Symbol

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is clearly going to be a novel overflowing with words, lines, and phrases that are meant to evoke great emotion and touch the reader. Words strung together form sentences that create a poignant view of the Vietnam War. What has struck me the most at this point, however, is not the line "they carried the emotional baggage of men who might die" nor the phrase "the guy's dead" nor the word "fear". What my mind carried while I read the first chapter was from the very first page of the story; the letters from Martha. It touched me that a lieutenant pretended these letters were love letters. I never thought of myself to be a romantic, but I suppose I am one after all. It was heart wrenching for me to realize the unrequited love he had for her. Later, though, I began thinking about it. To me, the letters, photographs, and pebble were all symbols. Yes, obviously symbols of Martha the girl Jimmy Cross loved, but more importantly, symbols of his former life. These items were pieces of his world back home; one he would never be able to return to because his innocence was lost. Cross was "just a kid at war, in love. He was twenty-four years old." These things were pieces of Cross' naive world he could no longer belong to. The symbols created an understanding within me that ruins the romantic aspect of the trinkets.