The Need for "Things"

Often, in this world we live in, we place a very high value on possessions–what name brand it is, how new it is, how many you have. We constantly live our life worrying about what the newest thing out there is and how we can get it. In reality we all seem to want what we can’t have. When we do get what we want it only pleases us for a little while until we find a new possession to set our sights on. Why do we as a society care so much about belongings?

In The Things They Carried I think that it was a very conscious choice by the author to spend the first fifteen pages of the novel describing in details all the physical possessions each man in the company carried.  O’Brien went into detail about how many ounces each thing weighed, how the burden was distributed, and what each belonging was used for. Then, all of a sudden, without the reader really even knowing it, he started describing the emotional burden each man carried: the intangibles.

“They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing – these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight… and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and posture (O’Brien 20)

The way the author transitioned made it impossible for the reader not to feel the literal weight of the intangibles. I think that as people we place too much emphasis on the tangible possessions we surround ourselves with. We are constantly obtaining more and more “things” to serve us in our various needs. O’Brien shows us, however, that when what you are carrying counts the most (in war) it isn’t the tangible things that seems to weigh the most, but instead, the intangible.