The Things They Carried

1
The Things They Carried

• Tim OBrien

2
The Things Writers Carry

• Preliminary thoughts
• Memory can be highly unreliable. Our remembered
  truths may be completely different from the
  remembered truths of those who grew up in the
  very same house.
• Humor is the writers armor against hard emotions
  and therefore, in the case of memoir, one more
  distortion of the truth.

3
The Things Writers Carry

• From author Toni Morrison
• The act of imagination is bound up with memory.
  They straightened out the Mississippi River in
  places to make room for houses and live-able
  acreage. Occasionally, the river floods these
  places. Floods is the word they use, but its
  not flooding, its remembering. Remembering where
  it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and
  is forever trying to get back where it was.

4
The Things Writers Carry

• Writers are like that remembering where we were,
  what valley we ran through, what the banks were
  like, the light that was there and the route back
  to our original place. It is emotional memory
  the rush of our imagination is the flooding.
• All of us live with a life history in our mind.
  We are storytelling creatures. The crux is how
  well we tell our stories and how well we
  recognize that there is no true history.

5
The Things They Carried

• Themes
• Physical and emotional burdens
• Fear of shame as motivation
• Subjection of truth to storytelling

6
The Things They Carried

• Storytelling
• Fact and fiction is blurred The objective truth
  of a war story is less important than the act of
  telling the story itself.
• Technical facts around any one event are less
  important than the subjective truth of what the
  war meant to the soldiers and how it changed
  them.
• Notes adapted from Jill Collela,Wiley Publishing
  Inc. New York 2001

7
The Things They Carried

• The books different storytellers are designed
  to relate the truth of experience.
• OBrien Stories contain immense power tellers
  and listeners confront past together and share
  otherwise unknowable experiences.
• By telling stories, O'Brien is able to gain some
  distance from the harrowing experience he had in
  Vietnam. But while stories are a coping
  mechanism, they are also blueprints for
  communicating in life.

8
On The Rainy River

• Explores the role of shame in war and
  embarrassment as a motivating factor.
• This story is a most obvious example of OBriens
  fiction-as-truth Its point is to convey an
  emotional truth, not facts.
• He clearly puts the reader in his position as a
  young, naïve person facing a difficult decision.

9
On the Rainy River

• How the Vietnam War differed from other wars
• Average age of soldier 19 (WW II 26)
• In Vietnam War, many went to college to avoid war
• Men had to explain why they served not serving
  was acceptable
• Soldiers served a tour of duty
• In combat, there was no safety in the rear
  there was no rear in Vietnam
• There was little support for either the soldier
  or the war from the general population of the
  U.S.
• Vietnam had not directly threatened the U.S.

10
On the Rainy River

• The war was fought in a country whose history,
  culture, religions, and values were quite
  different from ours
• The wars goal was unclear There was never a
  clear indication that America would do whatever
  was necessary to win
• The officers in charge were often inexperienced
  and/or inconsistent. Fragging occurred
• Fighting casualties exceeded those in WW II
• Territory was taken, lost, and taken repeatedly
• There were no clear combat zones there was no
  front
• No emotional support was offered returning
  soldiers

11
On the Rainy River

• All of the soldiers did not return home at the
  same time
• No war since the Civil War caused such a split in
  U.S. public opinion, leading to social unrest and
  violence
• Vietnam was the first war the U.S. lost
• The war was broadcast on TV daily
• Drug use was part of the combat scene problems
  in the military included financial corruption,
  racism, low morale, theft, murder, and suicide

12
The Things They Carried

• Hand grenades smoke bombs
• M-16 assault rifle (7.5 pounds, unloaded
• with 8.5 to 14 pounds of ammunition)
• M-16 maintenance gear 1 pound
• Hatchet (7 pounds) flashlight (2 pounds)
• Poncho (2 pounds) Steel helmet (5 pounds)
• Flak jacket (7 pounds) jungle boots (7 pounds)
• M-60 (23 pounds, unloaded 10-17 pounds of ammo)
• PRC-25 radio (26 pounds) Medic gear 20 pounds
• M-79 grenade launcher 6 pounds 50 pounds of
  ammo

13
The Things They Carried

• C-rations 2 lbs P-38 can openers
• Pocket knife 1 lb Heat tabs
• Watch Dog tags
• Insect repellent Gum/candy
• Cigarettes/lighters salt tablets
• Iodine tablets Kool-Aid packets
• Sterno/matches Sewing kits
• 2 or 3 canteens of water
• Total 15 to 20 pounds, depending on the man

14
The Things They Carried

• The Things They (and we) Carry
• The metaphor of carrying gives weight to the
  idea that the things we carry whether physical
  or emotional enable us to navigate lifes
  inconsistencies.

