Name _______________________________
The Things They Carried: WAR STORIES
Answer the following questions as you read
“Enemies” (pages 62-64), “Friends” (pages 65-66),
“How to Tell a True War Story” (pages 67-85) and “The Dentist” (pages 86-88)
Note: gook is a derogatory name for an Asian. See handout of acronyms and vocabulary for other specific terms.
From “Enemies” and “Friends”:
1. What is the irony in Lee Strunk’s reaction when Dave asked him if they were now square?
2. Why does Lee’s death relieve Dave of an enormous weight.
From “How to Tell a True War Story”:
3. Why do you think Rat Kiley is so disappointed when Curt Lemon’s sister does not answer
his letter?
4. Why do you think she might not have written back?
5. The narrator gives ten features of a true war story. List them.:
a.
f.
b.
g.
c.
h.
d.
i.
e.
j.
Adapted from The Center for Learning.
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6. Why did the soldiers who were in the fog-shrouded mountains for seven straight nights
waste napalm and trillions of dollars of fire power to burn the mountain?
7. What does Mitchell Sanders say is the moral of the incident? Note the page number. What
do you think he means?
8. How do you explain Rat Kiley’s cruelty to the baby water buffalo and then cradling his rifle
and crying as he walks away?
9. What does the narrator mean when he says that proximity to death makes you more alive?
10. The narrator explains that true fads and events may actually be a lie and that fictional events
may be “truer than truth.” What do you think he means?
11. Are Tim O’Brien’s stories in this book fiction or non-fiction? Are they true?
12. Why does the woman cry over the buffalo story but like the grenade story? What is the
deeper meaning of his saying that she wasn’t listening? What didn’t she hear/realize?
13. What does the narrator mean by saying that the story was a love story?
The following questions are from “The Dentist” (pages 86-88)
14. How is the narrator’s impression of Curt Lemon different from Rat Kiley’s?
15. Why does the narrator tell a Curt Lemon story?
16. Why was Curt Lemon “all smiles” the next morning?