Back and Forth

The Plot of the Things They Carried does not follow a timelined sequence of events. The author, instead jumps around from the time during the war to the time after the war, to the time before the war. In terms of time, there is no order of things. However, what I do beleive the author follows is a progression of what he wants to get across in this novel. He has an organized progression of ideas that are unparallel to a timed sequence of events. For example, the book begins by describing what the soldiers carried during the war. The next chapter, however, goes on to describe the meeting of two characters after the war and two chapter after that, the author talks about himself when he got drafted during the war. So while the the plot does have a series of related events, the author finds it unecessary to follow a specific timeling in order to get his point across.