STORY PREPARATION
Introduction
At the bottom, all wars are the same because they involve death and
maiming and wounding, and grieving mothers, fathers, sons and
daughters.”
--Tim O’Brien
Tim O’Brien writes often about his own experiences in the Vietnam War and the way
those experiences reverberated in the lives of other soldiers. He was born in Minnesota in 1946,
in a small city that figures in his books, including The Things They Carried. After graduating
from Macalester College with a degree in political science, O’Brien was drafted into the Army
and sent to Vietnam, where he served from 1969-70. His division contained the unit involved in
the 1968 My Lai Massacre, the murder of hundreds of unarmed civilians, including women and
children, in South Vietnam. O’Brien said that when his unit arrived in the area, “we all wondered
why the place was so hostile. We did not know there had been a massacre there a year earlier.”
After his return from Vietnam, O’Brien attended graduate school, worked as a journalist
and began to write about his war experiences. He often blurs fiction and reality; while his work
includes actual details of situations he experienced, he also invents characters, manipulates time,
contradicts earlier passages and strives for an “emotional truth” that, he says, may not be the
same as the “happening truth” of actual occurrence.
He received the National Book Award in 1979 for Going After Cacciato. He teaches fulltime every other year at Texas State University; in alternate years, he teaches writing workshops
to graduate students.
“The Things They Carried” straddles the line between fact and invention; while some
details of a “grunt’s” life are clearly drawn from actual experience, the characters and scenes are
invented, and fictional techniques of repetition, imagery and interior monologue help create the
story’s haunting quality and its raw, unsentimental depiction of war’s effect on the young men
who take part in it.
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First impressions
After reading "The Things They Carried,” jot down your own questions, thoughts, confusions
and impressions. What intrigues you about this story? What catches your attention? Make some
notes on the story or in the space below.
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APPLYING THE METHOD
Poetics
Moments in the story where the use of metaphor, simile, repetition, rhythm or voice may prompt
discussion.
1. “They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in
plastic at the bottom of his rucksack.” (p. 366, line 2)
2. “…he would…spend the last hour of light pretending.” (p. 366, line 7)
3. “Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives, heat tabs,
wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes, salt tablets,
packets of Kool-Aid…” (p. 367, line 5)
4. “Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside
the village of Than Khe in mid-April.” (p. 367, line 15)
5. “As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother’s distrust of the
white man, his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated.” (p. 367, line 29)
6. “Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage...”
(p. 367, line 35)
7. “They were called legs or grunts. To carry something was to hump it.” (p. 368, line 8)
8. “…to hump meant to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive.”
(p. 368, line 11)
9. “…he could see the shadow of the picture-taker spreading out against the brick wall.” (p.
368, line 20)
10. “Her legs, he thought, were almost certainly the legs of a virgin, dry and without hair, the left
knee cocked and carrying her entire weight, which was just over 100 pounds.” (p. 368, line
26)
11. “…she turned and looked at him in a sad, sober way that made him pull his hand back, but he
would always remember the feel of the tweed skirt and the knee beneath it and the sound of
the gunfire that killed Bonnie and Clyde, how embarrassing it was, how slow and
oppressive.” (p. 368, line 32)
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12. “Right then, he thought, he should have done something brave…Whenever he looked at the
photographs, he thought of new things he should’ve done.” (p. 369, line 1)
13. “He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men.” (p. 369, line 10)
14. “…all the things a medic must carry, including M & Ms for especially bad wounds...” (p.
369, line 16)
15. “…he went down under an exceptional burden, more than 20 pounds of ammunition…and all
the rest, plus the unweighed fear. He was dead weight.” (p. 370, line 1)
16. “Kiowa, who saw it happen, said it was like watching a rock fall…not like the movies where
the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle…the poor bastard
just flat-fuck fell. Boom.” (p. 370, line 5)
17. “It was a bright morning in mid-April. Lieutenant Cross felt the pain. He blamed himself.”
(p. 370, line 10)
18. “He pictured Martha’s smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more
than his men, and now Ted Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and could not
stop thinking about her.” (p. 370, line 17)
19. “When the dustoff arrived, they carried Lavender aboard. Afterward they burned Than Khe.”
