Duality:
The Struggle of "weight" in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines the word "weight" as "a mass or quantity of something taken up and carried, conveyed, or transported." Tim O'Brien's war story The Things They Carried, published in 1990, explores the theme of weight and its importance to men at war in considerable depth. The opening chapter of this book, which was originally written as a short story, is comprised of a collection of lists. O'Brien details for his reader both the physical objects, such as cigarettes, C rations, and packets of Kool-Aid, and the more intangible things, such as fear and silent awe, that weigh these soldiers down. With the amount of space that the author gives to enumerating the weight of these objects, one might assume that these objects are what are really important to these soldiers, but in reality it is the incalculable weight of their spiritual burdens that truly weigh them down.
For the......

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Title: The Struggle Of "Weight" In Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried
Approximate Word Count: 1309
Approximate Pages: 6 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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