The Things They Carried -- Tim O'Brien

Viet Cong (VC)

A Communist-led army and guerrilla force in South Vietnam that fought its government and was supported by North Vietnam.

Norman Bowker

A man who embodies the damage that the war can do to a soldier long after the war is over. During the war, Bowker is quiet and unassuming, and Kiowa's death has a profound effect on him. Bowker's letter to O'Brien in "Notes" demonstrates the importance of sharing stories in the healing process.

Mark Fossie

A medic in Rat Kiley's previous assignment. Fossie loses his innocence in the realization that his girlfriend, Mary Anne, would rather be out on ambush with Green Berets than planning her postwar wedding to Fossie in Cleveland.

Dave Jensen

A minor character whose guilt over his injury of Lee Strunk causes him to break his own nose. Jensen's relief after Strunk's death is an illustration of the perspective soldiers are forced to assume. Instead of mourning the loss of his friend, Jensen is glad to know that the pact the two made—and that he broke—has now become obsolete.

Infantry Platoon

A platoon is a military unit of the United States Army. It is generally the smallest unit to be commanded by a commissioned officer, known as the platoon leader, currently a first or second lieutenant. The senior-most non-commissioned officer assists the platoon leader as platoon sergeant, currently a sergeant first class.[1][2] The exact size and composition of platoons in the US Army depends on the time period and their intended mission. Among the Combat arms a platoon will consist of several squads or a similar number of armored fighting vehicles, while combat service support platoons are organized based on their function. Several platoons will be combined into a company, with each platoon receiving a letter designation for identification.

Vietnam War

A prolonged war (1954-1975) between the communist armies of North Vietnam who were supported by the Chinese and the non-communist armies of South Vietnam who were supported by the United States.

story "Field Trip" summary

After he writes "In the Field," Tim takes a ten-year-old Kathleen to Vietnam with him. They go to the field where Kiowa died. The place looks smaller, and peaceful. It's twenty years after Kiowa's death. Kathleen doesn't really get why they're there. She says it smells. During the touristy part of their trip, Kathleen has held up well. She asks why the war started. Tim says that some people wanted one thing, and others wanted another thing. When Kathleen asks what he wanted, he tells her that all he wanted was to stay alive. She doesn't understand why he can't forget the war, why he needed to come to Vietnam, and why he was in Vietnam in the first place. At the field where Kiowa died, Tim takes a few pictures. Kathleen is bored. Tim pulls out a cloth bundle from the jeep and wades into the river. Ignoring Kathleen's protests, he gets to the point where Mitchell Sanders had found Kiowa's rucksack, and takes Kiowa's moccasins out of the bundle. He lets the moccasins sink down into the muck. He notices an old farmer watching him. The old man raises his shovel grimly, then brings it down and begins to dig. Tim gets out of the water, and Kathleen observes, correctly, that he stinks to high heaven. She asks him if the old man is mad at him, and he says no. All that is over.

story "Love" summary

After the war is over, Jimmy Cross visits Tim and the two reminisce over coffee. Jimmy reveals that he never forgave himself for Ted Lavender's death, at which point Tim and Jimmy decide to switch from coffee to alcohol. The mood lightens and around midnight, Tim feels comfortable enough to ask Jimmy about Martha. Jimmy is shocked that Tim even remembered who Martha was. He ends up showing Tim the same photograph that he carried of Martha when he was in Vietnam. It turns out that after Jimmy burned the first one, Martha gave him a new one after running into him at a college reunion. Here's what happened: Jimmy and Martha spend almost an entire day together. Martha hasn't married, and is now a Lutheran missionary who has done work in Ethiopia and Guatemala. Even though they seemed to be getting along OK, Martha is still distant, and doesn't even respond when Jimmy tells her that he loves her. At the end of the evening, he tell her about his fantasy -previously mentioned in "The Things They Carried" - about carrying her to the bed and tying her up so that he could hold her hand to his knee all night long. Yes, he did tell her about that. Unsurprisingly, Martha doesn't take this well, and simultaneously expresses disgust at "the things men do" and implies that she's either a lesbian or had been sexually assaulted in the past, or both. Well, whatever she meant, Jimmy gets it, and the next morning, Martha apologizes and explains that "there was nothing she could do about it" (Love.5). The two part on relatively good terms, with Martha giving Jimmy another copy of her picture. Back in the present, Jimmy tells Tim that no matter what, he still loves Martha. Tim asks Jimmy if he'd mind if he (Tim) wrote a story about it. Jimmy thinks it over and says he wouldn't, that it might even make Martha fall in love with him after all. He asks Tim to make him look good, and not mention anything about ----- [blank].And Tim says that he won't.

Lee Strunk

Another soldier in the platoon and a minor character. A struggle with Dave Jensen over a jackknife results in Strunk's broken nose. In begging Jensen to forget their pact—that if either man is gravely injured, the other will kill him swiftly—after he is injured, he illustrates how the fantasy of war differs from its reality.

Self-Blame In Response To Death

At both the beginning of the novel as well as the end, Jimmy Cross blames himself for the deaths of men in his company. After Ted Lavender dies, Cross reflects that "[h]e hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead" (16). Then, much later, writing a letter to Kiowa's father after Kiowa's death, he thinks he would say it was "[m]y own fault" (162). Ironically, at the end of "In the Field," the young soldier near Jimmy Cross also blames himself for Kiowa's death since he used a flashlight: "Like murder, the boy thought. The flashlight made it happen. Dumb and dangerous. And as a result his friend Kiowa was dead" (163). Norman Bowker likewise blames himself for Kiowa's death after the war is over. Jimmy Cross thinks, "When a man died, there had to be blame" (169). Many people or entities could be blamed for death. For instance: You could blame the war. You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the enemy (169-70). Yet despite all these possible sources of blame, Jimmy Cross believes that small mistakes that seem preventable by the people who make them caused the untimely deaths. Since mistakes and errors of judgement are so common in war, the sense of responsibility for Kiowa's death is spread across many different people. Stories allow a reader to access many different points of view for a single event and to see that real blame cannot land on any single individual. As Jimmy Cross points out, there are many factors that lead to death in a war. These factors then combine with immediate causes in complicated ways that make it difficult to assess blame to any one person.