(p. 370, line 21)
20. “…they carried whatever presented itself, or whatever seemed appropriate as a means of
killing or staying alive.” (p. 370, line 27)
21. “They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power
of the things they carried.” (p. 371, line 6)
22. “…Martha wrote that she had found the pebble on the Jersey shoreline, precisely where the
land touched water at high tide, where things came together but also separated.” (p. 371, line
13)
23. “Martha was a poet, with a poet’s sensibilities, and her feet would be brown and bare, the
toenails unpainted, the eyes chilly and somber like the ocean in March, and though it was
painful, he wondered who had been with her that afternoon.” (p. 371, line 25)
24. “On the march, through the hot days of early April, he carried the pebble in his mouth,
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turning it with his tongue, tasting sea salt and moisture. His mind wandered. He had
difficulty keeping his attention on the war.” (p. 371, line 32)
25. “…they carried it anyway, partly for safety, partly for the illusion of safety.” (p. 372, line
16)
26. “Kiowa always took along his New Testament and a pair of moccasins for silence…Henry
Dobbins carried his girlfriend’s pantyhose wrapped around his neck as a comforter. They all
carried ghosts.” (p. 372, line 19)
27. “…by and large they just shrugged and carried out orders.” (p. 373, line 3)
28. “…how it was tunnel vision in the very strictest sense, compression in all ways, even time,
and how you had to wiggle in—ass and elbows—a swallowed-up feeling—and how you
found yourself worrying about odd things...” (p. 373, line 13)
29. “And then suddenly, without willing it, he was thinking about Martha. The stresses and
fractures, the quick collapse, the two of them buried alive under all that weight. Dense,
crushing love.” (p. 373, line 35)
30. “…he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted
her to be a virgin and not a virgin, all at once. He wanted to know her.” (p. 374, line 3)
31. “Vaguely, he was aware of how quiet the day was, the sullen paddies, yet he could not bring
himself to worry about matters of security. He was beyond that. He was just a kid at war, in
love. He was twenty-four years old. He couldn’t help himself.” (p. 374, line 17)
32. “…right then, when Strunk made that high happy moaning sound…Ted Lavender was shot in
the head on his way back from peeing.” (p. 374, line 30)
33. “Norman Bowker, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a thumb that had been presented to
him as a gift by Mitchell Sanders.” (p. 375, line 3)
34. “It’s like with that old TV show—Paladin. Have gun, will travel. Henry Dobbins thought
about it. Yeah, well, he finally said. I don’t see no moral.” (p. 375, line 25)
35. “They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear. Often,
they carried each other, the wounded or weak.” (p. 376, line 9)
36. “They carried the land itself…They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it,
the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.” (p.
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376, line 16)
37. “…it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without purpose,
nothing won or lost. They marched for the sake of the march…it was automatic, it was
anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage, the hump was everything,
a kind of inertia, a kind of emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect and conscience and
hope and human sensibility.” (p. 376, line 22)
38. “They carried their own lives. The pressures were enormous.” (p. 377, line 2)
39. “…the resources were stunning—sparklers for the Fourth of July, colored eggs for Easter—
it was the great American war chest…” (p. 377, line 11)
40. “…for all the ambiguities of Vietnam, all the mysteries and unknowns, there was at least the
single abiding certainty that they would never be at a loss for things to carry.” (p. 377, line
16)
41. “He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead,
and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the
war.” (p. 377, line 29)
42. “All he could do was dig. He used his entrenching tool like an ax, slashing, feeling both love
and hate…” (p. 377, line 33)
43. “The fog made things seem hollow and unattached. He tried not to think about Ted Lavender,
but then he was thinking how fast it was, no drama, down and dead, and how it was hard to
feel anything except surprise.” (p. 378, line 31)
44. “Even his own fatigue, it felt fine, the stiff muscles and the prickly awareness of his own
body, a floating feeling. He enjoyed not being dead.” (p. 379, line 5)
45. “…all he could feel was the pleasure of having his boots off and the fog curling in around
him and the damp soil and the Bible smells and the plush comfort of night.” (p. 379, line 10)
46. “Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal
but couldn’t, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said
Dear Jesus…” (p. 379, line 19)
47. “As if in slow motion, frame by frame, the world would take on the old logic—absolute
silence, then the wind, then sunlight, then voices. It was the burden of being alive.” (p. 379,
line 29)
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48. “Awkwardly, the men would reassemble themselves…They would repair the leaks in their
eyes.” (p. 379, line 31)
49. “For a few moments, perhaps, they would fall silent, lighting a joint and tracking its passage
from man to man, inhaling, holding in the humiliation.” (p. 380, line 6)
50. “They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it.” (p. 380, line 14)
51. “They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness.” (p. 380, line 17)
52. “When someone died, it wasn’t quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed
scripted…and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of
death itself.” (p. 380, line 19)
53. “There it is, they’d say…as if the repetition itself were an act of poise, a balance between
crazy and almost crazy…” (p. 380, line 35)
54. “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love,
longing…They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was
the fear of blushing.” (p. 381, line 6)
55. “Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move. They endured…they were
too frightened to be cowards.” (p. 381, line 19)
56. “And they dreamed of freedom birds…They were flying. The weights fell off; there was
nothing to bear…it was all lightness, bright and fast and buoyant, light as light, a helium
buzz in the brain…” (p. 382, line 3)
57. “…and so at night, not quite dreaming, they gave themselves over to lightness, they were
carried, they were purely borne.” (p. 382, line 25)
58. “Lavender was dead. You couldn’t burn the blame.” (p. 383, line 1)
59. “He hated her. Love, too, but it was a hard, hating kind of love.” (p. 383, line 13)
60. “Everything seemed part of everything else, the fog and Martha and the deepening rain. He
was a soldier, after all.” (p. 383, line 15)
61. “…otherwise it would be one more day layered upon all the other days.” (p. 383, line 24)
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62. “He would shut down the daydreams. This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another
world…” (p. 383, line 30)
63. “It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they
had to do.” (p. 384, line 2)
64. “…Lieutenant Jimmy Cross reminded himself that his obligation was not to be loved but to
lead. He would dispense with love; it was not now a factor.” (p. 384, line 29)
65. “…then they would saddle up and form into a column and move out toward the villages west
of Than Khe.” (p. 384, line 35)
Record your own notes: thoughts, other instances of poetics, etc. Additional space is on page at
end of this section
Tensions / contrasts
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Meaningful tensions or juxtapositions in the story.
