The Things They Carried
Which chapter marks Azar's transformation from an immature soldier who mocks death into a sensitive comrade who feels the tragedy of death acutely?
"In the Field"
Which chapter compares coping strategies men use?
"The Lives of the Dead" - compares coping strategies: men who shake hands with the dead and men who joke about cleaning up the corpses of their friends
Linda
(O'Brien's childhood love interest who dies at 9 years old from a brain tumor) o Shows O'Brien's loss of innocence o With her, he experiences love and death for the first time o She represents the promise of childhood at first - going to the movies, eating ice cream o Later reveals her bald head and corpse - Linda and O'Brien's innocence is lost forever o Her death is more tragic than Lavender, Lemon, and Kiowa - she is completely innocent Like Bowker, Linda gives O'Brien a reason to write. In his vision of her after her death, Linda tells O'Brien to "stop crying," that death "doesn't matter." Indeed, O'Brien uses writing to tell the story of Linda, to give her life again, or as he puts it, to "save Linda's life." Writing is creative; it counters the destruction of death and war. Bowker's need to have O'Brien tell his story is the same as O'Brien's need to remember Linda through writing, which is itself an act that sustains life by animating the dead.
Ted Lavender
****Carries marijuana and tranquilizers.**** A young, scared soldier in the Alpha Company. Lavender is the first to die in the work. He makes only a brief appearance in the narrative, popping tranquilizers to calm himself. Because his death, like Lemon's, is preventable, it illustrates the expendability of human life in a senseless war. There are many ironise in his death: 1. Ted Lavender always carries tranquilizers and marijuana because he doesn't want to feel any pain. However, he ironically dies a very painful death as he is shot in the head. 2. He was the soldier who was afraid of death, but died first. 3. Ted Lavender was carrying a lot of weight for his given height, so the reader would think since he is the most prepared, he would survive longest. However, he dies first. This character's death makes Lt. Cross feel guilty and responsible for his death, causes him to burn the letters from Martha because he thinks they are a distraction.
Norman Bowker - What did he carry?
***Carries a diary and the thumb that Mitchell Sanders cut off a soldier.*** Quiet and laid back, the kind that "didn't want to bother anybody." O'Brien describes Bowker as someone who "did not know what to feel." Bowker himself could not find words to describe his feelings, and instead turns to O'Brien to tell his story for him. A guy who embodies the damage that the war can do to a soldier after the war is over. During the war, Bowker is quiet, and Kiowa's death has a profound effect on him. Bowker's letter to O'Brien in demonstrates the importance of sharing stories in the healing process. (Wanted O'Brien to write a real war story that encapsulates the difficulty of transitioning to home life.") Bowker embodies the paradox between the need for emotional truth and the pain many feel in expressing it. He teaches O'Brien how to articulate pain through storytelling, the particular pain of Kiowa's death to the wastefulness of war. Without this experience of articulating trauma through storytelling, O'Brien asserts that he too could have been trapped in the same emotional paralysis as Bowker. Bowker also helps O'Brien realize how writing helped him to avoid a similar fate. Later hung himself in the locker room of a YMCA.
Lee Strunk
***Carries a sling-shot and tanning lotion*** Minor character - Dies in a helicopter after getting shot. 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.
Kiowa
***Carries hunting hatchet, New Testament, and Moccasins.***** Kiowa is a good guy, and the "emotional compass.": intelligent, brave, soft-spoken, good hunter. He helps his friends rationalize the war and their actions - can be seen when he helps O'Brien through the killing of a young Vietnamese soldier. As a Baptist and Native American, be brings new perspectives to the story. His death is symbolic of the uselessness and tragedy of war. He dies in a gruesome way, in a sewage field, which ironically shows the waste of war. ****************There is NO DIGNITY in Kiowa's death, he becomes another casualty in a war that strips men of their identities and turns them into statistics.************
Rat Kiley - Iconic for being a what?
