The Things They Carried
Research Paper Book Exam
Directions:
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You may use any handwritten notes you have taken during the reading process.
You must answer all five of the questions.
Each question will be worth 20 points for a total of 100 points.
The grade will count for English class only.
You should use at least one example in each answer.
When answering one question, you must do your best at not overlapping the answer from
another question. A little overlap (the mentioning of a character or a setting in more than
one answer) is fine, but the purposes of this exercise – to prove that you read and
understand the entire book and to start working toward some of the main ideas you will
research - are frustrated if there is too much overlap. Thus, your grade would be lowered
accordingly.
1. What is the meaning of these final paragraphs of the book? How is the meaning of this final
page related to what happens earlier in the story? Explain as many links as you can find and
develop them persuasively.
“Linda smiled at me.
‘Anyhow, it’s not so bad,’ she said. ‘I mean, when you’re dead, you just have to be yourself.’
She stood up and put on her red stocking cap. ‘This is stupid. Let’s go skate some more.’
So I followed her down to the frozen pond. It was late and nobody else was there, and we held
hands and skated almost all night under the yellow lights.
And then it becomes 1990. I’m forty-three years old, and a writer now, still dreaming Linda alive
in exactly the same way. She’s not the embodied Linda; she’s mostly made up, with a new
identity and a new name, like the man who never was. Her real name doesn’t matter. She was
nine years old. I loved her and then she died. And yet right here, in the spell of memory and
imagination, I can still see her as through ice, as if I’m gazing into some other world, a place
where there are no brain tumors and no funeral homes, where there are no bodies at all. I can
see Kiowa, too, and Ted Lavender and Curt Lemon, and sometimes I can even see Timmy skating
with Linda under the yellow floodlights. I’m young and happy. I’ll never die. I’m skimming
across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing
loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I
realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story” (O’Brien 232-233).
2. Choose one of the following minor characters. Explain the importance of that character to the
life of the narrator.
a. Lt. Cross
b. Rat Kiley
c. Curt Lemon and/or Ted Lavender
d. Norman Bowker
e. Bobby Jorgensen
3. Compare and contrast any two of the following settings from the book, with attention to
developing how these two settings help the reader understand one of the main themes in the
book:
a. The Armour meat-packing plant in Worthington Minnesota
b. The Tip Top Lodge on the Rainy River that separates America from Canada.
c. Being out on patrol in the Vietnam jungle
d. Searching through tunnels made by the Viet Cong
e. The shit field next to the Song Tra Bong
f. The lake back home that Norman Bowker drives around all evening of July 4th.
g. Headquarters Company – Supply Battalion (where the narrator gets sent after being
shot the second time)
4. Why does Tim O’Brien go through such lengths to make sure that the reader knows that he is
writing a piece of fiction, and why does he also indicate how hard it is to tell a “true” war story?
Explain, using specific examples. It would be a good idea to make references to other first
person narratives we have studied this year.
5. We have read several examples this year of characters who are outsiders and who are trying to
reinvent themselves, such as Autobiography of Ben Franklin, The Narrative Life of Frederick
Douglass; The Awakening; Passing; and The Great Gatsby. To what extent is The Things They
Carried a story about outsiders and reinvention? Explain, using specific examples not used
elsewhere on your exam.