[2] Many of the characters are semi-autobiographical, sharing similarities with figures from his memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home.

[3] As part of this effect, O'Brien dedicates The Things They Carried to the fictional men of the "Alpha Company," giving it “the form of a war memoir,” states O’Brien.

[4] Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, the leader of a platoon of soldiers in Vietnam, carries physical reminders of Martha, the object of his unrequited love.

A death in the squad under his supervision causes Cross to reconsider his priorities; as he was heartbroken, he burns and throws away all reminders of Martha in order to focus on the mission and avoid distractions.

It includes moments of camaraderie and beauty: a joke of a hate letter to the Draft Board; learning a rain dance between battles.

He is reluctant to go to war and considers fleeing the draft; he begins to travel north to the Canada–US border on the Rainy River.

[5]: 82 O'Brien recounts the legendary (and almost certainly exaggerated) tale of Rat Kiley's first assignment, near the Song Tra Bong river.

At first, she cooks, cleans, and tends to the soldiers' wounds, but she gradually assimilates into Vietnamese guerrilla culture, even wearing a necklace made of human tongues, and disappears into the jungle.

[5]: 111 The platoon discovers an abandoned building being used as a sort of church, inhabited by monks who bring them food and supplies.

[5]: 125 The platoon witnesses a young Vietnamese girl dancing through the burned remains of her village, and argue over whether it's a ritual or simply what she likes to do.

[5]: 131 O'Brien says that Bowker asked him to write the previous story, and that he hanged himself three years later unable to regain his footing and find any meaning in life after the war.

He says that his story about killing a man on the trail outside My Khe was fabricated, but he wanted to provoke the same feelings in the reader that he felt during the war.

[5]: 171 After finishing the story, "In the Field," O'Brien says, he and his ten-year-old daughter visit the site of Kiowa's death with an interpreter.

[5]: 180 O'Brien tells the second-hand account of Rat Kiley's injury: warned of a possible attack, the platoon is on edge.

Literary Critic David Wyatt points out that O'Brien's novel is similar to the works of Wilfred Owen, Stephen Crane, George Orwell, and Ernest Hemingway.

When asked to describe how he blurs this line between the two genres, O’Brien says "I set out to write a book with the feel of utter and absolute reality, a work of fiction that would read like nonfiction and adhere to the conventions of a memoir: dedicating the book to the characters, using my name, drawing on my own life.

O’Brien talks about truth and reality in relation to the story by describing, "I can say that the book’s form is intimately connected to how I, as a human being, tend to view the world unfolding itself around me.

"[7] O'Brien's fluid and elliptical negotiation of truth in this context finds echoes in works labeled as 'non-fiction novels'.

[11] "Speaking of Courage" was originally published (in heavily modified form) as a chapter of O'Brien's earlier novel Going After Cacciato.

The Things They Carried has received critical acclaim and has been established as one of the preeminent pieces of Vietnam War literature.

[citation needed] A film adaptation of the book, directed by Rupert Sanders and starring Tom Hardy, is currently in pre-production.

The stories "The Things They Carried", "On the Rainy River", "How to Tell a True War Story", "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong", "The Man I Killed", and "Lives of the Dead" were adapted for the theatre in March 2011 by the Eastern Washington University Theatre Department as part of the universities' Get Lit!

Literary Festival in cooperation with the National Endowment for the Arts The Big Read 2011, of which The Things They Carried was the featured novel.

The same department remounted the production in December 2011 for inclusion as a Participating Entry in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

Its author describes it as "heavily inspired by the films Platoon and Full Metal Jacket and the novel The Things They Carried".