It is the falsehoods which represents the realities

I loved the nature of how the title of the book, The Things They Carried, so directly played into the body of the story, both literally in the echoing of the phrase throughout the novel but also on a deeper level in the layered meaning behind the words. The way in which O'Brien begins the book with the physical manifestation of what was actually carried by the soldiers, and then gradually transitions deeper into the psyche of his characters into what they have internalized and the mental burdens or rewards they carry with them is extremely powerful, as well as reflecting a prominent facet of human nature in its privacy. While I too (according to my readings of the blogs that have already been posted) was at first surprised by the ending of the story with the recount of his love for the late Linda, after thinking back it no longer strikes me as surprising at all but instead mirrors the overall emotional structure of the piece. In a way, the concluding story about his love for Linda and attempt to revive her and keep her memory alive through his dreams is as internal and intimate as a story can be. In a way, it justifies the entire work; just as the stories of soldiers dying in the war are created by O’Brien, the dreams too do not reflect reality and yet there lies a truth in both of them in their means of allowing O’Brien, and maybe the reader as well, to deal with some sort of otherwise inaccessible emotion.