***Carries medical kit, brandy, comic books, and M&M's**** The platoon's medic - O'Brien has great respect for Kiley, especially when he is shot for a second time and is mistreated by another medic, Bobby Jorgenson. Level headed and kind, but later succumbs to the stress of the war when he blows off his toe so he can leave his post. He is known as an unreliable story teller, because he exaggerates - but people still like hearing his stories. -Demonstrates the limits of what a man can take. (Shoots himself in the foot)
Lt. Jimmy Cross
***Carries picture of Martha, letters, a pebble from the beach for good luck.**** Represents the effects responsibility has on those who are too immature to handle it. In college, he signs up for the war because his friends are doing it and its worth a few credits. As a result, when in battle, he is unsure in everything he does. He is a bad leader because his training taught him how to march and keep guns clean, not how to adapt to his environment and his men. He was the leader of Alpha Company but never a true member of it, separating himself from his men in order to maintain a position of authority that he could never maintain if not for his superior rank Feels guilt and shame about what happened and what he put his soldiers through. Cross's guilt is apparent every time one of his men dies, but it is most apparent in Ted Lavender's death. Right before Lavender is killed, Cross allows himself to be distracted by the thoughts of Martha, who sends him photographs and writes letters that never mention the war. He can be viewed as a Christ figure. Like Christ, who suffers for his fellow men, Cross suffers for the sake of the entire platoon. He makes a personal sacrifice, burning the letters from Martha so that her presence will no longer distract him.
Dave Jensen
***Carries soap, dental floss, foot powder, vitamins, ear plugs**** Minor character He and Lee Strunk are foils. He breaks his own nose. Jensen's relief after Strunk's death shows the perspective soldiers are forced to assume. Instead of mourning the loss of his friend, Jensen is glad the pact the two made is now non-existent.
Mitchell Sanders
***Carries unit's radio, brass knuckles, and condoms*** OBSESSED WITH THE TRUTH - ALWAYS TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WAHT THE MORAL IS. It doesn't matter what the moral is, there just has to be one! He is the Radio Telephone Operator, so he's all about communication........... Mitchell Sanders is a likable soldier and a devoted friend. Voice of wisdom and soldierly experience. TElls stories about how other soldiers react to Vietnam. He has a sense of irony, picking lice off his body and sending them back to his draft board in Ohio, and a sense of loyalty, refusing to help O'Brien inflict revenge on the medic Bobby Jorgenson and standing by Rat Kiley in his decision to escape Vietnam by shooting himself in the toe. He also has a strong sense of justice—when Cross leads the troops into the sewage field where Kiowa eventually meets his death, Sanders refuses to forgive him because the evidence shows that he should have known better. Sanders often applies this pragmatism to his storytelling. He believes that a good war story often lacks a moral and that sometimes a story without commentary or explanation speaks for itself because he understands that war stories are never simple or cut-and-dried. In his story about the platoon driven crazy by phantom voices in the jungle, for example, he offers no explanation of what the voices were. Instead, he focuses on the soldiers' experience of the voices, which he considers more relevant and concrete. Sanders is in this way a mouthpiece for O'Brien, who presents the stories that constitute The Things They Carried not to teach a moral but to portray an experience.
"The Things They Carried" Brief Summary
-Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, of the Alpha Company, carries various reminders of his love for Martha, a girl from his college in New Jersey who has given no indication of returning his love. -The narrator, Tim O'Brien, describes the things all the men of the company carry. -Cross becomes distracted by wondering whether or not she is a virgin. On the way back from going to the bathroom, Lavender is shot. -While the soldiers wait for the helicopter to carry Lavender's body away, they smoke his marijuana. -The morning after Lavender's death, in the steady rain, Cross crouches in his foxhole and burns Martha's letters and two photographs. He plans the day's march and concludes that he will never again have fantasies. -Kiowa marvels at how Lavender fell so quickly and how he was zipping up his pants one second and dead the next. He finds something unchristian about the lack of drama surrounding this type of death and wonders why he cannot openly lament it like Cross does.
"Speaking of Courage" Brief Summary
-Norman Bowker returns to Iowa after the war and on the 4th of July he drives his dad's car around the lake reminiscing about high school, his old girlfriend, and his life -He won 7 medals -Almost won the Silver Star, but blew his chance -The night the platoon settled in a field along the river, a group of Vietnamese women ran out to discourage them, but Lieutenant Jimmy Cross shooed them away. When they set up camp, they noticed a sour, fishlike smell. Finally, someone concluded that they had set up camp in a sewage field. Meanwhile, the rain poured down, and the earth bubbled with the heat and the excess moisture. Suddenly, rounds of mortar fell on the camp, and the field seemed to boil and explode. When the third round hit, Kiowa began screaming. Bowker saw Kiowa sink into the muck and grabbed him by the boot to pull him out. Yet Kiowa was lost, so Bowker let him go in order to save himself from sinking deeper into the muck.
