Reading Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried made me think about the material things in my life and which ones are really important. I realized that if I were a soldier in Lieutenant Cross’s unit I would carry my Thing One and Thing Two photo album that my mother bought my sister and me on our trip to Universal Studios.
My sister and I have become extremely close since moving to Colorado five years ago. So in order to commemorate our bond, when I turned 18, my sister and I both got matching tattoos of thing one and thing two and since then we’ve been inseparable. If I carried the thing one and thing two photo album filled with pictures of us throughout the years no matter how bad things were I would be reminded of the simple things that used to make us laugh before the war. I would be reminded of the friends and family I have back home.
By carrying personal effects during the war, the soldiers in The Things They Carried were able to hold on to who they were before the war. They could keep in touch with who they really are and prevent what they experience in battle from affecting their relationships in the real world.
Since reading The Things They Carried I have realized that material things are just physical representations of our emotional baggage that in the real world we may not want to hold on to. However in times of war and turmoil, these manifestations of emotional baggage can give soldiers a connection to the world they left behind and therefore, something to go back to or something to keep them from changing during the war.
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