The Things They Carried: I Am Highly Original

I'm happy to say that I sort of like this Tim O'Brien fellow, so far. His writing style amuses me. For instance:

"The first was a Kodacolor snapshot signed Love, though he knew better." - p. 4

"...including M&Ms for especially bad wounds...." - p. 5

"...he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered." - p. 11

"...the plush comfort of night." - p. 18

There were more, but they get increasingly disturbing, for all their literary merit. I also want to say that if this book is entirely about unrequited love, [insert empty threat here]. And I dearly hope that future chapters have a smaller sentence/paragraph ratio and fewer of those conversations bereft of quotation marks, because that is terribly annoying to me. Anyway....

There were lots of euphemisms this chapter. "They would repair the leaks in their eyes," (p. 18) for instance, is (I think) a euphemism for crying, as a soldier's greatest fear, allegedly, is of blushing/being afraid. Heeeey, that's Harry Potter's greatest fear. ("That suggests that what you fear the most is fear itself--very wise, Harry." --Remus Lupin, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban)

Also, there were all the euphemisms for death. "Greased they'd say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping." - p. 19 They know they're doing it, too.

Usually, I think authors take a little more time to reveal the meaning of their title. They like to be subtle and slip it in when the audience isn't paying attention because it makes them feel smart. I think I like O'Brien more for slamming us with it right off the bat. Anyway, I think that's going to be a motif. It's used a ton in this chapter, at least.

The things they carried are: largely determined by necessity, "humped," partly a function of rank and partly of field specialty, varied by mission, determined to some extent by superstition, plentiful, and largely internal.

On a couple of last notes for the chapter, it was weird to hear McDonalds mentioned. The Vietnam War feels like it happened a long time ago, but it really wasn't so far off.

Also, " And they dreamed of freedom birds," (p. 21) made me think of a VlogBrothers video, as so many things do, in which John Green discusses the foolishness of the term "freedom fries."

Oh, and also, what's this moral business? "Stay away from drugs. No joke, they'll ruin your day every time." - p. 20

That's cool and all, but what's it got to do with this Lavender fellow? I realize he had dope, and the living guys are all smoking it now, but I don't actually think that's what ruined their day.