"On the Rainy River" Brief Summary
-O'Brien says he has not told this story to his parents, siblings, or wife. -The day the draft notice is delivered, O'Brien thinks that he is too good to fight the war. Although his community pressures him to go, he resists making a decision about whether to go to war or flee. -O'Brien begins thinking seriously about fleeing to Canada, His conscience and instincts tell him to run. After describing a "physical rupture" in his chest, O'Brien cracks and drives to the Tip Top Lodge, along the Rainy River. He spends nearly a week with Elroy Berhdal, eating, hiking, and playing Scrabble. Berhdal knows something is wrong with O'Brien, but never brings the matter up. Berhdal even gives O'Brien two-hundred dollars for his work at the cabin. Berhdal takes O'Brien out on a fishing boat on the Rainy River. O'Brien stares at the shoreline of Canada and wonders if he should jump off the boat and escape the draft there. O'Brien suddenly bursts into tears and Berhdal pretends not to notice. The two continue not to speak, and Berhdal never brings up what is apparently bothering O'Brien. O'Brien silently concludes he will go to war not because he wants to, but because he is embarrassed not to. He then goes off to war.
"In the Field" Brief Summary
-The morning after Kiowa's death, the platoon goes in the sewage field with Jimmy Cross leading the way. He thinks that he made a mistake letting his men camp on this riverbank. He decides to write a letter to Kiowa's father saying what a good soldier Kiowa was. When the search for Kiowa's body gets underway on the cold, wet morning, Azar begins cracking jokes about "eating shit" Halfway across the field, Mitchell Sanders discovers Kiowa's rucksack, and the men begin wading in the muck, desperately searching for the body. Jimmy Cross finishes composing the letter in his head and reflects that he never wanted the responsibility of leadership in the first place—he signed up for Reserve Officers Training Corps without giving thought to the consequences. He blames himself for making the wrong decision, concluding that he should have followed his first impulse and removed the men from the field. The men find Kiowa's body wedged between a layer of mud, take hold of the two boots, and pull. Unable to move it, they call over Dobbins and Kiley, who also help pull. After ten minutes and more pulling, Kiowa's body rises to the surface covered with blue-green mud.
Scenes that demonstrate the juxtaposition of Beauty and Horror of War
1. When O'Brien killed the Vietnamese man Synopsis of the chapter: The chapter begins with O'Brien listing the physical attributes and possible characteristics of the man who O'Brien killed with a Grenade. He imagines that the man was neither a Communist, or a fighter, and hoped that the Americans would go away. He looks at his sunken chest and delicate fingers, and wonders if he was a scholar. Other boys might have teased him because he has delicate wrists, fingers, a love for math, and a woman's walk. Kiowa tells O'Brien to pull himself together, but he can't. Kiowa confesses that he doesn't know what O'Brien is going through. Kiowa takes a few of the young man's belongings, including a picture of a girl, then covers the body. All O'Brien can think about is the boy's daintiness and his eye looks like a star-shaped hole. 2. "His head was wrenched sideways, as if loose at the neck, and the dead young man seemed to be staring at some distant object beyond the bell shaped flowers along the trail." (123) a. Beauty vs. ugliness i. Contrast of images is ironic, suggesting that among the tragedy of death, there is beauty ii. The presence of the blue flowers suggests that as time goes on, even after unspeakable tragedies iii. After O'Brien killed the soldier, the flower didn't shrivel up and die 1. This is a story about the beauty of life instead of the ugliness of death OR O'Brien tells Curt Lemon's death as a love story. Despite its gruesomeness, evident by O'Brien's graphic recounting of the situation, he describes the scene as beautiful, focusing on the sunlight rather than the carnage. Blood and carnage are never even discussed, not even as O'Brien and Dave Jensen are forced to shimmy up the tree in order to throw down Curt Lemon's body parts. The way O'Brien describes this action, and the death in general, is unspecific and detached. His storytelling functions as a salve that allows him to deal with the complexity of the war experience, so much even as to turn the story of Curt Lemon from a war story to a love story.
