O'Brien's intention is to accurately depict the psychological phenomena of soldiers in modern warfare; how young boys from the cities, towns, and countryside of America can be wrenched from their ordinary social conditions and dropped in a setting where nothing makes sense-not even their own actions. From this point of view, even the depiction of events must be presented in a symbolic manner; the mere recapitulation of actions, times, and events cannot accurately capture the truth of horror and accountability. The Things They Carried illustrates, often, the most mentally damaging effects of war are caused by being unable to see the reasoning behind death, particularly when death seen as an extension of a remotely operating organizational body-military policy.

             O'Brien is haunted both by the man he killed and the men around him who died. The guilt he feels for killing the man with a grenade is unavoidably centered upon his disagreement with the principles of the war. The ordering of his novel imitates the symptoms of an individual suffering from PTSD. Had he not been drafted, suited-up, shipped-off, trained, and ordered to kill would this man have died. On a conceptual level, it was the organization that killed the man, not O'Brien. However, this mere mind-play cannot separate O'Brien from the fact that he physically, or symbolically, pulled the pin and threw. Since O'Brien disagreed with the war makes his killing that much more painful, that much more arbitrary, and that much more significant. He was the individual faced with the moral choice and for the rest of his life, although he was compelled to act, the shadow of choice will forever follow him.

             This symbolic story, however, takes on additional meaning when O'Brien grapples with how he should package it when relaying it to his impressionable young daughter, Kathleen. Kathleen represents another significant symbol to O'Brien's story: she is the stepping stone between the story-teller, O'Brien, and the audience.