story "speaking of courage" summary

Back from Vietnam, on the Fourth of July, Norman Bowker is driving the seven-mile loop around the lake over and over again. The lake is calm and flat and silver. It's a graceful lake, but not good for swimming; it drowned his best friend Max Arnold before he could go to the war. There's no one around for Norman to talk to. Everyone's moved away. His old girlfriend, Sally, is married to another man, and happy. His father is watching baseball on TV. Norman starts another loop around the lake. He wishes he could stop in and talk to Sally and impress her with his new skill - he can tell time without a watch, thank you, Vietnam. He wants to tell her about how he almost won the Silver Star for valor. He wishes his father weren't watching baseball and were in the car with him instead, so that he could tell his father how he almost won the Silver Star for valor. He thinks his father would understand. And besides, Norman has seven other medals, which are ordinary medals for doing ordinary soldier things. Norman would tell him why he didn't end up winning the medal, telling him first about the Song Tra Bong, a river that in the monsoon season changed from a normal river to a big, stinky, overflowing muck. And that he would've won the medal if not for that darn smell. Norman keeps driving through the town. He wants to tell it about the war, but it doesn't look like it would care. He continues with how he would have told his father about the Silver Star, saying that there was a night when the Alpha Company camped in a field besides the Song Tra Bong. Locals told them not to camp there, that it was an evil field. But because the platoon had apparently never seen a horror movie, they went ahead and did it anyway. By midnight, the river had overflowed, and the rain made the field all oozy. What's more disgusting, it turned out the field was literally a full of sewage, the village toilet. If Norman were telling the story to Sally, she would at this point be offended by the obscenity. His father wouldn't, though. Neither would Max. Norman starts his eighth loop around the lake. If Max were here, he would talk to Max about the war, and courage. And if his father wanted to talk, he would talk to his father. He would say that la

In "Love," O'Brien relates the story of Martha and Lieutenant Cross. As you explore the realities of war how do you believe family relations were tested?

Being at war meant families were often destroyed. At the worst a family member is killed. A son, husband, father, brother taken from the family by a great tragedy of death at war. Less horrible but almost as sad is the time lost with families. Years apart from loved ones leaves a hole in everyone's lives. For Lt Cross and Martha going to war meant they never really had a chance to connect and be together. They were forced to go their separate ways and they may be missed out on being in love and happy with each other. War causes families to lose and suffer.

Story 3 Spin

Chapter has no fighting in it -- stories about the war being boring -- routine random stuff

Curt Lemon

Childish soldier, killed while playing catch with a grenade. Represents the immaturity of many young American soldiers in Vietnam and what can happen. Story of the Dentist.

story "Friends" summary

Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk get to the point where they trust each other pretty well. They make a pact that if one of them should get a wound so bad it would put them in a wheelchair, the other will kill him to put him out of his misery. They even put it on paper. Of course, Lee Strunk eventually steps on a rigged mortar round and it blows his right leg off at the knee. He begs Dave Jensen not to kill him. Dave Jensen says not to worry - he won't be killing his friend. Strunk doesn't believe him, but Jensen does as he was asked - he doesn't kill Strunk. Strunk dies as he is being airlifted out. It "seemed to relieve Dave Jensen of an enormous weight" (Friends.13).

Green Berets (special forces)

Elite anti-guerrilla military units expanded by President Kennedy as part of his doctrine of "flexible response"; branch of the army -- fought extensively in Vietnam.

Jimmy Cross

First Lieutenant, platoon leader; carried letters from Martha and 2 photographs of her (one yearbook volleyball shot and the other she stood against a brick wall), compass, maps, code books, binoculars, .45-caliber-pistol, strobe light and responsibility for the lives of his men, good-luck pebble from Martha; in love with Martha

On the Rainy River

He's never shared this story before- one with Elroy, running to his cabin. Thoughts he was too good for the war- educated, bright. Drives north along the Rainy River, border between US and Canada. Elroy rented him a cabin, let him in, didn't ask about the war, joins Elroy in chores, Elroy gave him money, gives him opportunity to go to Canada (boat ride), O'Brien cries, goes back to America and joins the war. Thinks that he is a coward for not standing up in what he believed in and joining the war.

story "Stockings" summary

Henry Dobbins is a good guy, but unsophisticated. He wears his girlfriend's pantyhose around his neck for luck. In Vietnam, people get superstitious, and Dobbins completely believes that the pantyhose give him good luck. Everyone else starts to believe too, because Dobbins never gets a scratch on him. Then his girlfriend dumps him. Dobbins keeps wearing the stockings for luck, though. He says that the magic didn't go away.

In "On The Rainy River," we learn the 21-year-old O'Brien's theory of courage: "Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comforting theory." What might the 43-year-old O'Brien's theory of courage be? Were you surprised when he described his entry into the Vietnam War as an act of cowardice? Do you agree that a person could enter a war as an act of cowardice?

His theory of courage is not just about doing things that are physically courageous like going into combat. His theory of courage is doing the right thing in the larger sense of what is morally correct. In the case of the Vietnam War that correct thing in the broader sense would have been refusing to go. He could have dodged the draft and gone to Canada. But he had not really cared or thought about the war before he was drafted. Then when he was drafted he just went along and went to the war. When it would have been braver to think hard about right and wrong then choose not to participate in what turned-out to be a senseless and cruel war.

Baby Water Buffalo

In "How to Tell a True War Story," Rat Kiley loses a close friend, Curt Lemon, and shortly after expresses his grief by torturing a baby water buffalo. He shoots it in the front knee and "[t]he animal did not make a sound. It went down hard, then got up again, and Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear. He shot it in the hindquarters and in the little hump at its back" (75). This torture continues for a long time until Rat Kiley finally shoots the buffalo in the throat. Afterwards, Dave Jensen expresses his amazement at witnessing such torture: "Mitchell Sanders took out his yo-yo. 'Well, that's Nam,' he said. 'Garden of Evil. Over here, man, every sin's real fresh and original'" (76). Although the men take part in the burning of villages, and greet dead bodies as a way to keep their spirits up, it is the torturing of an animal that provokes Dave Jensen to say, "My whole life, I never seen anything like it" (76). The suffering of the water buffalo is a symbol for the pain and waste of the Vietnam War, as well as war in a more general sense. Whereas the deaths of Kiowa, Curt Lemon, and Ted Lavender provoke thoughts of blame and regret in both the narrator and soldiers such as Jimmy Cross, the torturing of the water buffalo is a symbol that evokes the carnage and pain of war for those who have never been to war: "Usually it's an older woman of kindly temperament and humane politics" (80). Such a person usually doesn't like war stores, "[b]ut this one she liked. The poor baby buffalo, it made her sad" (80). In this way, the water buffalo is a symbol not only for the senseless carnage of the Vietnam War, but as a symbol for the role of storytelling itself. Symbols like the baby water buffalo provide ways for those who have never experienced war to understand it, even if only in a limited sense.

