What Does Not Kill You Makes You Stronger

Vietnam, a war that ended in 1975 was a war about the prolonged struggles between the nationalists forces that were trying to attempt the unification of Vietnam as a country under a government of communism and the United States attempting to delay or stop the spread of communism. To the Americans, this war seemed pointless and the Americans saw that there was no way of winning so the government lost the support for this uncalled war. In "The Things They Carried," Tim O'Brien wrote a novella about different situations that happened to him and to the other soldiers in his platoon during this un-popular. It recalls what individual soldiers carried with them. To a point, all of the soldiers carried the same items. There were the necessities that were required. Most were pointless, or at least seemed pointless, but were standard issued to carry. Each soldier carried pocketknives, heat tabs, dog tags, sewing kits, C rations, canteens, and much more.... Most of those items were needed in some way while they were out on the battlefield. “What they carried was partly a function of rank, partly of field specialty” (O’Brien 5). What they carried also varied by the missions they were sent on. Whether their journey took them through the mountains or in the most hazardous places they carried what they absolutely needed. They would carry USO stationary with pencils and pens to chewing tobacco to spools of wire. What ever the others could no longer carry them selves; the other soldiers would carry. They would carry infections, they carried the land, they carried the sky and most importantly they would carry their own lives. Emotional aspects weighed down on them, knowing that in a second, they could be dead. They would carry shameful memories and their reputations. As soldiers, they would carry everything they could, no matter what is was; they carried it everywhere they went while on that battlefield in Vietnam. From the points of the main characters the book was dedicated to...