So I have text in here and I am writing away and then
how much space
So I have text in here and I am writing away and then
how much space
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So I have text in here and I am writing away and then
how much space
So I have text in here and I am writing away and then
how much space
Armando Toral
English 1302
Dr. Irvin
18 April 2013
The Importance of Imagery to Convey Themes in “The Things They Carried”
How does the use of imagery in The Things They Carried help to convey the various themes
through out the story? Imagery is one of the most important tools an author has at their disposal. If used
well, it can create worlds the reader was never aware of. The imagery used in The Things They Carried by
the author Tim O’Brien displays a great amount of detail. This detail is essential for the reader to
understand the themes that O’Brien displays through the telling of his story. Tim O’Brien uses an
extraordinarily detailed amount of imagery in his story The Things They Carried so the reader is able to
experience the themes prevalent in the writing.
First, the use of imagery is important to the story because without it the reader does not experience
one of the most important themes in The Things They Carried—the theme of heaviness. Tim O’Brien
makes the heaviness of war that the soldiers in company A experienced a very prevalent theme in his
story. According to an essay by Rena Korb, a writer who has written for educational publishers,
O'Brien's deliberate prose, here sounding like parts of it could have been lifted from a
military report, emphasizes the physical load of the soldier—“P-38 can openers, pocket
knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy,
cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid, lighters, matches, sewing kits, Military
Payment Certificates, C rations, and two or three canteens of water” (Korb par 5).
Korb effectively summarizes O’Brien’s style of writing as military-like, straight to the point. She also
brings forward the physical aspect of O’Brien’s most prevalent theme—that of heaviness. The physical
objects that O’Brien describes as what the soldiers need to carry is evident when he begins to list the
objects and how much they weigh. Staring with the very first paragraph of the story, where the narrator
describes Martha’s letters as weighing ten ounces, and later going on to describe each and every object the
characters carried through the development of the story: “On their feet they carried jungle boots—21
pounds” and “because the land was mined and booby trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steelcentered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much
heavier” (O’Brien par 2). The imagery used to describe the objects and their exact weight helps the reader
feel the heaviness of the objects and relate to the soldiers in that aspect. O’Brien also divides the theme of
heaviness into emotional heaviness. This is never more evident than at the beginning of the story, where
the narrator defines the act of humping—“To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Cross
humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, to hump meant
to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive” (O’Brien par 4).The narrator
gives an element of foreshadow to the reader, adding that Cross’s love for Martha will bear burdens of
another kind besides having to carry her letters. Also according to Dr. Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton,
professor of American Literature, during O’Brien’s description of what Ted Lavender was carrying when
he died,
Readers apprehend the weight of fear because its intangibility contrasts with the specified
and quantified weights of his other burdens, Cross has the heaviness of the responsibility
of his men as well as the death of Ted Lavender on his shoulders (Piedmont-Marton par 3).
The heaviness of the emotional weight is made evident to the reader because no exact measurement of it
is given. Towards the end of the story, Cross is burning the letters from Martha and O’Brien writes:
“Lavender was dead. You couldn’t burry the blame” and how Lieutenant Cross would “accept the blame
for what had happened to Ted Lavender” (O’Brien par 86-99). The weight of the blame from Lavender’s
death stays with Cross until the end of the story.
Second, the detailed use of imagery is important to the story because it helps the reader understand
the theme of death. Death is always a possibility for each character in the story and they live with it.
Tobey Herzog, Professor of English, writes in his critical essay: A Soldier’s Heart and Mind: Going after
Cacciato and The Things They Carried,
As the fictional Tim O'Brien presents the confessional thread of this autobiography,
revealing his heart and mind, readers begin to understand that author O'Brien and narrator
Tim O'Brien are also preoccupied with analogous issues--courage, embarrassment,
cowardice, fear, death, revenge, guilt, and healing (Herzog par 31).
Here, Herzog explains that death; as well as many other “analogous issues” are an important part of the
story that the reader needs to be concerned with. The theme of death is present at various points
throughout the story. Ted Lavender’s death is arguably the most important one in the story since the
accounts of how it happened are told, but mostly because it perturbs Cross the most and makes him decide
to stop being distracted by thoughts of Martha, eventually leading to the decision to forgo any thoughts of
his life in the United States and concentrate of being a better leader. Apart from Lavender’s death there is
the young Vietcong soldier that one of the soldiers in company A removes the thumb as a good luck
charm:
The thumb was dark and brown, rubbery to the touch, and weighed [four] ounces at most.
It had been cut from a [Vietcong] corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen. They’d found him at
the bottom of an irrigation ditch, badly burned, flies in his mouth and eyes. The boy had
been carrying pouch of rice, a rifle, and three magazines of ammunition (O’Brien par 26).
The imagery used to describe the young boy’s dead body is important to the story to display the
gruesomeness of war. There are many more minor instances where death is mentioned such as when the
narrator describes how the men carried themselves: “There were numerous such poses. Some carried
themselves with a sort of wistful resignation, others with pride or stiff soldierly discipline or good humor
or macho zeal. They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it” (O’Brien par 66).
Here the narrator explains to the reader what the soldiers were feeling throughout their tour in Vietnam.
Finally, the imagery of the story is important so the reader feels the theme of loneliness in the
story. Loneliness is another prevalent theme in The Things They Carried. Loneliness can be characterized
by the description of Lieutenant Cross’ feelings about Martha before Lavender’s death: “He wanted to
know her. Intimate secrets: Why poetry? Why so sad? Why the grayness in he eyes? Why so alone? Not
lonely, just alone…and it was that aloneness that filled him with love” (O’Brien par 21). During
Lieutenant Cross’ daydreaming about Martha, a recurring sense of loneliness is evident from the
repetition of the word. Another instance where the theme of loneliness is evident is after Lieutenant Cross
burns Martha’s letters and he sees her image in the rain: “Briefly, in the rain, Lieutenant Cross saw
Martha’s grey eyes gazing back at him. He understood. It was very sad, he thought. The things men
carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do” (O’Brien par 95-97). During this scene, the
imagery of Martha is important to help the reader understand the loneliness of Lieutenant Cross.
With the use of extremely detailed imagery, Tim O’Brien helps paint a whole new world for the
reader. In this world the themes of heaviness, death and loneliness are present through the entirety of the
story and if it weren’t for O’Brien’s expert use of imagery, the reader would miss these important aspects
of The Things They Carried.
Works Cited
Herzog, Tobey. "A Soldier's Heart and Mind: Going after Cacciato and The Things
They Carried." Tim O'Brien. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1997. 78-124. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism.
Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 123. Detroit: Gale, 2009. Literature Resource Center. Web. 21 Apr.
2013.
Korb, Rena. "The Things They Carried." Short Stories for Students. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Literature
Resource Center. Web. 3 Apr. 2013.
O’Brien, Tim. "The Things They Carried”. An Introduction to Literature . 7th Ed. Pearson, Boston, 2011.
493-505.
Piedmont-Marton, Elisabeth. "The Things They Carried." Short Stories for Students. Detroit: Gale, 2002.
Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Apr. 2013.