Literal and Figurative Weight of Items Carried by Soldiers

In "The Things They Carried," the items they literally carry with them during the war characterize each soldier. These items signify not only the soldiers' rank and personality, but also refer to a symbolic weight that they psychologically carry. In this way, the words "weight" and "burden" often take on both a literal and a figurative two meaning: To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, to hump meant to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive (3). Jimmy Cross carries a photo of Martha, but also carries the symbolic weight of his love for her. Ted Lavender carries "34 rounds" (6) of ammunition, but also his deep fear of war and death; it is because of this combination of literal and figurative weight that the narrator says, "he was shot and killed outside Than Khe, and he went down under an exceptional burden" (6). The close relationship between literal and metaphorical weight continues beyond the first story. In "Friends," Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen make a pact to kill one another if the other is ever seriously injured. Lee Strunk loses a leg to mortar fire and Dave Jensen promises to not end Strunk's life. However, "[l]ater, we heard that Strunk died somewhere over Chu Lai, which seemed to relieve Dave Jensen of an enormous weight" (63). The burden of a friendship with Strunk is revealed to be another symbolic weight that Jensen carries with him in the war, just as in the beginning of the book, he carried his practice of "field hygiene" (2) as well as "a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he'd stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia" (2).

Submersion under Water and Muck

In his letter to the narrator, Norman Bowker says, "It's almost like I got killed over in Nam... Hard to describe. That night when Kiowa got wasted, I sort of sank down into the sewage with him... Feels like I'm still in deep shit" (130). This image of sinking down into sewage, mud, or water is repeated several times throughout The Things They Carried. At the end of "Speaking of Courage," Norman Bowker enters the lake he has been circling throughout the story: "The water felt warm against his skin. He put his head under. He opened his lips, very slightly, for the taste" (148). At the end of "In the Field," Jimmy Cross lays in the mud field in which Kiowa dies. In "Field Trip," the narrator wades into the river near the same field and buries Kiowa's moccasins. All of these submersions into water mirror the death of Kiowa, who drowned in a field of muck. When Kiowa dies, it is not only Norman Bowker who feels a part of himself "sank down into the sewage with him" (13), but in the ways they too enter and submerge beneath the surface of rivers and fields of muck, the narrator and Jimmy Cross do as well. These ritual submersions might be symbolic of Kiowa's death, as well as the feeling that Norman Bowker articulates when he says, "Feels like I'm still in deep shit" (130). All the characters remain submerged in their memories of the war long after the war has passed.

In "Spin" the audience is introduced to the mundane life of soldiers. Describe one of these events and how it contributes to the author's purpose in conveying the day-to-day events of war.

In that story Kiowa teaches the other soldiers and Indian rain dance. This scene illustrates that even in the middle of war there can be random moments when people are just nice and are passing the boring time by doing somewhat random things. War has long periods of just sitting around that are then suddenly interrupted by terrible violence and intense activity of fighting. Kiowa and his friends talking about and teaching rain dancing is contrast to that. It is especially powerful because it shows what a nice man Kiowa was and makes his death all the more painful.

What is the effect of "Notes," in which O'Brien explains the story behind "Speaking Of Courage"? Does your appreciation of the story change when you learn which parts are "true" and which are the author's inventions?

In the "Notes" chapter O'Brien explains that Bowker still considers himself a failure even though he had done heroic things and that eventually he had killed himself. Bowker had asked O'Brien to write a story about the difficulty of returning and that was a version of "Speaking of Courage" - Bowker had only sort of liked the story. Notes makes the pain of Speaking in Courage even more bleak. These background details make Bowker an even more sympathetic character. Bowker was a good soldier who did his duty bravely. He was a normal, nice man who faced war honorably. The hurt he felt from the death of Kiowa only makes him seem a better person. Notes" gives "Speaking of Courage" much more depth once we find out why it was written. Understanding this makes me want to help veterans cope with the trauma of serving and defending our nation. It is pathetic that we don't do more to help them return and to make them feel appreciated and valued.

How did Curt Lemon's visit to the dentist affect him?

In the middle of a war Lemon was afraid of the dentist and he fainted. This made him embarrassed and he sulks away from the group. Then he very strangely goes back to the dentist and pretends he has a tooth-ache and makes the dentist pull out one of his teeth. Lemon felt he had to prove he could be brave enough to go to the dentist even while he was in the middle of fighting a war. Lemon's perception of himself is distorted. He didn't really need to prove he was brave - but he thought he needed to prove he was brave.

Story 2 Love

Jimmy visits the narrator years later and tells about seeing Martha at their college reunion. She was a lutheran minister and still cold to him. but he still loved her. they talked for hours -- then they just left.

"The Ghost Soldiers" is one of the only stories of The Things They Carried in which we do not know the ending in advance. Why might O'Brien want this story to be particularly suspenseful?

Keeping it suspenseful makes the reader wonder if the narrator, who the reader has come to like, is actually going to do something terrible and hurt Jorgenson or get him killed accidentally or maybe get Azar killed in the middle of scaring Jorgenson. It makes the reader doubt that the narrator is a "good guy" - maybe he has lost his mind. Then it veers back to a good outcome for the reader's view of the narrator - because he stops short of getting Jorgenson hurt or killed. Even though Azar continues to take it too far. This reminds the reader that Azar is a bit crazy and nasty and reassures the reader that the narrator is back to being the "good guy" - but to go through all that it requires that the reader not know that "everything works out in the end".

story "Enemies" summary

Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen get in a fight over a missing jackknife. Dave Jensen breaks Strunk's nose so hard that Strunk has to be flown back to the rear. When Strunk returns two days later, Dave Jensen gets nervous. Paranoid. He keeps away from Strunk and feels like he's always under attack. One afternoon, he starts shooting his gun in the air, yelling Strunk's name. All the other soldiers hit the ground (of course). When he runs out of ammo, Jensen puts his head in his arms and refuses to move for two or three hours. That night, he breaks his own nose with a pistol. Then he goes up to Strunk and asks if they're even. Strunk says they are. Later, though, Strunk is still laughing, saying that Jensen is crazy, and that he'd actually stolen Jensen's jackknife. It's kind of unclear whether Strunk means that Jensen is crazy to forgive Strunk for stealing his jackknife and that he didn't need to break his own nose to be even, or that Jensen is just crazy in general. Knowing this book, it's probably both.

