One of the most powerful literary accounts of the Vietnam War was Tim O’Brien’s famous collection of stories The Things They Carried, which as a rhetorical device categorically listed the minute objects of possession carried by the soldiers with devastating effect, from bug spray to love letters to superstitious trinkets.  The impact of O’Brien’s humanizing of all these young men sent into the maw of war through their objects is considerably felt, leading one reviewer to comment that this approach “lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly.“

I felt as though the same effect is achieved in the chilling lede of today’s dispatch from C.J. Chivers in the New York Times on the political murder of a Chechen citizen:  “Umar S. Israilov, a whistleblower living in hiding after accusing Chechnya’s president of personally participating in torture, kidnapping and murder, was gunned down here last year as he stepped from a grocery store with yogurt, eggs and bags of M&M’s and Gummi Bears for his three young children.”