“The Things They Carried” was originally published in the August 1986 issue of Esquire. It was collected in The Things They Carried (1990). It is currently most readily available in The Things They Carried (Mariner Books).

I want to begin with a quotation from Plato's Republic—a quotation that Tim O'Brien uses in his book If I Die in a Combat Zone:

”… a power that through everything else will preserve the opinion about which things are terrible.” Tim O'Brien over the years, writing about our terrible century, has preserved that opinion. He has known which things are terrible and has borne witness, soberly, eloquently, courageously, to that knowledge.

It may be that for Americans, particularly for Americans of O'Brien's generation, no matter that earlier and later there were more terrible things going on in the world, for those Americans, because they took part in it, the most terrible of all things is the Vietnam War. We have shrunk away, have closed our eyes, have cowered before the terrible knowledge of the Vietnam War. Of how we became embroiled in it. Of what we did there. Of how many lives were wasted there: our brothers, our friends, our sons and daughters. Of all the “enemies” we “wasted” there. Of our confusion and bewilderment, of our disgraceful, self-deceiving disengagement. Of what responsibility every single one of us bears. Every single one of us.