The Start of Second Book Blogs

I finished reading "The Things They Carried" recently, and this is what my next twenty blogs will cover! I am going to again start with literary terms and then discuss certain scenes or phrases that caught my attention while reading. Sooo let's get started!
Literary Term #1
Paradox

• page 7: "Where things came together but also separated."

This is clearly a paradox. In a letter to Jimmy Cross, Martha brings up this contradictory statement. An ocean's shoreline brings things together from the ocean to the land. It also takes things away, making them separate. In addition, it brings two very different things together that might usually not. I think that this is somewhat mean of Martha to say to Jimmy because this is just adding to his false thinking of her loving him. He might take this as that the two of them are together but separated by the ocean or war. He may also think that the pebble is a way of keeping them together since it was at the shoreline. This is just how I took this paradox. Lastly, this paradox may serve as a way to tell the situation that the soldiers are in. They are in an unknown place. They are together as one, but the war has separated them from family and loved ones. The ocean is the new unknown area they have been taken to. The land was what they knew. I am not sure if this is true, but it was another way I interpreted this.