blog 3

This story was a sad war time experience about a group of soldiers deep in the heart of Vietnam. The story starts off speaking of all the different things that the individual men carried with them. Most of the accessories are due to protection and survival,but it also seems like everyone carries something personal to keep them motivated, and a reason to live. The soldiers all carried weapons according to their style, some carried big guns, and others carried grenades, while others carried machetes.
The story was sad in the aspect that they all operated like machines and without a heart. But their personal items symbolized a human part of them. It showed that they were all hurting and struggling and needed something substantial to keep them going. My brother is in the army and can testify to this. He always tells us how the military is constantly reminding them that they are property of the arms and they have nothing. So in the story these men's personal items are all they have to remind thy who they were as a person.
I believe in the story the men had to keep in a mental state were they were not vulnerable. They all feel emotion, but they had learned to deny it. Only when they pulled out their personal item did they allow themselves to get lost in the person or people they loved. They often found themselves lost in the one they loved and lost focus of the war. The story represents that in war there is nothing concrete, nothing to ensure tomorrow. And everyone needed something to hold on to, something to promise and convince them that there were going to be out of there alive, even thought they rarely escaped the battlefield.