15
The Things They Carried

• The notion that people carry heavy emotional
  burdens is a universal one OBrien switching
  between first-person narrative and third-person
  throughout the book reflects his belief that by
  telling his own story, he is telling the story of
  many.

16
The Things They Carried and Platoon

• Possible character parallels
• TTTC Platoon
• OBrien Taylor
• Lt. Cross Lt. Wolfe
• Kiowa King
• Lavendar Gardner
• Rat Kiley Rhah
• Azar Bunny
• Henry Dobbins Big Harold

17
Love

• Lt. Cross shows how repression of painful
  memories can be essential for survival.
• The feelings behind the story are the investment
  for the reader, rather than what is truth and
  fiction.
• In a twist, we dont know if what Cross has asked
  OBrien to leave out of the story is in there or
  not.

18
Love

• At the end of the Love chapter, Jimmy Cross
  says, Dont mention anything about but is
  cut off by OBrien. What two questions does this
  create for the reader about the story and about
  OBrien?
• The ambiguous ending reflects veterans
  difficulty in articulating traumatic experiences
  a task storytelling can address.

19
Spin

• The unconnected anecdotes here echo the
  fragmentation of the war experience.
• War has no winners or losers, unlike Dobbins and
  Bowkers game of checkers.
• OBriens relationship with his daughter,
  Kathleen, reveals the importance of storytelling
  to deliver the past into the future, for giving
  perspective and understanding.

20
Spin

• Jot down these important quotes
• As a writer, You take your material where you
  find it, which is in your life, at the
  intersection of past and present.
• Remembering leads to a story, which makes it
  forever. Thats what stories are for. Stories are
  for joining the past to the future. Stories are
  for eternity, when memory is erased, when there
  is nothing to remember except the story.

21
Enemies/Friends

• OBrien presents a fight within a war a
  microcosm to the macrocosm of Vietnam.
• The meaninglessness of the fight It was over a
  stolen jackknife.
• This is a metaphor for the meaninglessness the
  men feel over the war itself.
• This is seen when Strunk laughs when Jensen
  breaks his own nose After all, Strunk thinks
  Jensen was justified in his fight with Strunk,
  because Strunk does admit he stole Jensens
  jackknife.

22
Enemies/Friends

• However, the fight is more personal and emotional
  than the war Strunks nose is broken because his
  enemy relentlessly beats him and crushes his
  nose.
• Strunk loses his leg for no reason other than
  where he stepped. He could not have known or
  prevented it.
• So in the fight between the two men, the enemy is
  visible and is physical. Conversely, the war
  often lacks a visible opponent.

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How To Tell A True War Story

• This chapter really blurs the distinction between
  truth and fiction. OBrien immediately brands the
  story as true then he states later that none of
  it happened.
• He doesnt lie He changes the definition of
  telling the truth.
• Lemons sister doesnt get the truth of the
  story Kiley is telling her Kileys brotherly
  love for Lemon.
• On one hand, Lemons sister doesnt respond to
  Kileys letter on the other hand, her response
  is that she doesnt answer Kileys letter.

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How to Tell A True War Story

• According to University of Maryland professor
  Jill Colella, who has critiqued the novel, this
  suggests a meaning that can be applied to readers
  and hearers of stories that they can tell when
  stories hold a truth, whether the events of the
  story actually occurred, based on certain
  criteria.
• Colella says that according to OBrien, then, the
  truth of a story depends solely on the audience
  hearing it told.
• If it strikes you as true, then it is.

25
The Dentist

• This chapter forces us to reconsider how and why
  we honor the memory of war and war heroes.
  OBrien finds it difficult to mourn Lemons
  death, because Lemon did not earn that right
  when he was alive.
• OBrien sees Lemon as someone who strove for some
  false image of machismo Lemon was still afraid
  of the dentist, even after he had his healthy
  tooth pulled, but he was more afraid of losing
  face with his fellow soldiers an image he worked
  hard to maintain.
• So the issue for OBrien In a war, we tend to
  mourn people because they died, not for how they
  lived.