Curt Lemon
A childish and careless member of the Alpha Company who is killed when he steps on a rigged mortar round. Though O'Brien does not particularly like Lemon, Lemon's death is something O'Brien contemplates with sadness. The preventability of his death and the irrational fears of his life—as when a dentist visits the company—point to the immaturity of many young American soldiers in Vietnam. He even makes a dentist pull a healthy tooth from his mouth to prove to everyone that he is not afraid of dentists.Pulls crazy stunts for the trill of danger.
Azar
A foot soldier in Alpha Company, Azar is the wild man who enjoys war. He makes jokes about death, even the death of Kiowa. He mocks the movements of a traumatized Vietnamese girl dancing for fun and helps O'Brien play a cruel prank on Jorgenson. Azar's real allegiance is to war itself, not to his friends or his cause. His humanity is finally demonstrated near the end of the work, when he is forced to help unearth Kiowa's body from the muck of the sewage field. This moment of remorse proves that a breaking point is possible even for soldiers who use cruelty as a defense mechanism. Shows how people become resistant to violence and cruelty.
Where Bowker commits suicide and Mary Anne Bell becomes an agent of the wild, Kiley decides to remove himself from death by shooting himself in the foot. What does this symbolize?
All of these characters demonstrate how each person deals differently with the limits of innocence and human understanding when confronted by something as powerful and terrifying as war.
This character shows how war makes people resistant to brutality, violence, and cruelty
Azar
Elroy Berdahl
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. Other than providing basic necessities, such as food, shelter, and even money, he forced the O'Brien to confront his fear. He doesn't do this in a disruptive, harsh way, as Berhdal leads the author to the river and helps him physically and emotionally confront his conflict of escaping to Canada. The author is able to face his conflict between the prospect of freedom from the draft, and his moral integrity. The author is then compelled to act, not because Berhdal forced him, but because the old man showed him to importance of making a decision and facing his fears.
Symbolizes the young, inexperienced, "green soldier," or "FNG"
Bobby Jorgenson
Henry Dobbins
Carries extra rations, machine gun, girlfriend's pantyhose. "GENTLE GIANT." Machine gunner of the group, but carries around his girlfriend's pantyhose for good luck. (Representing superstition....) Dobbins' actions are driven by his sincerity, respectfulness, kindness, and faith. Dobbins is not a complex character; he exhibits a resounding genuineness in his actions, such as reprimanding Azar as he mimicked the dancing of a traumatized Vietnamese girl. Similarly, Dobbins' character and personality are revealed as he expresses his thoughts about joining the clergy when he and Kiowa discuss religion in "Church." Although he cannot understand the monks' language, he shows them kindness, respecting the sanctity of their church and speaking to them in what little Vietnamese he knows. O'Brien makes Dobbins a different model for a soldier than Azar, who is particularly savage and immature, and the others in Alpha Company: He is a great soldier, but he is neither bloodthirsty nor obnoxious. Dobbins represents the good intentions of middle America. He believes himself safe from harm as long as he keeps the pantyhose, and he is. For example, Dobbins trips a land mine — an event that usually kills — without the mine detonating. Dobbins attributes this miracle to his faith in the pantyhose, and through this event, he "turned [Alpha Company] into a platoon of believers." Dobbins demonstrates to us that what you believe in is not as important as simply believing in something, and he teaches his fellow soldiers to believe in his story of defying death.
Who is the foil to O'Brien?
Cross is a foil to "O'Brien" because Tim and Linda share a true love story and Cross and Martha do not. Martha is the object of Cross's sexual desire, Linda is not the subject of O'Brien's; Martha prevents Cross from being a soldier, Linda teaches Timmy about death. O'Brien's story is a true love story; Cross's is a war story; the primary function Cross serves in the novel is to demonstrate how sometimes stories are not cathartic, but sources of denial.
Died a beautiful death in the sunlight of the forest.
Curt Lemon
This character represents an outdated model of masculine heroism.
Curt Lemon
Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley
DEATHOF CURT LEMON CAUSES RAT KILEY'S LOSS OF INNOCENCE Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon are on patrol and goofing around like children and not fully realizing how dangerous the war was. This scene of childlike behavior between Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon quickly transitions into a moment of extreme violence in the form of Curt Lemon stepping on a booby trap and exploding. One moment Rat and Curt were goofing around and the next moment he was dead in an instant. The death of Curt would forever affect the mental state of Rat and later on in the story Rat would go crazy from the amount of death he encountered and he shot himself in the foot in order to go home.
