Tone

According to Gillespie, Pipolo, and Fonseca’s Literature Across Cultures, the definition of tone is the manner, mood, or attitude that the writer has for the characters, situations, and the readers themselves. The tone of "The Things They Carried" varies widely throughout the story. It, at one point or another, was happy, sad, emotional, devastating, and careless. Because of the change in tone, you get the feeling of how much the soldiers had to struggle with so many things throughout the war.