Mary Anne Bell

Mark Fossie's high school sweetheart. Although Mary Anne arrives in Vietnam full of innocence, she gains a respect for death and the darkness of the jungle and, according to legend, disappears there. Unlike Martha and Henry Dobbins's girlfriend, who only serve as fantasy reminders of a world removed from Vietnam, Mary Anne is a strong and realized character who shatters Fossie's fantasy of finding comfort in his docile girlfriend.

In "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," what transforms Mary Anne into a predatory killer? Does it matter that Mary Anne is a woman? How so? What does the story tell us about the nature of the Vietnam War?

Mary Anne is transformed into a killer by seeing the cruelty of war. This story doesn't seem entirely true. It is a true war story in the O'Brien sense of telling a truth about war, that it is terrible and it transforms innocent people into savages but it is not true in the sense that a civilian teen-age woman traveled to Vietnam and unofficially joined the Green Berets and then disappeared out into the jungle as a crazed killer. Even as the craziness of the story is highlighted by it being about a woman the truth of its moral is reinforced. War makes even the most nice and innocent person, Mary Anne, into a crazed killer.

Vietnam Draft

Most unpopular draft in the history of the U.S. People disagreed with us fighting in that war, because it "wasn't our war". Many people found ways to get out of the draft., Draft until 1973. Mostly working class - richer people had students deferments or created medical exemptions or appointments. People especially got angry when middle class white men had to go

The Narrator (Tim O'Brien)

Nearly all of the stories in The Things They Carried are written in the first-person from the point of view of a single narrator, who is referred to by name as Tim O'Brien, the same name as the author of the book. The narrator grows throughout the stories from a recent college graduate conflicted about going to war, to an inexperienced soldier, to someone made emotionally cold by the war, to the writer of the stories. It is, perhaps, the role of a writer looking back on the war that the narrator most frequently occupies. In "Along the Rainy River," the narrator portrays himself as morally conflicted about his impending draft. He regards himself as cowardly for submitting to the expectations of others and going to war. When he kills a man along a trail in Vietnam, he feels considerable guilt. After he is removed from the war, he feels isolated from the men with whom he served and enacts a petty revenge on a medic who mistreats a gunshot wound. However, the words the narrator utters the most often are, "I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now" (213). In this way, The Things They Carried is as much about the narrator's experience as a writer, as it is about the war itself.

story "Notes" summary

Norman Bowker asks Tim to write "Speaking of Courage," and then hangs himself three years later. In 1975, Bowker writes Tim a seventeen-page letter where he explains how he can't seem to adjust back to life in America after the war. He tells Tim that he still feels like he's back in the field with Kiowa. He suggests that Tim should write a story about the field, and a guy who feels like he's still stuck there, even when he's driving around his hometown. When Tim gets the letter, he feels guilty about his own easy transition from war to peace. While he doesn't think of his storytelling as therapy, it has actually been a way of navigating his memories in a healthy way. Tim tries to write the story as part of his novel Going After Cacciato. He introduces the lake, changes the scenery, changes Norman's name (as he'd requested). He has to take out the sewage field and Kiowa's death to fit in with the rest of the novel. Eventually, he publishes it as a separate short story, and sends it to Norman Bowker. Norman Bowker says it's fine, but he left out Vietnam, Kiowa, and the sewage in the field. He hangs himself eight months later. Ten years later, Tim rewrites the story. He puts Norman back in it, and the night in the sewage field, and the death of Kiowa. But he wants to make it very clear that in real life, it wasn't Norman who let Kiowa go. It was Tim.

Explain this excerpt. Is it applicable today? "In many ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat juggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor. Like his country, too, Dobbins was drawn toward sentimentality."

O'Brien is using Dobbins as a metaphor for the US. The US is a big strong country that grinds along. The US going into the Vietnam War was simple and direct and hard working - like a big strong chubby American teen-ager. Many would argue that the US as a country lost that innocence in the terrible war that Vietnam was in. That the disagreement back in the US about fighting it permanently changed the country. I think for many Americans that there is still a belief in that old America of simple beliefs and values back from before the difficulties of Vietnam. For other Americans the US isn't as good and wholesome as we thought we were back at that time.

According to O'Brien, how do you tell a true war story? What does he mean when he says that true war stories are never about war? What does he mean when he writes of one story, "That's a true story that never happened"?

O'Brien says contradictory things about telling war stories. He says they must be true in their horrible details and that they are true to telling the story of how evil war is but he also says they are never true in the sense that everyone perceives the events differently and feels differently about them. Almost to the point that things that actually happened seem fake and other things are imagined as part of dealing with the horror of living through war and violence. All the stories are based on things that happened but they aren't about war so much as they are about human emotions and human behavior. The specific example is the soldier taking the blast from a grenade to protect his friends. That is a true story that never happened in the sense O'Brien never saw that actually happen but it is true in the sense of how soldiers can have so much comradeship and love for each other that they can sacrifice their lives to protect the group. It is an exaggerated story that illustrates a true thing.

story "Spin" summary

O'Brien starts the chapter off by telling us that the war "wasn't all about terror and violence" (Spin.1), and then launches into a number of very short stories that then show the sweetness in the war. A little boy with one leg asks Azar for chocolate, and Azar gives him some. Aww. Lest we think that Azar is in any way a good person for more than a second, Azar then says that the boy's one leg showed how much war sucks, because it means that "some poor ****er [soldier] ran out of ammo" (Spin.1). Trust us, you'll hate him even more later. Mitchell Sanders spends an hour picking off his body lice, puts them in an envelope, and sends them to his draft board back in Ohio. O'Brien compares the war to a Ping Pong ball, saying that you could put a spin on it and make it dance. Norman Bowker and Henry Dobbins have a ritual checkers game every evening, one that the rest of the men often gather around to watch. There is order in checkers, two clear armies, rules. It's restful. Tim sits at his typewriter now, 43 years old, and remembers Kiowa dying in a field of excrement (yeah, like sewage) and Curt Lemon dead in a tree. And while he's remembering it, he can't help but relive it. But that wasn't the whole war. Back in Vietnam, Ted Lavender takes too many tranquilizers, he says that the war is nice and mellow. An old Vietnamese guy leads them through the mine fields in the Batangan Peninsula. He knows exactly where the safe spaces are, and where you definitely do not want to step. Rat Kiley makes up a rhyme: "Step out of line, hit a mine; follow the dink, you're in the pink" (Spin.8). The men fall in love with the old man, and when the choppers came to take the soldiers away, everyone is sad (including the old man). The war is about waiting as much as it is about humping. It is boredom (a nerve-wracking boredom, but boredom nonetheless) interspersed with seriously gut-wrenching terror. Tim feels guilty for still writing war stories. Kathleen, his daughter, tells him it's an obsession. Tim agrees that maybe he should forget, but that "the thing about remembering is that you don't forget" (Spin.13). That his real obsession is not the war, but the stories. He tells a peace story. A guy - unnamed - goes AWOL and has a great