26
Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

• A spooky one with a compelling metaphor
• This is not truly a story of Mary Annes
  transformation Its more about storytelling and
  the loss of innocence.
• Many of the soldiers are represented by Mary
  Anne They, too, left America as young and naïve,
  and like her, they lost their innocence in
  Vietnam. Eventually, they all crossed over into
  the dark side of the war experience, and their
  innocent selves were lost for good.
• The reason why the soldiers listening to the
  story want Kiley to get it right and to tell
  them how it ends is two-fold One, endings
  complete stories and make them true. Secondly,
  the men want to subconsciously know how the
  story will end for them.
• Will they, too, go to the dark side and never
  return?

27
Stockings, Church

• In Stockings, Dobbins wears his girlfriends
  panty hose around his neck because they symbolize
  love, home and most of all, some kind of mojo
  that comes from both.
• Even after his girlfriend breaks up with him,
  Dobbins wears the pantyhose to keep this state of
  mind, rather than memories of the girl. They will
  continue to protect him as long as he believes in
  them.

28
Stockings, Church

• The soldiers have blurred the boundaries between
  the war and church something Dobbins and Kiowa
  think is wrong.
• When Dobbins imitates the hand-washing action, he
  doesnt know what it means, only that he is
  trying to make amends for having violated this
  separation.

29
The Man I Killed

• OBrien copes with his feelings about the young
  mans death by taking himself out of the
  narration He focuses on physical characteristics
  of the young man, rather than on OBriens own
  feelings of guilt.
• The reader can only infer what OBrien is
  feeling.
• He creates an entire identity for the young man
  sharing many similarities with his own life in
  coming to grips with his own mortality.

30
Ambush, Style

• Recounts The Man I Killed in first person He
  is much more direct about it, in part, for
  Kathleens benefit.
• He has a clear memory of the mans actual death
  that only time and distance has allowed to
  crystallize.
• In Style, just as in Church, the soldiers try
  to derive meaning from something they dont
  understand in this case, the girls dancing amid
  the destruction and human carnage.
• Its confusing. Dancing is purposeful, graceful,
  and meaningful everything the war is not.
• When Azar dances, he may be mocking the girl Or
  he may be trying to derive meaning from the dance
  (and hence, the war).

31
Speaking of Courage

• Intricate storytelling structure here Whereas
  OBrien writes in past tense, separating his
  current self from the self that fought in the
  war, Bowker is unable to use storytelling as a
  way to deal with his war trauma.
• Bowker has no one to talk to as a way to leave
  his war experiences behind him.
• Compelling metaphor The sewage field represents
  an unpleasant, meaningless battle that none of
  the soldiers can escape literally Kiowa, and
  symbolically Bowker, whose wading into the lake
  he drives around (and even tasting it) signals
  his desire to return to Vietnam to change the
  events that ended Kiowas life.
• (Collela) Bowker represents the paradox between
  the need for emotional truth and the pain many
  feel in expressing it.

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Notes

• Its here where we get to the crux of the
  question, What is patriotism? (page 156).
• This is O'Brien's search for authenticity in
  storytelling Most of his writing comes from the
  simple need to talk, illustrating that his
  writing is his chosen form of relief from mental
  anguish.
• As such, his success in dealing with his mental
  anguish is directly related to his success as a
  storyteller By telling stories, you objectify
  your own experiences. You separate it from
  yourself. You pin down certain truths.
• Bowker has no such avenue for relief.

33
In The Field, Good Form

• No one emerges emotionally intact from the three
  perspectives of In The Field.
• Lt. Cross blames himself for not going against
  orders and setting up camp in a better spot.
• The young, unnamed soldier (Tim?) blames himself
  for his carelessness, turning on the flashlight
  to show Kiowa a picture of the young soldiers
  girlfriend.
• When the men discover Kiowas body, they are
  overwhelmed by the sense of bad luck that
  caused his death bad luck that could have
  claimed (and still could claim) any one of them.

34
In the Field Good Form

• Consider how this same luck visited the Viet
  Cong soldier OBrien killed in The Man I
  Killed.
• Reality, randomness, luck, and war overwhelm all
  of them.
• Good Form OBrien distinguishes, again, the
  difference between story truth and happening
  truth.

35
Field Trip

• The scene in the field is the climax of the
  story.
• OBrien finds a sense of closure through the
  physical act of wading into the water and
  depositing Kiowas moccasins.
• Still, he is unable to explain this to his
  daughter, Kathleen, who represents the future.
• OBriens lingering questions about Vietnam 20
  years later Is it a country, a memory, both, or
  neither?

