The Thin Line Between Bravery and Cowardice in the Things They Carried

Edwin Hubbel Chapin was once quoted saying, "At the bottom of a good deal of the bravery that appears in the world there lurks a miserable cowardice. Men will face powder and steel because they cannot face public opinion." This belief is held true throughout Tim O'Brien's short story, "The Things They Carried." A story whose setting is placed within the action of the Vietnam War, O'Brien uses extensive imagery in order to describe each …

…his platoon. The effects of war changed the Lieutenant and in the long run will change each and every member of his troop, yet O'Brien gives us the feeling that this change will have no effect in the big picture, the war itself. The things they carry to keep them prepared and ready will not change this; change is inevitable and must be accepted in order to survive, as in the case of Jimmy Cross.