Kiowa

O'Brien's closest friend and a model of quiet, rational morality amid the atrocities of war. Kiowa's death, when the company mistakenly camps in a sewage field, is the focal point of three stories. Since it is a prime example of arbitrary, unforgiving cruelty in war, Kiowa's death is given more prominence than his life.

story "Good Form" summary

OK, listen up, because Tim O'Brien is about to make your brain explode again. He tells us that while he is 43, and a writer, and was a foot soldier in Vietnam, everything else in the book is made up. The young man he killed on the trail outside My Khe? Made up. Tim didn't kill him. He was just there. Except that even that is made up. Tim says that story-truth, or how something felt, is sometimes truer than what actually happened, or happening-truth. The happening-truth is that there were a lot of bodies, and Tim never looked at them. And now, with stories, he's giving those bodies faces. He's making himself feel again. So when Kathleen asks him if he's killed anybody, he can truthfully say that he has, and truthfully say that he has not.

Mitchell Sanders

One of the most likable soldiers in the war. Sanders strongly influences the narrator, O'Brien. He is kind and devoted, and he has a strong sense of justice. Because of these qualities, he is a type of father figure. Though his ideas of storytelling may or may not agree with O'Brien's in the end, his ability to tell stories and to discuss their nuances makes a profound impression on O'Brien.

Anti-Vietnam War Movement

Protests and marches were seen throughout the U.S., especially on college campuses; draft cards were burned and some deserted to avoid going to fight

story "Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong" summary

Rat Kiley often tells stories, and it's hard to know whether they actually happened or not; he believes in story-truth, not happening-truth. But the story that Rat is about to tell, he claims is absolutely and completely true - something that he saw with his own eyes. Mitchell Sanders says that the story - about a medic who ships his girlfriend over to Vietnam from Ohio - couldn't possibly be true. But Rat insists. The story starts when Rat is assigned to a small medical detachment in the mountains near a village called Tra Bong and a river called the Song Tra Bong. There isn't a lot of military oversight in the medics' compound, and the security is provided by a mix of RFs (Regional Forces), PFs (Popular Forces), and ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) infantry. The ARVN are, according to either Rat or Tim, useless as soldiers, and the RFs/PFs (also known as Ruff-and-Puffs) are South Vietnamese militias and are worse than useless - they are dangerous. The only other soldiers on the compound are a squad of six Green Berets who use the compound as a base of operations. The Green Berets, or Greenies, have their own fortified hootch (hut) at the edge of the perimeter, and they keep to themselves, gliding in and out of camp when they need to. Creepily. (There are going to be a lot of creepy things in this story, we're just warning you now.) One night, Eddie Diamond, the ranking NCO (non-commissioned officer), suggests as a joke that the medics find a way to bring a girl into the camp (which kind of tells you exactly how slack discipline is at this place). But one kid, Mark Fossie, takes the idea seriously. He says that if you did it right, you could fly a girl in. After all, there's no war at the compound, really. The rest of the medics don't really pay attention to the guy. And then his girlfriend arrives. Her name is Mary Anne Bell, and she's seventeen and has long legs, blonde hair, and blue eyes, and she's wearing a pink sweater and culottes (knee-length shorts that are wide and look like a skirt). Now that's not what we were expecting. Turns out Mark Fossie just paid a lot of money for plane tickets to get Mary Anne to Saigon, and she hitched rides on military aircraft to get the rest of the way. Mary Ann

Rat Kiley

Real name Bob, platoon's medic. Tells the story to his fellow soldiers of the "sweetheart of the song tra bong" Eventually is overwhelmed with stress of the war and must go. Is the most effected by Curt Lemon's death

Green Berets

Special US forces that were trained to fight the Viet Cong's guerilla tactics

In "The Lives of the Dead," O'Brien writes, "Stories can save us." How do stories save the narrator? What else can stories do, according to The Things They Carried and from what you've experienced in your own life? The story "Good Form" attempts to explain the method behind the construction of the book and raises the question, "What are stories for?" How might Tim O'Brien answer that? And how would you?

Stories saved the narrator because his ability to tell stories about his time in Vietnam allowed him to process the emotions and trauma and to recover from them. Norman Bowker is the contrast of someone who could never tell his story to anyone and instead held all that emotion and trauma inside and that drove him to suicide. Stories can also be for more than the healing of an individual who is telling the story. Stories such as those in "The Things They Carried" can also serve the larger society by communicating wisdom to younger generations. In this case these stories communicate the horror of war and the sadness of its impact on people and families. Thus these stories serve to help the story-teller cope and process and these stories serve to teach the wide world about the experiences of the story teller. In this case those experiences have valuable lessons about war and suffering and should make us all want to work to keep the world peaceful so we can spare our young men the pain and sorrow inflicted on those in Vietnam.

"The Man I Killed" Why is some of the story told from the young man's perspective? What do Tim and the young man share in common? To what extent does this story present an implied argument about men and war? What is that argument?

Switching back and forth between different perspectives reinforces the confusion and conflict that O'Brien feels about killing the man and about killing and death in Vietnam in general. The bouncing from viewpoint to viewpoint is like the questions and emotions bouncing around inside O'Brien. Why did he kill this man? What was he like? He sadly imagines that the man had things in common with him like going to college and not caring about the war before he was drafted into it. These are imaginary things that O'Brien is using to try to make sense of his confused emotions. The repeated description of beautiful things next to death like the butterfly landing on the deadman are another emphasis of how men are confused and conflicted about war and death and try to distance themselves from thinking about facing it. Eventually the Platoon just moves on without O'Brien sorting anything out about killing or war or how he feels about it.

