Before he had picked up a gun and shot at another human being, he was at war with himself.
Everything he knew as a young man was scrambled in with the chaos of Vietnam.
With every death, the weight increased.
“The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.”
**Introduces to the unimaginable world of war. He describes dozens of objects that the men carry. TO CREATE THE SENSE OF REALITY.
Quintessential war memorial.
***If we believe what he says about the character is true, then his viewpoint is true too! He wants you to see the past the way he saw it. Diabolical
(Preference between reality and fantasy is given to whichever one makes one feel more alive.)
“The things men carry inside.” Their imaginations!
“You’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead.”
“Even at nine years old, I wanted to live inside her body. I wanted to melt into her bones –that kind of love.”
“She died, of course…But in a story I can steal her soul.” (The lives of the dead) – O’Brien’s elementary school sweetheart helps him impose some order and sense onto his own life. To us, Linda is alive, which shows the extent of O’Brien going to making fantasy into reality. (that he made a dead person alive to tell his story.)
Tim knows that stories can bring dead people back to life. Even the soldiers do this, and even Tim has been doing this since he was a child, when the first girl he ever loved died of a brain tumor.

Hardships and sentiments of soldiers.
Love, shown through intimacy, separation, fantasy, and reality, are presented in a very...BLAH.
Lt. Cross carries a small and light load of gear and weapon. Despite this, he carried one of the heaviest things of all, which is the