Questions:
Writing for Theme
The title is repeated many times throughout the story. How does the narrator classify the things they carried? Can you see meaning in the way he orders the categories? How do "the things they carried" serve to reveal theme?
Next, the narrator describes long periods of tedious activity and boredom shattered by flashes of terror and death. How does this narrative structure reveal the story's theme? In other words, what does O'Brien say about war and how it shapes or distorts the fundamental human condition (what it means to be human in the world)?