Why is the first story, "The Things They Carried," written in third person? How does this serve to introduce the rest of the novel? What effect did it have on your experience of the novel when O'Brien switched to first person, and you realized the narrator was one of the soldiers?

The author begins writing in the 3rd person to set up the story. He establishes the context from a distance. It is like a movie starting out at a wide angle showing a war scene without the reader or viewer knowing exactly what is going on and who the characters are at that point. Then the author switches to the first person and it is like the camera has zoomed in on the main character and the individual people who are inside the larger scene of the Vietnam War and an infantry platoon. It goes from big picture context down to individual experience.

Talking as a way to process trauma

The author makes clear the importance of talking as a way to work through the traumas of war in stories such as "Love," "The Man I Killed," "Speaking of Courage," and "Notes." In "Love," the narrator and Jimmy Cross do little more than drink coffee and gin, smoke cigarettes, and remember "some of the craziness that used to go on" (27). In "Speaking of Courage," and "Notes," Norman Bowker is incapable of sharing his experiences with anyone, and this inability leaves him in a state of mental paralysis. In this light, the seemingly simple act of sharing stories as Jimmy Cross and the narrator do in "Love" takes on a larger and more meaningful dimension. After Norman Bowker decides not to talk with the A&W cashier in "Speaking of Courage," he continues to drive around the lake and ruminate about his experiences at war. He has conflicting and contradictory thoughts about the act of sharing, thinking for example, "[t]here was nothing to say. He could not talk about it and never would" (147). But then just a couple of paragraphs later, Bowker thinks that, "[h]e wished he could've explained some of this" (147). The contradictory nature of his thoughts shows that sharing, for Bowker, is an internal struggle and not as easy or simple as it seems to be for Jimmy Cross and the narrator in "Love." One interesting counterpoint to this theme comes in the form of Elroy Berdahl, the old man the narrator meets in "On the Rainy River." Elroy Berdahl remains largely quiet during the narrator's stay at the lodge, and yet the narrator claims, "the man saved me. He offered exactly what I needed without questions, without any words at all" (46). This suggests that perhaps just as important as the need to talk is the need for an attentive listener. Such a listener Norman Bowker fails to find in "Speaking of Courage," which is perhaps one of the reasons he feels so paralyzed.

In "Night Life," O'Brien writes, "With Rat Kiley though, it was different. Too many body bags, maybe. Too much gore." It is through this revelation that we eventually learn the drastic measures that Kiley takes to remove himself from the war. Why are some soldiers able to deal with the stress and horrific tragedies of war while others are not?

The breaking point of every person is a mystery. In the case of war and suffering some are likely able to endure more because they have come from a more difficult background and so they care less about the suffering and death. Rat Kiley was a medic that indicates that he at least somewhat cared about the suffering of others. That choice to be a medic gives some indication that perhaps Kily had more empathy and a little bit softer side to him. So when he had prolonged exposure to the worst fighting and the most exhaustion he became crazed and shot himself in the foot in order to get out of combat.

Martha

The girl Jimmy cross loved and day dreamed about.

story "Church" summary

The men dig their foxholes in the yard of an abandoned pagoda. There are two monks there, who seem basically OK with the arrangement. Kiowa isn't OK with it, though, saying that you shouldn't mess with churches. They stay there for a couple of days, and the monks especially take a shine to Henry Dobbins. They call him "soldier Jesus" and help him clean his machine gun. Dobbins tells Kiowa that maybe he'll join the monks after the war. Kiowa says that he didn't realize that Dobbins was religious. Dobbins agrees that he's not particularly religious, but he likes the idea of being a decent person. He ends up deciding, though, that he's simply not smart enough to be religious. He couldn't explain why God invented pneumonia. Plus, um, he hates church. Then Dobbins asks Kiowa if he planned to be a minister, what with Kiowa carrying around a Bible all the time. Kiowa says he'd never be a preacher, but that he likes churches, the feeling you get when you're inside them. And that setting up for war inside one of them is absolutely wrong. When the monks are finished cleaning Dobbins' machine gun, he gives them each a can of peaches and a chocolate bar. And then he agrees with Kiowa, saying that all you can do is treat people decently.

story "Style" summary

The men find a girl dancing near a burned down hamlet. She's dancing on her toes, smiling to herself. Azar can't figure out why she's dancing. Henry Dobbins says it doesn't matter why. Her family is burned to death in her house. When the men drag the bodies out, she keeps dancing, but puts her hands over her ears. Azar still doesn't get it. When the men leave, she's still dancing. Azar decides it's some kind of weird ritual, but Henry Dobbins says the girl just likes to dance. Later that night, Azar decides to mock the girl's dancing, making it suggestive and silly. (Of course he does. It's Azar.) Henry Dobbins, endearing himself to the entire reading audience, grabs Azar and holds him over a well. He tells him that if he doesn't want to be dumped in, he'll dance right.

story "In the Field" summary

The morning after Kiowa dies the solders search for his body. Azar makes a crude comment about Kiowa. Mitchell sanders finds Kiowa's rucksack. Jimmy Cross stands far away and composes a letter to Kiowa's father in his head. He reflects on how he should have camped on higher ground. The young soldier things of how it was his fault Kiowa was killed because he used his flashlight to show Kiowa a picture of his girlfriend. Norman Bowker finds Kiowa's body in the mud. A helicopter comes and takes his body away.

Fictional Truth v Actual Truth

The narrator offers many different thoughts on the nature of truth throughout The Things They Carried. As Mitchell Sanders tells the story about the soldiers who heard music playing in the hills in "How to Tell a True War Story," he pauses and tells the narrator that he won't believe the next part: "'You won't. And you know why?' He gave me a long, tired smile. 'Because it happened. Because every word is absolutely dead-on true'" (70). This corresponds with the narrator's assessment that "[i]n many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical" (68). That is, what both Mitchell Sanders and the narrator are saying is that the truths of war can sometimes seem so outlandish and farfetched, that if a war story seems to make sense then it must be false. On the other hand, if a story seems too strange, obscene, or impossible to believe, then it might be true. This is a statement not just about storytelling and truth, but about war as well. The true nature of war, the narrator suggests, often stretches beyond the imagination of someone who has not experienced it themselves.

