The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien"The Things They Carried" lists the variety of things his fellow soldiers in Alpha Company carried on their missions. Many of these things cannot be seen, including guilt and fear, while others are specific physical objects, including matches, morphine, M-16 rifles, and M&M candy. Throughout the collection, the same characters reappear in various stories. The first member of Alpha Company to die is Ted Lavender, a "grunt," or low-ranking soldier, who deals with his anxiety about war by taking tranquilizers and smoking marijuana. Lavender is shot in the head while returning from the bathroom, and her superior, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, blames himself for the tragedy. When Lavender is shot, Cross distracts himself by thinking about Martha, a college crush. In "Love" it is revealed that Cross's feelings for Martha, whom he dated once before leaving for Vietnam, were never reciprocated, and that even twenty years after the war, his guilt over the death of Lavender stays. the narrator, O'Brien, first explains the series of events that brought him to Vietnam. He received his draft in June 1968, and his feelings of confusion pushed him north, towards the Canadian border, which he planned to cross so as not to be forced to fight in a war he didn't believe in. Sitting in a rowboat with the owner of the Tip Top Lodge, where he is staying, O'Brien decides that his guilt over avoiding war and his fear of disappointing his family are more important than his political beliefs. He soon leaves, returning first home to Worthington, Minnesota and then to Vietnam. Over at Ted Lavender, a… medium… argues that stories have the power to save people. In the Curt Lemon and Kiowa stories, O'Brien explains that his imagination allowed him to successfully deal with the guilt and confusion over the death of his first fourth-grade love, Linda. I like this book because Tim O'Brien explains everything that is happening at that moment very well, and you are never confused about what is happening at any point in the book. The details about the killings, wounds and wounds are very gruesome but interesting. This book helped me try to imagine some of the fears the soldiers felt in those moments. A few times in the book it's almost as if Tim O'Brien is going back and forth between two different stories. This makes his writing style seem very significant and unique when compared to the style of other writers..