Point of View

The Things They Carried is told from a third person point of view. The narrator describes the love life of Jimmy Cross and on page 15 says that "Jimmy Cross led his men into the village of Than Khe." While the narrator is able to describe all these things, he never uses the pronoun "I" or indicates that he has taken part in any of the action. He also seems to be an omniscient third party. On the first page of the novel, he talks about Jimmy "imagine[ing] romantic camping trips" with Martha. A limited narrator could not know Jimmy's thoughts, so he must be omniscient. After finishing the first chapter, I really do like this book a lot better than TSAR. It's much easier to follow, and it's more entertaining.