"Enemies" Brief Summary
Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk get into a fistfight over a missing jackknife that Jensen thinks Strunk has stolen. Jensen breaks Strunk's nose, hitting him repeatedly and without mercy. Jensen breaks his own nose because he goes crazy thinking Strunk will break his nose out of anger.
"Friends" Brief Summary
Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk learn to trust each other. They resolve that if one gets seriously wounded, the other will kill him to put him out of his misery. In October, Strunk's lower leg gets blown off by a mortar round. Jensen kneels at his side and Strunk repeatedly begs not to be killed. Strunk is loaded into a helicopter, and later Jensen is relieved to learn that Strunk didn't survive the trip.
Their relationship demonstrates the close relationship between aggression and camaraderie. They serve as foil for one another, each bringing the other to the edge of loyalty and violence. They make an agreement to kill the other should he sustain a permanently debilitating wound.
Dave Jenson and Lee Strunk
Symbolizes "America itself, big and strong...slow of foot but always plodding along."
Henry Dobbins
After this character's death, this other character's relief shows the perspective soldiers are forced to assume.
Jensen is relieved after Strunk's death shows 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.
Which character's death has no dignity?
KIOWA'S DEATH HAS NO DIGNITY - he becomes another casualty in a war that strips men of their identities and turns them into statistics.************
Which character symbolize a naïve outsider?
Kathleen (O'Brien's daughter)
Symbolizes wastefulness of war
Kiowa
What is the purpose of O'Brian putting the moccasins in the lake?
Kiowa's moccasins and wading into the muck to deposit them there. Like Bowker dousing himself in his Iowa lake on the Fourth of July, O'Brien attempts a ritual cleansing.
Character that got shot in the head while going to the bathroom
Lavender
First dead body O'Brien saw
Linda
Which character shows O'Brien's first loss of innocence?
Linda
This character's story sets up the link between love and death.
Linda and O'Brien
Martha
Lt. Cross's love interest; he keeps her picture with him in Vietnam. She does not return his feelings. "O'Brien" suggests that she has a secret, possibly that she had been raped. She becomes a Lutheran missionary and does not want to be married. In "The Things They Carried," Martha represented the kind of psychological baggage that can get men killed. She was the psychological baggage carried by Lieutenant Cross, a distraction that interfered with his primary (unofficial) job of keeping his men alive.
Shows mental escapism - project one's mind somewhere else to escape from an undesirable situation.
Lt. Jimmy Cross
Mary Ann Bell
Mark Fossie's high school sweetheart. She arrives in Vietnam full of innocence, but gains respect for death and darkness of the jungle. According to legend, she 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.
This character refutes the idea that women serve only to comfort men.
Marry Anne o Fossie assumes that if he brings Mary Anne over to the relatively comfortable quarters he and his men keep, he will gain her comfort and companionship and she will remain unaffected by her surroundings. This fantasy is immediately shattered as Mary Anne is instantly curious about the things surrounding her—from the language and the locals to the ammunition and the procedures and finally the nature of war itself. o She is enlivened and empowered by war: its influence prompts her to make plans for future travel and to attempt to steer her path away from the life she earlier considered desirable. Ironically, although her soldier boyfriend brings her over to be a comfort while he is in the midst of war, in the end, Mary Anne's conversion makes her hungrier for adventure than he is.
Functions of female characters
Martha - psychological baggage that soldiers carry Kathleen - perspective of an outsider looking in on the war Linda - once innocence is gone, it can never come back (Takes away Timmy's innocence) Stories are the best ways to keep people alive. Mary Anne - transition young soldiers go through in Vietnam. Women serve as more than companions to men!!!!
Which character embodies the transformation that all young soldiers went through in Vietnam?
Mary Anne - She arrives in Vietnam not only unprepared for war but also not intending to take part in it. Her transformation from a pretty girl wearing culottes to an animal-like hunter who wears a necklace of tongues parallels and exaggerates the change all young men went through in Vietnam, such as "O'Brien" who went from a boy who liked school to the man who plotted a sadistic revenge against Jorgenson.
