Looking back, the first chapter shows how Tim O'Brien and the other soldiers were influenced by the Vietnam War, many soldiers had to deal with the burdens of war, the loss of innocents, and the sexual desire of women. One of the fundamental themes introduced in the first pages of the novel was the burden many soldiers must bear during war. The soldiers in the novel carried remarkably heavy physical and emotional burdens; these burdens almost always seem too heavy for them to bear. For example, Jimmy Cross, the platoon leader, was responsible for the lives of all the soldiers in the subdivision, but he was unable to keep his soldiers alive. Another theme introduced in the first chapter is the loss of the innocent. The Vietnam War stains and ends the innocence of the soldiers who participated in the war. Most soldiers in the Vietnam War were young, not even twenty years old. However, Tim O'Brien continually emphasizes that even though they are young, they are killers when commanded. Many soldiers had to give up their innocence and become men immediately during the war. Another theme that emerges in the first chapter is sexual spinning for women. In addition to fighting the Vietcong, the soldiers had to live without any women nearby; which causes them a lot of anxiety. In the novel The Things They Carried, the first chapter by Tim O'Brien describes a group of soldiers marching through the jungles of Vietnam. Subsequently, Tim O'Brien began to reveal the personal items that each soldier carried with him during the war. These soldiers carry surprisingly heavy physical and emotional burdens in the jungles of Vietnam. However, these emotional burdens are far heavier than anything... middle of paper ... are killers. (O'Brien 1.37) These men kill on orders; most soldiers simply accepted whatever they did during the war as their job. At the start of the first chapter, Jimmy Cross was only twenty-four years old and the leader of his own platoon. He was still an innocent person, all when Ted Lavender was executed before his eyes. Jimmy Cross had to leave his youth behind and start thinking like a soldier. When he burns Martha's photo, he symbolically loses his innocent self. He had to leave his youth behind and start seeing the world from a different perspective. The undoubted loss of innocence in the novel was the story "Song Tra Bong's Sweetheart", in which Mark Fossie's girlfriend came to Vietnam from America only to later get drunk from Vietnam and become a killer. The Vietnam War materializes the change of people and makes them ruthless and brutal.