

The straight facts of a story are very boring. If there is not an emotional side to the re-telling of the event or the history, it will just seem like reading a history textbook, long and boring. Tim O'Brien has the ability to evoke feelings from his audience, and this is why this book is such a success.