The series of activities in this unit are designed to enhance empathy for your students to situations, people, cultures, and places they may have never experienced before. Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried, is an excellent literary resource, in particular with setting, narrator, and characterization, imagery, syntax, and more, as well as developing deeper understandings of the themes of war, post-traumatic stress disorder, battlefield violence, social and political inequities, and men