Henry Dobbins

The platoon's machine gunner and resident gentle giant. Dobbins's profound decency, despite his simplicity, contrasts with his bearish frame. He is a perfect example of the incongruities in Vietnam.

Elroy Berdahl

The proprietor of the Tip Top Lodge on the Rainy River near the Canadian border. Berdahl serves as the closest thing to a father figure for O'Brien, who, after receiving his draft notice, spends six contemplative days with the quiet, kind Berdahl while he makes a decision about whether to go to war or to escape the draft by running across the border to Canada.

Discuss the two very short stories "Enemies" and "Friends." What is the relationship between Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen? How are they both enemies and friends? In what other ways are the soldiers in this platoon sometimes fighting one another instead of the "real" enemy?

The relationship between Strunk and Jensen is bizarre and shows how the pressure of war distorts relationships and makes everything abnormal. First they are enemies because they have an argument and a fight about Strunk stealing Jensen's jack-knife. The level of conflict over a jack-knife is very excessive. But that is because they are stressed by war. This is an example of how the external stress on the platoon creates many layers of internal stress and conflict. The group is always angry and jumpy. Then Jensen and Strunk become a strange kind of "friends" promising to kill each other if one of them is seriously wounded. Then Strunk has his leg blown off and Jensen doesn't shoot him to put him out of his misery. Then after a helicopter evacuates Strunk he dies anyway and Jensen is relieved he died. That is the strange kind of friendship created by the pressures of war.

After reading 'In the Field," "Good Form," and "Field Trip," how were the lives of young American soldiers different from teenagers' lives stateside?

Their lives were massively different. Teenagers back in the US were going to school and spending time with their families and having summer jobs etc. During Vietnam some of them were protesting against the US being involved in the war. The men of O'Brien's platoon who were teenagers themselves were marching around the jungle in a foreign country fighting and dying. Even when not fighting they were in a miserable depressing place. The contrast between a civilian teen-ager and a soldier teen-ager is two entirely different worlds.

story "The Man I Killed" summary

There's a slim, dead, almost dainty young man lying on the ground. His jaw is in his throat, and Tim was the one to kill him. He wears a wedding band on his long, delicate fingers. Tim thinks that the man might have been a scholar, born in the village of My Khe, who was a citizen, not a communist, and who secretly would rather not have fought. Azar, helpful as always, points out how extremely dead the young man is. Kiowa tells him to go away. Kiowa tries to get Tim to stop staring at the body and talk. Tim doesn't respond, but keeps staring at the body. Kiowa tells Tim to take all the time he needs. Tim decides that the man he killed probably loved mathematics, and was never able to get in fights at school, and worried that he would shame himself and his village. Again, Kiowa tries to get Tim to talk. And, again, Tim ignores him. Tim thinks that maybe the young man went to university for mathematics and met a woman who loved him, and they got married. Kiowa tells Tim that they all had the young man in their sights, that it's only chance that Tim is the one who got him first. The young man had only been a soldier for a day. Tim is sure. Kiowa begs Tim to talk.

Aside from "The Things They Carried," "Speaking of Courage" is the only other story written in third person. Why are these stories set apart in this manner? What does the author achieve by doing so?

These chapters take the reader out to a wider context by using the third person. O'Brien is not in the chapters and his unique individual thoughts and emotions are not dominating the narrative. The wider context of war is emphasized in the first chapter and the wider context of post-war guilt and depression and suffering is emphasized in "Speaking of Courage". It is more sad for the reader to be at distance watching poor Norman Bowker wander around and drive around and have no one to talk to than it would to have the same concepts related from inside the head of a narrator. The distant third person perspective is better for making the point of the chapter about how war memories don't leave the men feeling heroic. War memories leave them sad and lonely.

story "Night Life" summary

This is how Rat Kiley got wounded. The platoon is working in slightly more stressful situations than usual; because of rumors about increased North Vietnamese troops, they move only at night. It's called the night life. Everyone is tense, but for Rat it's the worst - maybe because of all the bodies he's seen as medic. First he's just quiet, but then he starts talking about the bugs in Vietnam and how crazy they are, and how they're all after him. He can't shut up about the bugs. He starts scratching his bug bites compulsively. The night life makes everyone feel a little crazy - in the dark, the countryside feels like it's alive - but Rat isn't even sleeping during the days, and he just completely loses it. He tells Mitchell Sanders that he can't shut off the part of him that's a medic, that when he's talking to people, he starts to picture them dead, or in pieces. He sees his own body, covered in bugs. He starts to ramble about the men who have died. So he shoots himself in the foot. Cross lies for him, saying it was an accident so he doesn't get in trouble. Rat is airlifted to Japan, and he's out of the war.

Curt Lemon's sister

We never find out her name. The one role she has is to not reply to a letter about her brother's death.

story "The Ghost Soldiers" summary

Tim gets shot twice in his time in Vietnam. The first time, Rat Kiley is there, and takes care of him. Tim is sent away to recover and is fine. Twenty-six days later, when he returns to the Alpha Company, Rat Kiley is no longer with the group - he was wounded and shipped to Japan - and the company has a new medic named Bobby Jorgenson, who's green. When Tim is shot the second time - this time *********** - Jorgenson is too scared to crawl over to him. Tim nearly dies of shock, and the wound is so poorly treated that his butt then gets gangrene. As you might imagine, Tim isn't too happy with Bobby Jorgenson. People make fun of Tim pretty much constantly. It's the worst wound he's ever gotten, and he can't even talk about it without being an object of ridicule. After he's released from the hospital, Tim is transferred away from the Alpha Company to the battalion supply section. There's no fighting there, and he's basically safe. Despite this, he misses the front. And he keeps thinking about how he can get back at Bobby Jorgenson when he sees the guy again. Eventually, the Alpha Company comes to the battalion supply section for a break. Tim gets to see most of his old friends - Mitchell Sanders, Azar, Norman Bowker, Henry Dobbins, Dave Jensen - and, as usual, there are plenty of stories to tell. Mitchell Sanders tells one (Azar interrupting all the while) about Morty Phillips and how he used up his luck: It's an incredibly hot day, and Morty disappears. Everyone's flipping out, and then, at dark, Morty shows up again. He's soaking wet. He went skinny dipping in a river. He could easily have been killed - it wasn't exactly safe territory - but he wasn't. But! The water wasn't safe to drink. Morty gets polio, and then becomes paralyzed. It's a good story, but Tim can't stop thinking about how much he doesn't belong with these men anymore. He misses the companionship. And he keeps wondering, and asking, where Bobby Jorgenson is. The butt wound continues to be humiliating. He has to spread ointment on it three times a day, which stains his pants and prompts another round of hilarious jokes. Mitchell Sanders tell Tim to forget about Bobby Jorgenson - the kid was new and scared and he's better at his job now. He tells

