Book Review In The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien tells the story not of war, but rather of the effect of war on one's mindset. Ultimately, this novel is built on the foundation of the objects carried by soldiers from the Vietnam War. Whether it's how Jimmy Cross uses the pebble to escape his duties as a soldier or when Norman Bowker realizes that courage comes from within, not from receiving a Silver Star; O'Brien uses baggage as a symbol throughout the book to teach that war does, in fact, change people. These goods were not just materialistic, they constituted the attributes of the soldiers, they constituted the personality of the soldiers, and they constituted the soldier. At the beginning of the story we are introduced to Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. Cross is in love with a girl named Martha and carries with him letters and photos that she sent him. He also carries with him a lucky pebble he received from Martha and daydreams about her during their long marches. One day the lieutenant and his men are marching through Than Kale, Cross' daydreams distracting him as usual, when Ted Lavender is shot in the head and killed. The men “brought” Lavender to a helicopter. The emotional baggage they all carried was the thing they most wanted to let go of. Jimmy Cross took responsibility for his men and blamed himself for Ted Lavender's death. O'Brien is the most complex character in the novel, especially because there are three different stages of development. O'Brien the writer/narrator, “O'Brien” the soldier, and Timmy O'Brien the boy all possess different thoughts and emotional understandings, each of which is in tension with the others. Part of O'Brien's goal as a writer/narrator is to emphasize these tensions. For example, each of these characters deals with the concept of death differently. Timmy learned at a young age to accept death; soldier “O'Brien” tries to recover that lesson to face death in war; The writer O'Brien connects these two approaches, highlighting the importance of memory to his ultimate understanding of death. This kind of connection and understanding of death and loss comes from the conflict he feels as he tries to reconcile these different phases of his life. The conflict between the three different “O'Briens” manifests itself as pain and guilt, two qualities that paradoxically motivate him.