The Things We Carry

Every year in Modern Literature, we read Tim O'Brien's 1990 Vietnam War novel, The Things They Carried. It begins with a story in which O'Brien lists the burdens, physical and emotional, carried by the infantrymen of Alpha Company. Every year, I ask my students to make lists of the things they are carrying - the tangible and the intangible. I copy all the lists and give them to the class and assign them to write their own essay about our class called, The Things We Carry. Here are some of the things they carried.

"We all carry notebooks full of things said when teachers were speaking at us. Pages waiting to be ripped out and thrown away as soon as we hear the final bell. We carry books that will be rotated out in a week, a month, sooner."

"The girls mostly carry items to cover and hide their flaws. They carry makeup, lip-gloss, deodorant, extra clothes. They carry society's pressure to look good. They carry the specific image of supermodels in magazines, and wish silently they were like that."

"The mental things we guys carry: If only you knew. We have wanted to be cared for. Our thoughts of not being like our Dads create fear: Will we still have his respect? Can I beat someone up, knowing that I'm more gentle deep down than could be imagined?"

"We carry keys, we hold others hostage in our vehicles, we carry the safety of those passengers and ourselves. We carry painkillers. We carry pain in our bodies, and we carry our pasts and regrets. I carry the things that I shouldn't have done to others. I carry the humiliation of being looked down upon."

"We carry the stress of the future, of who we are supposed to be and what we are supposed to do. We carry the stress of never finishing everything that we need to."

"Art is in the things we carry, whether it be music, CD players, books of poetry, novels, or songs. But art is not limited to the standard art forms: I can picture some of these kids loving with all their hearts and souls their cars, their cell phones. There is an art in driving a car; there is an art in having a conversation."

"We carry our dreams and hopes: to be redeemed, to find love, to experience love, to have love and to be able to say it and know what it means."

"We carry our genes, handed down from our families. Some are lucky, some aren't. For some the genes they have are quite the load, a force not to be reconciled."

"The things we carry are different in many ways, and the same in many others. We carry height, weight, happiness, trouble, sadness, humor, and fun. We carry anything from planners to condoms and everything in between. It's a bittersweet fact that we carry high school, and we carry life."