Katie on The Things They Carried

I have to start this with the confession that I (really) have never read a war story or seen a war movie before I read this story. (Seemed to me that everyday life could be bleak enough without adding blood and guts- shallow, I admit it) So, given that, I opened up the book and saw that this was a story about Vietnam. Uggg, I thought. I'm a good doobie, though, I started to read it because I was told to do so and then I realized that I didn't want to stop reading. O'Brien took me right out of my living room and put me somewhere above Jimmy Cross' platoon to watch the action. To me, that is the true sign of a talented writer, when all time and place are forgotten in the passion of reading the words on the page. Anyway, I read my first war story. I'm not going to say that I was shocked by the backbone as I expected the blood and guts, maybe not a severed thumb as a gifted charm, but I had no idea, really, what a soldier's day would look like. For instance, the weight that they carried despite the heat, the way they had no place to call base and were forced to carry all of their living arrangements on their backs along with the various weapons, the way they just wandered around in constant fear. I finished the story wondering to myself how situations like that were (are) even real. Who could live for a day like that, much less months at a time? Certainly, I would be the one who shot my eye ball out and wouldn't care a rat's bum what anyone thought of me because it seems so unnatural to me that one would choose to withstand the intense pressure and pain that O'Brien described. I wasn't so much drawn to the plot of the story as I was overwhelmed with the emotional background. I mentioned in class that I had gone so far as to call the Martha issue a subplot, which I now realize really was the main plot (but my mind still put it in sheep's clothing...). It's funny how differently two people can read the same piece and almost read two different stories. But yes, Jimmy Cross is much more an important figure than I first read him to be (because I reread the story after I presented my point of view to the class and amazingly, got a lot more out of it than the first 2 times I read it!). And, I absolutely loved the inferrence, Prof, to the initials J.C. I so wish that my brain was smart enough to come up with things like that on my own. I'm disappointed in myself for missing the mark on the plot thing, but I'm really glad to have read this story. I ordered a novel by O'Brien because I enjoyed this so much.