Which female character's actions links love and war?
Mary Anne's rapid descent from girlfriend and lover to warrior is the most blatant example in the novel of O'Brien linking love and war.
Purpose of Mary Anne
Mary Anne's story teaches us is that once innocence is lost, it can never be regained. Also the most real example of love in the novel - Mark Fossie brings his girl to him.
Bobby Jorgensen
Medic that replaces Rat Kiley. The second time O'Brien is shot, Jorgenson's incompetence causes O'Brien's desire for irrational revenge. Jorgenson's anger prompts him to kick O'Brien in the head for trying to scare him, but later apologizes and wants O'Brien to forgive him. When O'Brien is shot a second time, Jorgenson is too afraid to help him quickly, and O'Brien subsequently develops a hideous infection. O'Brien later gets revenge when he and Azar play mind tricks on Jorgenson.
Voice of soldierly experience and practical wisdom
Mitchell Sanders
Which character tells O'Brien that bobby Jorgenson is part of the group and O'Brien no longer belongs?
Mitchell Sanders
Which character vehemently blames Lt. Cross for Kiowa's death due to his incompetence as a leader?
Mitchell Sanders
Tim O'Brien
Narrator and protagonist. Work allows him to comment on the war/recount personal experiences. He enters the war a scared young man afraid of the shame that dodging the war would bring him. He is our guide to how extreme situations can turn a man into a solider who commits unspeakable acts. Sometimes another character tells the story, adding a human quality and gives us the chance to see it from different perspectives. He uses storytelling to face unspeakable horrors he witnessed as a soldier. (Storytelling has become a good coping mechanism for him.)
Represents "survivor guilt" - cannot forgive himself for outliving his friends who died in battle.
Norman Bowker
Which character embodies the paradox of the need for emotional truth and the pain many feel in expressing it?
Norman Bowker
List one of the factors of a "true war story."
O'Brien explains that a true war story is impossible to tell. He describes a story that Mitchell Sanders tells. Sanders recounts the experience of a troop that goes into the mountains on a listening post operation. He says that after a few days, the men hear strange echoes and music—chimes and xylophones—and become frightened. One night, the men hear voices and noises that sound like a cocktail party. After a while they hear singing and chanting, as well as talking monkeys and trees. They order air strikes and they burn and shoot down everything they can find. Still, in the morning, they hear the noises. So they pack up their gear and head down the mountain, where their colonel asks them what they heard. They have no answer.
"Field Trip" Brief Summary
O'Brien says that a few months after finishing the story "In the Field," he returns to the site of Kiowa's death with his daughter Kathleen and an intepreter. He says though the field does look familiar, it is not how he remembers it—everything, he says, is dry. Kathleen complains that the land stinks. She has just turned ten and has received the trip as a birthday gift intended to grant her insight into her father's history. But though she attempts to act tolerant, she is bored. She can't understand the war or why her father fought in it. As she and O'Brien approach the field, Kathleen is amused by the interpreter's display of magic tricks. O'Brien reflects on the way the field, which now looks so different, could have the power to swallow his best friend and part of his life. He goes for a quick swim, surprising and disgusting Kathleen, who threatens to tell her mother. But before he leaves the river, he takes Kiowa's moccasins and leaves them in the spot where he imagines his friend settled into the river. When O'Brien returns, Kathleen asks him if an old man in the field is mad at him. O'Brien says that all the anger is finished.
"Dentist" Brief Summary
O'Brien says that mourning Curt Lemon was difficult for him because he didn't know him well, but in order to avoid getting sentimental, he tells a brief Curt Lemon story. In February, the men are at work in an area of operations along the South China Sea. One day, an Army dentist is flown in to check the men's teeth. As the platoon sits, waiting to be checked one by one, Curt Lemon begins to tense up. Finally, he admits that in high school he had some bad experiences with dentists. However, a few moments later, when the dentist calls him, Lemon rises and goes into the tent. He faints before the dentist can even lay a finger on him. Later that night he creeps back to the dental tent and insists that he has a killer toothache. Though the dentist can't find any problem, Lemon demands his tooth be pulled. Finally, the dentist, shrugging, gives him a shot and yanks the perfectly good tooth out, to Lemon's delight.
"Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" Brief Summary
O'Brien says that the most enduring Vietnam stories are those that are between absolutely unbelievable and dull. Rat Kiley, who has a reputation for exaggeration, tells a story of his first assignment in the mountains of Chu Lai, in a protected and isolated area. One day, Eddie Diamond, the highest ranking man in his company and a pleasure-seeker, jokingly suggests that the area is so unguarded and seemingly safe that you could even bring a girl to the camp there. Six weeks later, Mark Fossie's elementary school sweetheart, Mary Anne Bell, arrives, carried in by helicopter with a resupply shipment. Mary Anne is curious and a fast learner—she picks up some Vietnamese and learns how to cook. When four casualties come in, she isn't afraid to tend to them, learning how to repair arteries and shoot morphine. She drops her fussy feminine habits and cuts her hair short. She begins coming home later and a few times not at all. One night she is missing, and when Fossie goes out looking, he discovers that she has been out the entire night on an ambush, where she refused to carry a gun. The next morning, Fossie and Mary Anne exchange words and seem to have reached a new understanding. They become officially engaged and discuss wedding plans in the mess hall, but over the next several nights it becomes clear that there is a strain on their relationship. Fossie makes arrangements to send her home but Mary Anne is not pleased with the prospect—she becomes withdrawn, and she eventually disappears. Mary Anne returns three weeks later, but she doesn't even stop at her fiancé's bunk—she goes straight to the Special Forces hut. Inside they see dozens of candles burning and hear tribal music. On a post near the back of the bunk is the head of a leopard—its skin dangles from the rafters. When Fossie finally sees Mary Anne she is in the same outfit—pink sweater, white blouse, cotton skirt—that she was wearing when she arrived weeks before. But when he approaches her, he sees a necklace made of human tongues around her neck. She insists to Fossie that what she is doing isn't bad and that he, in his sheltered camp, doesn't understand Vietnam. Kiley says that he never knew what happened with Mary Anne because three or four days later he received orders to join the Alpha Company. But he confesses that he loved Mary Anne—that everyone did. Two months after he left, when he ran into Eddie Diamond, he learned that Mary Anne delighted in night patrols and in the fire. She had crossed to the other side and had become part of the land, and disappeared into the mountains.
What is the purpose of the chapter - "lives of the dead?"
O'Brien uses "The Lives of the Dead" to illustrate that his war narrative has a larger purpose than simply showing readers what it was like to be in a war. We tell stories to keep the "dead alive" and to remember those people. We celebrate the dead by remembering them living.
Kathleen
O'Brien's daughter and a symbol of the naïve outsider. Although O'Brien alludes to having multiple children, Kathleen is the only one we meet. Her youth and innocence force O'Brien to try to explain the meaning of the war. Frustrated that he cannot tell her the whole truth, he is inspired by her presence since it forces him to gain new perspective on his war experience.
Represents the allure and danger of storytelling
Rat Kiley
Which character teaches us the limits of what a man can take?
Rat Kiley - shoots himself in the foot as a result of the company switching to a routine of night-movement for two weeks.
Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen
Represents how a war can distort social codes and morals -Transition from normal civilians to men who try to hurt each other over the smallest things -Jensen secretly hopes Lee Strunk will die so he won't have to hold up their pact and kill him -Unnecessary violence and brutality -Breakdown of a moral code
Lt. Cross and Lavender
Ted Lavender is shot in the head while Lt. Cross is being distracted by thoughts of Martha. He blames himself for his death, and it haunts him forever. Their relationship and Lavender's death shows the impact of carrying physiological baggage. If Cross hadn't been thinking about Martha back home, maybe Lavender would still be alive.
What is the significance of Mitchell Sanders' discussion with Henry Dobbins about a moral in connection with the thumb?
The significance of the moral they are discussing, is that there is no moral. The author is setting up a theme in the book, and is writing the story in a different way. As the reader, we want there to be a moral and we expect to see it. In this book, the author is trying to show that a war story is a fundamentally different story, so tries to match the difference in how it is told.
Curt Lemon and Ted Lavender
This shows that war takes the lives of innocent people innocent people being exposed by the horrors of war -Both did not understand war, had indeed only been there a short while. -Both were killed in freak accidents, nearly instantly (Lavender shot in the head, Lemon blown up by a mortar) -Both were just trying to stay alive
Describe the fight that Dave Jenson and Lee Strunk get into, and what it shows about their relationship.
• Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk get into a fistfight over a missing jackknife that Jensen thinks Strunk stole from him. Jensen breaks Strunk's nose, hitting him over and over again without mercy. Afterword, Jensen is nervous that Strunk will try to get revenge. Jensen goes crazy, day and night, always on edge and looking over his shoulder. Finally, one night, Jensen fires his gun in the air and calls Strunk's name. Jensen then borrows a pistol and uses it to break his own nose to even the score. The next morning, Strunk is amused by the news, and admits he did steal Jensen's jackknife. • Slowly, Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk learn to trust each other. They make a signed pact that if one of them gets seriously the injured, the other would kill him in order to put him out of his misery. However, Strunk's right leg gets blown off by a mortar. Strunk begs Jensen repeatedly not to be killed. Jensen promises he won't kill Strunk. Strunk is loaded into a helicopter, but later Jensen is relieved to learn that Strunk didn't survive the trip, and dies.
Story Truth v.s. Happening Truth
• Nearly everything in this book was invented • Why? o "I WANT YOU TO FEEL." o "I WANT YOU TO KNOW WHY STORY-TRUTH IS TRUER THAN HAPPENING TRUTH." o Stories make things seem real and current o Feelings instead of facts O'Brien's declaration that the truest part of this story is that it contains NO MORAL underscores the idea that the purpose of stories is to relate the truth of experience, not to manufacture false emotions in their audiences. This truth is often ugly, in contrast to the ideas of glory and heroism associated with war before Vietnam. In O'Brien's "true" war story, Kiley writes to Lemon's sister, and when she never responds, he calls her a "dumb cooze," only adding to the ugliness of the story.
"The Lives of the Dead" Brief Summary
• O'Brien has been at war for only four days when they are attacked by a village o Dave Jensen shakes a dead man's hand who's right arm was blown off, and tells O'Brien to do the same to "show a little respect for your elders." o O'Brien refuses and Kiowa tells him he did the right thing • Flashback - 1956 O'Brien is in love with nine-year-old Linda, a girl who wears a red cap everywhere • He goes to the movies with Linda, gets ice cream at Dairy Queen, then drops Linda off - he knew he was in love with her • Linda wears the ugly red cap every day, even though kids tease her for it • One day Nick Veenhof pulled off the cap revealing her bald, scared head o Linda has a brain tumor and after the summer, she dies o Nick broke the news to O'Brien and said his girlfriend had "kicked the bucket" o O'Brien goes to the funeral home with his dad and marvels how strange it is to see her body in a casket o O'Brien becomes obsessed with falling asleep because in dreams, he could make up stories of Linda, imagine her, and bring her back to life Linda comforted O'Brien and told him it didn't matter that she was dead • O'Brien says that in Vietnam, soldiers found ways to make the dead seem less dead - they kept them alive with stories o Ted Lavender using his tranquilizers every morning so that he wouldn't feel any pain o Curt Lemon trick-or-treating in his underwear in the middle of the night o Watching Kiowa sink to the muck of the Song Tra Bong • In stories, O'Brien concludes, the dead live Analysis: Though the work's final statement seems to have little to do with Vietnam, its relevance lies in its addressing of the intimate relationship between death and life. O'Brien uses "The Lives of the Dead" to illustrate that his war narrative has a larger purpose than simply showing readers what it was like to be in a war. Interspersed throughout this story are smaller stories about death in Vietnam that lead back to the story of O'Brien himself—a man who writes in order to make sense of his life, especially in relation to others' deaths. But at the forefront is the story of O'Brien's first love and of his first realization that fiction can overcome death.
Irony of Lemon's character
• The irony of Lemon's character is that Lemon so abjectly fears something as generally harmless as a dentist's visit and doesn't give a second thought to the potential harm of playing with a grenade. • Passes out at the dentist's office • He experiences discomfort for the sake of pride and for the assurance that he has acted like a man. In the morning, when he reveals that the dentist has pulled his tooth, he is proud, having defeated his prior nervous reaction—fainting—with an obvious display of manliness. But the threat that Lemon faces is not a real one; nothing is wrong with his teeth. The challenge that he confronts with bravado is entirely psychological.