The Things They Carried, is not only the title of Tim O'Brien's novel, but it is also the title of its first chapter. In this chapter, O'Brien describes the characters of his novel and gives a detailed explanation of what exactly where they carrying with them throughout the war of Vietnam. By doing so, O'Brien introduces the reader to the different personalities of the characters (which may or may not represent real comrades from the Alfa Company) and their attitude towards war. Tim O'Brien describes every single detail about what his comrades from the Alpha Company where carrying even the things that where in their pockets, and more surprisingly, he even remembered what their weights where.

While reading this first chapter of The Things They Carried, I realized how the author was capable of memorizing all of these little details that no one else would pay attention to, but one day, twenty-years from that day, Tim O'Brien would start writing a novel about all these things with all of the long forgotten details as if it had happened yesterday.

Although my memory may not be as good as Tim's memory apparently is, I can make a connection with this chapter because I also have those long lost details of a long lost scenery in my early life that for some unknown reason I have managed to keep inside my mind.

This is very closley tied into what we were talking about in the seminar the past two days. I start to see that most soldiers are either pro war or anti war there seems to be no in between but they all agree they have to for their country. After only reading one chapter it seems to be an interesting read.