Greasy Lake

The un-named narrator is the central character of this story about three "dangerous" boys looking for fun one boring summer night. Instead, the boys interrupt a stranger and his girlfriend, thinking that the car belonged to a friend of theirs. The narrator ends up on the run, finding himself in a bunch of trouble instead of at a party. When he runs into a dead body in the lake, he knows he is in trouble:
"The water lapped at my waist as I looked out over the moon-burnished ripples, the mats of algae that clung to the surface like scabs. Digby and Jeff had vanished. I paused. Listened. The girl was quieter now, screams tapering to sobs, but there were male voices, angry, excited, and the high-pitched ticking of the second car's engine. I waded deeper, stealthy, hunted, the ooze sucking at my sneakers. As I was about to take the plunge- at the very instant I dropped my shoulder for the first slashing stroke- I blundered into something. Something unspeakable, obscene, something soft, wet, moss-grown. A patch of weed? A log? When I reached out to touch it, it gave like a rubber duck, it gave like flesh."
This part of the story was one of the most vivid passages, the appearance of the corpse interrupting the earlier tension of his fleeing. It makes everything stop suddenly, and the writing guides you along with the creeping realization of the sinister nature of the object in the water.

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My favorite object in "The Things They Carried" was Lt. Cross' pictures of Martha. They represented his connection to the world outside of the war. When he burns the pictures later in the story to get his mind off of home, it is a turning point in his character. He becomes more militaristic and takes his job more seriously without the distractions of "real life." I liked the pictures because they held this much importance. The story lists many things that the soldiers carried, but Lt. Cross' Martha-related items are the only things with such a significant weight.