The Things They Carried

When most people think about the idea of going to war, it is something with which they associate courage and bravery; alternately, people who run from or refuse to go to war are perceived as...

The collection of linked short stories The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien tells of a platoon of soldiers during the Vietnam War. In the title short story, "The Things They Carried," O'Brien...

At the beginning of "How to Tell a True War Story," Rat Kiley writes to the sister of his friend, Curt Lemon, who has just been killed in Vietnam. Kiley writes at length about what a fantastic...

In the linked series of fictionalized stories about his experiences during the Vietnam War The Things They Carried, author Tim O'Brien tells of Jim Cross's infatuation with Martha in the first...

Kiowa is undoubtedly sad at the death of Ted Lavender. But he expresses his emotions differently from that of the rest of the platoon. As well as sighing and shaking his head, he recounts the tale...

I believe this is a good quote to symbolize the tragedy of PTSD. The author deals with this a lot in The Things They Carried. But the symptom that most people know is that a person who has suffered...

In "On the Rainy River," Tim O'Brien tells of a young man just out of college who receives a draft notice to serve in the Army. Although the narrator has the name of "O'Brien," it's a fictional...

Throughout "Spin," O'Brien attempts to portray the lighter side of war while simultaneously examining the inconsistent, violent nature of conflict. O'Brien begins the chapter by saying, "The war...

I think he means that the war can be perceived in many different ways. The Things They Carried regularly shows various and even contradictory sides of the war, as well as the perspectives of...

Ted Lavender adopts an orphan puppy. He carries it around in his rucksack and feeds it with a plastic spoon. But the bond that develops between Ted and his puppy ends when Azar straps the poor...

According to the text, the platoon is scheduled to blow up an elaborate system of tunnels the Viet Cong utilizes in the Than Khe area. For the mission, each man in the platoon carries four blocks...

Elroy Berdhal appears in the fourth chapter of The Things They Carried, “On the Rainy River.” He plays an important, though very subtly expressed, role in helping Tim O’Brien decide what to do...

In Tim O'Brien's story, the "things" are both concrete and abstract. All the men in the platoon serving in Vietnam carry numerous physical objects as well as bear various emotional burdens. Grief,...

After Ted Lavender is killed, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross burns the letters he carries from a girl named Martha back home. Jimmy Cross feels that the letters have made him less aware of what has been...

The taking of the Vietnamese soldier’s thumb as a souvenir of war shows how war changes young men into uncivilized human beings. When Sanders is making the statement, “There it is”, he is talking...

The death of Ted Lavender serves a structural purpose in the story’s plot. Through relating the killing of one member of the company, author Tim O’Brien shows how all the unit’s other members...

Glad to help.

It is hard to tell a true war story because it is impossible to accurately capture all of the things that war actually is. O'Brien says that a "true war story is never moral. It does not instruct...

O'Brien writes of the soldiers, "they were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it." The soldiers are afraid to appear weak or vulnerable in the face of gunfire and potential...

In "The Man I Killed," Tim O'Brien, who portrays a fictionalized version of himself, describes the dead body of a Vietnamese soldier in great detail and writes about his own sensations after...

In the chapter "On the Rainy River," Tim describes how he decided to ultimately go to war in Vietnam. He was drafted, but it was a war he did not believe in (in fact, he wrote student newspaper...

In The Things They Carried, the men disguise their fear of death by using slang to refer to it, saying that a fellow soldier has been offed, lit up, or zapped while zipping. O'Brien also recalls...

Here is a list from the first chapter: mosquito repellent, marijuana, pocket knives, chewing gum, a girlfriend’s pantyhose, marijuana, tranquilizers, the New Testament, a compress in case of fatal...

As with all kinds of candy, M&Ms does not have any medical properties but can have what is called a placebo effect. This means that they can make people feel better without in any way affecting...

The young monk in the chapter "Church" makes a mysterious washing motion with his hands. The soldiers encounter an abandoned pagoda where the monks live in a tar paper shack and tend to their...

In a sense, when O'Brien says that each soldier carries "ghosts," he is not referring to any specific and identifiable thing or person. He's talking about the war itself, which has become a kind...

Imagery is comprised of descriptions of information that appeals to our senses; as such, it can be visual (sight), olfactory (smell), tactile (touch), gustatory (taste), and auditory (hearing). The...

Bob "Rat" Kiley is the medic of Alpha Company, the platoon of American soldiers in the Vietnam War in Tim O'Brien's 1990 short story collection, The Things They Carried. The narrator—a fictional...

In part, his inclusion of this experience is in keeping with the nature of the book as part memoir. Yes, it reveals some private aspects of his character to help us understand him better, but even...

In Tim O'Brien's short story "On the Rainy River," the narrator, also named Tim O'Brien, receives a draft notice to serve in Vietnam during the summer of 1968. He has been moderately opposed to the...

In Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, there is no shortage of symbols: the talismans that many troops carry symbolize the hope for survival and luck; the enemy is a collective emblem of death;...

The narrator of The Things They Carried, author Tim O'Brien, does not really feel much sorrow about Curt Lemon's death, so he tells a story about him instead. Curt Lemon was not afraid at all of...

The opening chapter of Tim O'Brien's novel The Things They Carried is an exhaustive list of the items carried by a small group of American soldiers in Vietnam. Amidst a litany of weapons and...

Shame is a central force that both arises from war and drives it. In listing the things that the soldiers carried, Tim O'Brien writes that the "soldier's greatest fear" is the fear of...

As we ponder Lieutenant Cross's personal war experience, we are led to question his obsession with Martha. Even though Cross suspects that Martha's affection for him may well be illusory, he...

Henry Dobbins carries the M60 machine gun, extra ammunition, canned peaches (which he's very fond of) and his girlfriend's pantyhose. The simplicity of his load, compared to the other men, is...

Examples of these techniques are ubiquitous in The Things They Carried. What might help would be to narrow down to a particular story. For example, "On the Rainy River" is a particularly strong...

Tim O’Brien’s autobiographical novel The Things They Carried has a Native American character named Kiowa. O’Brien doesn’t tell us a whole lot about what Kiowa carries with him in the war, but what...

"On the Rainy River" is a chapter in The Things They Carried in which Tim O'Brien explores his military draft and subsequent decision to fight in Vietnam as opposed to fleeing to Canada. As so many...

The primary themes of “The Lives of the Dead” are humor, resurrection, and storytelling. When O’Brien encounters the old man, dead in a pigpen, he “hadn’t yet developed a sense of humor” about the...

In this chapter, the men on patrol in Vietnam have just witnessed the death of Curt Lemon, who steps on a round of live ammunition. In an act of symbolic retribution, Rat Kiley kills a baby water...

"Truth goose" is a created phrase by Tim O'Brien that is partly American slang. It was used by the author of The Things They Carried, a work of fiction that is a collection of tales about his...

In the emotional story of “The Man I Killed” in The Things They Carried, O’Brien describes the first man he kills in the war. It is a terrifying time for O’Brien as he watches the dead body of the...

In "The Things They Carried", the baby water buffalo undergoes a significantly more traumatic experience than Curt Lemon. One of the unspoken points of the text is that Curt Lemon signed up to...

O'Brien's The Things They Carried addresses the purposes of storytelling and fiction to convey multiple, seemingly conflicting truths. The Vietnam war was the first war ever reported on using...

In the chapter titled “On the Rainy River” from his book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien composes an extremely long paragraph. This paragraph begins with the sentence “At the rear of the boat...