The Things They Carried blog 1

"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight."(pg21)
The book describes what they carried in a very poetic form. From guns to pictures of their love back in America. However, this passage describes intangible carry-ons, such as fear, and love. In reality these would weigh the most over any object you had to carry, because we are controlled by our emotions, no matter how we hide it, its always in our minds, repeating the same thoughts of death going over and over in your mind wondering if your gonna get shot. Fear plays a big role in Vietnam, it secretly controls all the soldiers.