Overall, I found The Things They Carried to be a mighty pleasurable book. I especially enjoyed the poetic ending of tying in the author's storytelling to a girl he loved. A nine-year-old girl whose bones he wanted to jump. Either way, they were in love, so it's okay. That's got to be pleasant for the wife.
I also really enjoyed the smooth, lucid writing which seemed to keep things flowing at a nice pace. If you'd like to read the antithesis, I suggest TSAR.
In both books, however, I feel they both had a motif about religion. In TTTC, religion was present in Kiowa, described as a hardcore, devout Baptist, in the lack of religion in some of the soldiers, the monks that took care of the platoon, and the perceived heathenism of the Vietcong and the wild Vietnamese countryside. I also feel that storytelling took on the role of religion for O'Brien. This book was a way for him to reflect on his life views, and because he says (or rather his daughter says) he's always writing war stories, he is continually reflecting on his life, life in general, and what to do about it. He just needs a storytelling afterlife and he'd be set!
Also the very setup of TTTC conveys the meaning of the lit. term unity perfectly. The series of reflective and anecdotal stories could stand alone, but they are meant to be parts of a whole to convey the truth in storytelling, that is, not the historical facts, but the truth in feeling the Vietnam war in your gut.
Christian out.
I was also worried about the wife's reaction =\. The unity idea hadn't occurred to me, though. That's one o' those sneaky lit terms I forget a lot.
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