Explain the significance of the title as it relates to the men in the novel.In other words, what specific physical and emotional burdens do each of...

In The Things They Carried, Tim
O'Brien uses the cataloguing of things to show the dualities between the physical and
the emotional, the concrete and the abstract, peacetime and wartime, and the lightness
and heaviness of things.

In general, the men carry
according to their size, rank, and role.  In terms of organization, the description of
items moves from light to heavy things.  O'Brien includes the physical weight of things
to juxtapose those abstract things that cannot be weighed, namely
fear.

All the men carry fear: the waiting is the
worst.

All the men carry ghosts.  Ted Lavender is
introduced as a ghost, and Cross carries his dead body literally (after he is shot) and
figuratively (guilt).

All the men carry love.  Cross
carries Martha's picture and letters.  He says he burns them.  Later, he says he kept
them.  Does it matter?  Like his love for her, which may or may not be real, the things
these men carry burden them down by sheer volume, even if they don't really
exist.