story "the lives of the dead" summary

Tim says that stories can save us. Through the stories, Tim keeps Linda and Ted Lavender and Kiowa and Curt Lemon alive. (Don't worry, you're going to find out who Linda is later.) When Tim has only been in Vietnam for four days, the platoon takes sniper fire from a village, so Jimmy Cross orders an air strike on the place. When they've completely destroyed it, they go in. The only person there is an old man lying dead by a pigpen. The other guys go over and shake his hand, introducing themselves. Dave Jensen tries to get Tim to do the same, but he can't. It's too real for him, and he's scared. Later, Kiowa tells him that he thought that was impressive. He wishes he'd had the guts to say no. He asks Tim if it was the first time he's seen a body, and Tim says that the body reminded him of his first date. (Um.) Linda and Timmy are nine and in love. Timmy takes her out on his very first date. They go to a movie - with Timmy's parents, of course. Timmy likes Linda's new red cap, and compliments her on it. She smiles, but his mother glares at him. In Vietnam, when Ted Lavender dies, Mitchell Sanders asks the body how the war is going, and someone answers "Mellow" for him. Tim says that stories animate bodies. Timmy and Linda watch The Man Who Never Was for their first date. Tim can't stop thinking about one of the dead bodies in the movie. They go to Diary Queen afterwards, then say goodnight to each other. Linda keeps wearing her new cap to school. A kid named Nick Veenhof keeps teasing her about it. Timmy doesn't do anything about the teasing. One day, Nick pulls the cap off, and reveals to the entire class that Linda is almost bald. She has cancer. She looks at Timmy, and Timmy nods. Timmy and Nick walk her home that day. Tim uses stories to save Linda's life - to bring her back, however briefly. Linda dies. Timmy tries to imagine what it's like to be dead, picturing Linda, trying to make her alive. He sees her in his mind, and he starts to cry. She tells him to stop crying - that it doesn't matter. Back in Vietnam, the soldiers pretend that death isn't as awful as it is. They tell stories about the dead as if they're still alive - Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon. After Linda dies, Timmy gets his father to take him to

story "The Dentist" summary

Tim wasn't a huge fan of Curt Lemon - he thought the guy was too cocky, too self-involved. But he wants to tell us a story about Curt Lemon anyway. Once, when it was quiet, the higher-ups send an Army dentist out to the soldiers to check their teeth. Lemon starts to panic. While he is pretty fearless in combat, he really hates dentists. When he walks into the dentist's tent, he faints. After he wakes up, he sulks for a while. Later that night, he goes to the dental tent and tells the dentist that he has a horrible toothache and he needs to have a tooth pulled. The dentist says that there's nothing wrong with his teeth, but Lemon insists, so the dentist pulls the tooth. After that, Lemon is back to normal.

story "Ambush" summary

Tim's daughter Kathleen asks him if he'd ever killed anyone. She thinks that he must have because he keeps writing war stories. He tells her that he hadn't, but it's clearly a lie. He tells us now that he killed a young man of about twenty with a grenade on the trail outside My Khe. Or, in more detail: The Alpha Company is at the ambush site outside My Khe around midnight. They are working in two-man teams, and Tim is on watch. He can see ten to fifteen meters up the trail. All of a sudden, he sees the young man come out of the fog. There is no sound. Out of instinct and terror, Tim pulls the pin on a grenade and throws it at the young man. He's just trying to make the guy go away. When it occurs to Tim that the young man is about to die (not just go away), he has to fight the impulse to warn him. Tim doesn't, and the young man dies, and his eye become a star-shaped hole. Tim wasn't in any danger from the young man. The guy probably would have just passed him by. Kiowa tries to help, telling Tim that the young man was dead even before Tim threw the grenade - someone would have gotten him. None of it makes a difference to Tim, who can't stop reliving it and imagining a version of the story in which he didn't throw the grenade and the man lived.

story "How to Tell a True War Story" summary

When one of his friends is killed, Rat writes to the friend's sister. He explains what a great guy her brother was, and tells them how close the two of them were. It's a long letter, and very personal. Rat is practically crying as he writes it. She never writes back. Tim tells us that a true war story is not a moral story, that you can tell a war story is true if it contains obscenity and evil. He says that because of Rat's response to the sister's non-response - that "the dumb cooze never writes back" - you can tell that it's a true war story (How to Tell a True War Story.10). Rat's friend's name was Curt Lemon. The day of his death is a peaceful day. Rat and Curt are playing chicken under a tree, tossing a smoke grenade back and forth in the sunlight. Lemon must have stepped on a mine, because all of a sudden it seems as if the sunlight has lifted him off the ground and right into the tree. Tim explains that even though it wasn't the sunlight that really killed Curt, that's what it seemed like - and therefore that's the truth of what happened. This is the first time that O'Brien gets really into his idea of story-truth and happening-truth, but there'll be a lot more, so keep your eyes peeled. Another way that you can tell that a war story is true is if it sounds too crazy to be believed. Like this one, from Mitchell Sanders: A six-man patrol is supposed to go up into the mountains and listen for enemy movement for a week. They're supposed to be completely silent; just listen. They start to hear things. Music. Chimes, xylophones, voices at a fancy cocktail party, a glee club, a choir. The voices of Vietnam.They freak out and order up a bunch of firepower on the mountain. They completely destroy the place. The next morning, things are quiet. They go back down the mountain. A colonel asks what happened, what they heard, and why they just spent six trillion dollars on firepower. The men just stare at him, amazed at how little he hears. Later, Sanders tells Tim that he figured out the moral of the story. It's that no one every listens. Later still, Mitchell admits to Tim that he invented a few details - the glee club, the opera - but that the guys definitely did hear crazy things. Tim says that he gets it. Then

Ted Lavender

Young, scared soldier. Takes drugs to calm himself down. Dies in the beginning of the story while walking back from the bathroom.

Jungle Warfare

combat fought in the dense thick forest/jungles of Vietnam

The Things They Carried

the stuff all the men in the platoon carried with them