36
The Ghost Soldiers

• This story, and the one that follows (Night
  Life), both deal with how the night affects
  people It is at night that OBrien holds the
  most hatred for, and plots his revenge against,
  Jorgenson.
• It is at night that Vietnam comes alive not the
  country but the war experience.
• Part of OBriens bitterness is in the
  embarrassment of his wound (in the rear end) and
  the fact that he almost died, but more in the
  loss of his life as a combat soldier. He
  especially misses the brotherhood that he is now
  on the outside of, looking in.

37
The Ghost Soldiers

• OBrien acts out his need for making war on
  Jorgenson but in the process alienates Sanders,
  while befriending Azar.
• The reader realizes now how much OBrien
  changed He is no longer fighting for an ideal
  but for pure, raw, revenge.
• In the end, OBrien tremblinghugging
  himself, rocking has lost his friends, his
  memories, and his moral superiority. He is
  defeated.

38
Night Life

• This story illustrates the fine emotional and
  mental stability line that the soldiers walk.
• The change in routine from day to night maneuvers
  pushes Kiley over that line and deep into
  himself, where he battles visions, terror, and
  obsession.
• OBrien goes to great lengths to show the impact
  of the night routine dark so thick that it
  creates an inability to blink.
• When Kiley shoots himself in the foot in order to
  get out of there, its unclear if he does so
  because he has gone crazy or if he does so to
  prevent himself from going crazy.

39
The Lives of the Dead

• This is the story that encapsulates the novels
  purpose writing in order to make sense of life,
  especially in relation to others deaths.
• Linda is OBriens first love and his first
  realization that fiction can overcome death.
• When this beautiful, little child dies, her
  innocence, and OBriens, dies with her.
• Lindas visits to OBriens dreams begin a
  life-long process of addressing difficulty
  through imagination and illusion an ability he
  carried with him to Vietnam.
• By keeping Linda alive as well as his Vietnam
  comrades OBrien is keeping himself alive.

40
The Lives of the Dead

• Important quotes from Tim OBrien
• The act of writing is an act of compassion. It
  entails sympathy for human frailties, weaknesses,
  and strengths sympathy for a human condition in
  which we can never be that to which we aspire.
• Novels are made out of a sense of outrage at the
  world, the way the world treats us the way we
  treat ourselves the mistakes we make ourselves.
  Books come out of that sort of thing, that
  tension to make things better.
• The thing about a story is that you dream it as
  you tell it, hoping that others might then dream
  along with you ... There is the illusion of
  aliveness.

41
Test Review

• 65 total points
• 15 multiple choice 8 true or false 8 matching
  questions
• 4 short-answer questions (9 points) 2
  long-answer questions (25 points total)
• Study your notes
• Emphasis on OBriens approach to storytelling
  (its purpose, its value, etc.)
• Know the characters well, especially those in
  Alpha Company.

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Test Review

• Key chapters to review
• Speaking of Courage
• In the Field
• Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong
• Notes
• Spin
• Lives of the Dead

43
Review

• 1. A former Alpha Company soldier, ______
  committed suicide by hanging himself.
• Norman Bowker
• 2. Reunited with OBrien after the war, _____
  was still preoccupied with his unrequited love
  for Martha.
• Jimmy Cross
• 3. __________, a soldier near Song Tra Bong, had
  not anticipated the effects of the Vietnam
  experience on his girlfriend.
• Mark Fossie

44
Review

• 4. This character, _________, is the first whom
  OBrien could see in his dreams.
• Linda
• 5. This soldier, ________, was OBriens
  confidante, especially after OBrien killed the
  unnamed Vietnamese soldier.
• Kiowa
• 6. As a medic, this soldier experienced a failure
  and nerve, but _______ later made amends with
  OBrien.
• Bobby Jorgenson

45
Review

• 7. As a talisman, _______ carried his
  girlfriends pantyhose around his neck.
• Henry Dobbins
• 8. An Alpha Company medic, _________ could not
  handle the strain of war and began to
  hallucinate.
• Rat Kiley

46
Review

• 9. This character, _________, stole a jackknife
  from fellow soldier Dave Jensen.
• Lee Strunk
• 10. While goofing around with Rat Kiley, ______
  was killed by accident.
• Curt Lemon
• 11. This character, ________, believes that
  OBrien should forget the war and write about
  something else.
• Kathleen

47
Review

• 12. To get revenge on Bobby Jorgenson, OBrien
  planned with ____________.
• Azar
• 13. A former Alpha Company soldier, __________
  returns to Vietnam and brings Kiowas moccasins
  with him.
• OBrien
• 14. Because of a pact the two soldiers made,
  __________ was relieved when he learned that Lee
  Strunk died from his battle wounds.
• Dave Jensen