The Abundance of the Things They Carried

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The Abundance Of The Things They Carried Rough Draft “That smile could end wars and cure cancer.” The symbolic connection between The Things They Carried and The Abundance Of Katherines truly shows we’re all connected by the longing of love. In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien’s characters are oppressed with the strong emotional burden of long distance love. This brings a new light to the classic war book and the emotion conveyed tells a story stronger then the words the O’Brien writes. As a result the characters are brought to life and are morphed into more then just soldiers. The reader feels the longing and the burdens of love the soldiers are conflicted with. Love is something we all strive to obtain and keep. The men the The Things They Carried felt a burden because of this. Even going as far as saying, “More than anything, he wanted Martha to love him as he loved her.” And O’Brian even described the relationship between Martha and Jimmy Cross “separate but together”. In The Abundance Of Katherines, Green says “You can love someone so much, he thought. But you can never love them as much as you can miss them.” As humans we call feel this longing for someone love and connect with. The platoon in The Things They Carried and Colin in The Abundance Of Katherines are proof that a part of this longing belongs to all of us and it’s a mutual story we all share. They say love isn’t just for lovers, but also for friends. In The Things They Carried a The Abundance Of Katherines this is proven to be true. The main characters in both stories have unbreakable bonds with a friend who they can’t ever repay. Green says “I might be gay if I had a better looking best friend.” This describes the boyish relationship between to friends that can’t be unbroken. O’Brian goes into detail on this topic by saying “Dave Jenison and Lee Strunk didn’t become

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