Wars tend to be the subject of historical documentation, and soldiers are considered emotionless machines who simply obey orders in war. Nobody cares about the individual soldier who actually fights in a war. "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien is about a soldier trying to communicate with civilians and tell them what he went through before and during the war. Sometimes the uninteresting items carried by the soldiers are told and other times there is an in-depth look at the soldiers' thoughts and feelings as they progress through the war. The story is not about the physical things soldiers carried with them, but rather about remembering the emotions they carried with them, so that the world would know who they were, what they did, and why they were fighting. O'Brien's writing style in this story blurs the picture between fact and fiction and brings the reader closer to the emotional core of the men's experiences. With the unique use of symbolism, setting, and imagery to explain the physical and mental conditions of soldiers at war, he manages to make us think the thoughts he wants us to think and change our minds about some things we once thought were true. . Overall it is a very well written piece and gives us a closer look into the real lives of soldiers. The symbols used in the story are essential to understanding the soldiers and their lives during the Vietnam War. The emotional weight each of them carries represents the trauma they are going through during the war. The personal items carried by soldiers exemplify their personality and tell us a story that shows the soldier's past. To cope with war conditions O'Brien represents how symbolically they u...... middle of paper ......taken away from the terrors of war by a helicopter that "roars and dips its nose" ( O' Brien par 17) finally bringing them to safety. The narrator also says "It was more than a plane, it was a real bird" (O' Brien par 11) to explain how the soldiers saw the jumbo jets as birds of freedom and wanted to ride them out of the war.O' The use of symbols, settings and images by Brien exemplifies the individual and ethical issues that every soldier faces on the war field. It successfully conveyed to us the true feelings of soldiers in some of the darkest hours of their lives and made us understand that the heaviest burden for a soldier to carry is dignity. Overall with his unique writing style O'Brien explains to us that wars cause nothing but bloodshed. Victory may be declared but in reality no one wins in war. It is only deaths and suffering that win in war.