Exploration 6- My Connections to the The Things They Carried

1. The story which meant the most to me so far was  Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong. I am naturally a hopeless romantic, so any love story usually gets my emotions going, especially where someone gets their heart broken. This story is especially sad as it shows the transformation people can under-go and become someone else entirely. Mary Ane Belle goes from a sweet girl from Cleveland, straight out of high school, to a murdering, tongue necklace wearing green beret who disappears in the jungle never to be found again. It truly touched me and I felt the pain Mark Fossie went through as I read the story.


2.I connect the most with Rat Kiley as he is a very observant person, who understands people and is able to empathize with them especially well as evident by his story telling throughout the book.

3. One convention of narrative is the use of oxymoron, Tim O'brien says "I felt close to them, yes but I also felt a new sense of separation." He uses oxymorons all throughout his writing in this novel to portray the paradox war is and the fight it creates within people. Essentially an over arching idea for "The things they carried".

4. "I hated him for making me stop hating him." I've never seen this in writing before and it struck out to me deeply as I have felt this exact way with one of the people in my past who use to be my bestfriend. In nineteen years of my life, I felt like this for the first time and last time hopefully when i was sixteen. My bestfriend had betrayed me bigger than I could ever imagine and then he simply dissapeared. For years I hung onto the anger and wanted to just simply hurt him. And then randomly, two years later, I receive a barrage of text messages from him explaining how it has haunted him and he constantly feels the guilt and something in me changed. I didn't feel angry any more at him, i simply felt pity for him. But I was angry, a sort of raw pure hatred at myself for being able to forgive him and maybe a sense of embarrassment for feeling how i did in the beginning.