THE THINGS THEY CARRIED (1990)

What is the story saying about the theme of war? 

I didn't realize until I was about halfway done with the story that I had read The Things they Carried before. At once I remembered how it ended and how it filled me with slight melancholy, but at the same time a sense of joy was present because of Lieutenant Cross' own personal achievement.

Lieutenant Cross is a fine example of a round character. We come to explore this character's true feelings and intentions in greater depth than the others while a fundamental attitude change also occurs by the end of the story. We see here, "... yet he could not bring himself to worry about matters of security. He was beyond that. He was just a kid at war, in love. He was twenty-four years old. He couldn't help it" (347). The first thing we need to understand about Lt. Cross is that he is still but a young man in a foreign land blinded and handicapped by his naive love for a girl named Martha back in New Jersey. "He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead..." (350) Lieutenant Cross realizes that his incapacity at focusing on his responsibility as platoon leader is putting his soldiers' lives at risk. Cross had not made the ultimate commitment to his men and it all stemmed from his futile love and longing for Martha. 

To me, the transformation into maturity occurs when Lt. Cross burns Martha's letters and decides to be a better leader. "He understood. It was very sad, he thought. The things carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do" (354). Lt. Cross comes to grow and become a man, in a sense. This is the strongest theme I gathered from this story. Lt. Cross was carrying unnecessary baggage in the form of an emotional handicap. In order to continue the war and lead his troops, he had to lighten his load of the things he was carrying by tossing those emotions he had towards Martha on the road and leave it behind. In a war, mostly all of the soldiers arrive young and foolish (foolish to fall in love) and in the course of the war suffer the loss of innocence. A realization that they have to leave all their small insignificant issues back home; forget about all their childish desires and let go of those troublesome burdens that are weighing them down  because they are in unfamiliar territory where not only their lives are at risk, but also the lives of their comrades.