The Love Of My Life" & "The Things They Carried

654 Words3 Pages
Literature is composed of many elements, irony, character, symbolism, plot, theme and style, just to name a few. Some stories show all of them, and others show only a few. Tim O’Brien and T. Coraghessan Boyle, the authors of “The Things The Carried” and “The Love of My Life,” show a few such as setting, characters, symbolism, and theme in their stories about lost love. The settings, or place and time, in “The Love of My Life” and “The Things They Carried” are quite different, in that they take place in completely different time periods and completely different areas. “The Love of My Life” takes place over the course of a year, it deals with the characters parting their own ways. Its setting is spread from their hometown, their colleges, and a hotel room. While in, “The Things They Carried,” the setting is in Vietnam during war and takes place over a period of war time. Both Short stories have a form of symbolism, or object that represents more than just an object. In “The Love of My Life,” the baby symbolizes their love and life. The whole time she’s pregnant Jeremy says “You‘ve got to get rid of it.” (384) China doesn’t want anyone to know so she never sees a doctor, or gets any help. And when she has her baby, all she says is “Get rid of it, just get rid of it”(387) They don’t realize it at the time, but when they ‘throw the baby away’ they are throwing their lives away. They think they are doing the right thing at the time, but when everything catches up with them its too late. They don’t have each other, they don’t have love, and they don’t have their lives they were trying to keep. In “The Things They Carried,” Jimmy Cross carries letters, that symbolize trouble, and a pebble from Martha that mean nothing but fantasies to him. He loves the thoughts about her and enjoys reading the letters, but they are just distractions to him. When his friend gets

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