1) Tim O'Brien's short story "The Things They Carried" depicts the physical and emotional burdens shouldered by young American soldiers during the Vietnam War. 2) O'Brien uses the varying weights of equipment carried by each soldier to symbolize their differing mental and emotional loads based on their duties. 3) The story focuses on Lieutenant Cross, who clings to letters and pictures from his girlfriend Martha as an escape from the horrors of war, until he burns them after feeling responsible for a fellow soldier's death.

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Amber Skibinski
Dr. Tribbett
Intro to Fiction
26 Oct. 2016
The Weight of War: Symbolism in O’Brien’s “The Things They Carry”
Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carry” is a Vietnam War short story in a collection of
other stories from the Vietnam War in his book of the same title. In the time of the Vietnam War
most of the soldiers forced to fight, as this was seen as a senseless war, were just young men in
their late teens or early twenties. This particular story gives insight into the burdens these young
men must bare and also of how they cope with the gruesome things they must experience all to
soon in life. In “The Things They Carry”, O’Brien uses the physical weight of each item carried
by the men to indicate the mental and emotional weight of war for the men.
The physical weight of each item carried by the men is proportional to the emotional and
mental weight they must carry with them during and after the war. O’Brien states, “[T]hese items
weighed between fifteen and twenty pounds, depending upon a man’s habits or rate of
metabolism” (2). The weight each man must bare varies based on his duty along with what is
important to them to have during their time at war. The varying weight each man carries
represents the varied weight each man carries mentally and emotionally throughout the war.
O’Brien does not give a specific weight for Kiowa’s copy of The New Testaments. This lack of a
physical representation of weight can be seen as a spiritual outlet for some of the mental and
emotional weight of what Kiowa faces thus his burden is not as heavy as the others. As the
leader, Cross’s ruck sack would be heavier than that of some of the other men because he would
have to carry things needed to keep them on the right path. This is proportional to the emotional
weight he feels as he is responsible for the lives of the men he is leading. The same can be said

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of the medic in that his burden would be heavier with supplies and that of holding a man’s life in
their hands if a soldier is hurt.
Everything Cross specifically carries and, the way he responds based on that item
represents the mindset of the man. Lieutenant Cross carries around two pictures of Martha, a
young woman from back home, and letters from her. Though she signs them with love he states,
“’Love’ was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant” (2).
Cross is unable to be accept that Martha would have any feelings of true affection for him
because the emotional toll of the war is already too heavy to bare. He is unable to shoulder the
weight of her affections fully while he is in such a desolate environment where anything lovely is
easily destroyed. While he cannot shoulder the weight, he still clings to the idea of some sort of
future with her after the war. His fantasies of a future with her and her letters, being that they are
so important to him, is Cross’s only escape from the horrors of war. This can be seen in his
obsessiveness over her possible virtue, it is something trivial or inconsequential that distracts him
from everything he is experiencing. He cannot obsess over the war, it would break him mentally,
so he obsesses over her. After Lavender’s death, Cross lets these fantasies wither and crumble
with the burning of Martha’s letters and pictures because he feels they made him negligent thus
resulting in Lavender being killed in action. His abrupt change of attitude symbolizes an abrupt
change in his mental state. He solely shoulder the guilt of Lavender’s death and the only way to
make sure that he is not negligent again, he must get rid of his only outlet he has from the war.
The war greatly affected the young men mentally and emotionally. O’Brien uses the
physical weight of items and the way Cross responds to his personal items, the letters and
pictures, to symbolize what he could not otherwise express effectively. A statement about the
weight of war on these young men would have fallen short. The effect of the story would not be

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what it is had he not had a physical representation for the mental and emotional weights that they
were forced to shoulder during, and even after, the end of the war.