The things They Carried

The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, is a novel in which you become the characters inside the stories. You feel the pain of the war; you share in the sorrow, and the tragedy of the war and the events that transpire. You feel the pain that First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross must have felt in his love for Martha; the gut-wrenching sorrow that Norman Bowker must have felt in his guilt over the loss …

…who lost his girlfriend, the one he loved, because she couldn’t wait for him to come home. You don’t see men watching their closest friends die in their arms. You don’t see a mother sitting in her living room and opening a letter from the government telling her what an honorable death that her son experienced. Tim O’Brien shows you that aspect of war in this book, and it is sad.