1. Reality and pretending: “In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his
foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of
his fingers and spend the last hour of light pretending.” (p. 366, line 4), “…Love was
only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant.” (p. 366,
line 19), “Whenever he looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he should’ve
done.” (p. 369, line 4) “They imagined the muzzle against flesh…They imagined the
quick, sweet pain, then the evacuation to Japan, then a hospital with warm beds and cute
geisha nurses.” (p. 381, line 35)
2. Necessity and desire: “Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers,
pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum,
candy, cigarettes, salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid…Henry Dobbins…was especially
fond of canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake…Norman Bowker carried a
diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New
Testament.” (p. 367, line 5), “Almost everyone humped photographs.” (p. 368, line 13)
3. War and love: “Lieutenant Cross kept to himself. He pictured Martha’s smooth young
face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than his men, and how Ted
Lavender was dead because he loved her so much and could not stop thinking about her.”
(p. 370, line 17), “Trouble, he thought—a cave-in maybe. And then suddenly, without
willing it, he was thinking about Martha. The stresses and fractures, the quick
collapse…Dense, crushing love.” (p. 373, line 34), “He was just a kid at war, in love.” (p.
374, line 19), “He would dispense with love; it was not now a factor.” (p. 384, line 30)
4. What is seen/what is invisible: “At night, sometimes, Lieutenant Cross wondered who
had taken the picture…because he could see the shadow of the picture-taker spreading
out against the brick wall.” (p. 368, line 17), “He imagined a pair of shadows moving
along the strip of sand where things came together but also separated. It was phantom
jealousy, he knew…” (p. 371, line 29), “They all carried ghosts.” (p. 372, line 26), “They
would sit down or kneel, not facing the hole, listening to the ground beneath them,
imagining cobwebs and ghosts…” (p. 373, line 9)
5. War and sport/athletics: “Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for
each man to carry a steel-centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds,
but which on hot days seemed much heavier.” (p. 367, line 31), “It was an action shot—
women’s volleyball—and Martha was bent horizontal to the floor, reaching…There was
no visible sweat. She wore white gym shorts.” (p. 368, line 22)
6. Death in the movies/death in real life: “…he would always remember the…sound of the
gunfire that killed Bonnie and Clyde, how embarrassing it was, how slow and
oppressive.” (p. 368, line 33), “Kiowa, who saw it happen, said it was like watching a
rock fall, or a big sandbag or something—just boom, then down—not like the movies
where the dead guy rolls around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle—not
like that, Kiowa said…” (p. 370, line 5)
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7. The tangible and the intangible: “He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the
lives of his men.” (p. 369, line 10), “They carried all they could bear, and then some,
including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried.” (p. 371, line 6),
“Dave Jensen carried night-sight vitamins…Lee Strunk carried his slingshot…Rat Kiley
carried brandy and M& Ms candy…Henry Dobbins carried his girlfriend’s
pantyhose…They all carried ghosts.” (p. 372, line 20), “Often, they carried each other,
the wounded or weak. They carried infections…They carried the land itself…They
carried the sky.” (p. 376, line 10)
8. Free will and inertia/lack of choice: “He was just a kid at war, in love. He was twentyfour years old. He couldn’t help it.” (p. 374, line 19), “They plodded along slowly,
unthinking, all blood and bone, simple grunts, soldiering with their legs…but no volition,
no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of
posture and carriage, the hump was everything…” (p. 376, line 24), “When someone
died, it wasn’t quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted…” (p. 380, line
19), “There it is, they’d say…as if the repetition itself were an act of poise, a balance
between crazy and almost crazy…Oh yeah, man, you can’t change what can’t be
changed, there it is, there it absolutely and positively and fucking well is.” (p. 380, line
35), “He might just shrug and say, Carry on, then they would saddle up and form into a
column and move out toward the villages west of Than Khe.” (p. 384, line 34)
9. Grief and aggression: “When the dustoff arrived, they carried Lavender aboard.
Afterward they burned Than Khe.” (p. 370, line 21), “He put his hand on the dead boy’s
wrist. He was quiet for a time, as if counting a pulse, then he patted the stomach, almost
affectionately, and used Kiowa’s hunting hatchet to remove the thumb.” (p. 375, line 14),
“After the chopper took Lavender away, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross led his men into the
village of Than Khe. They burned everything. They shot chickens and dogs, they trashed
the village well…and then at dusk, while Kiowa explained how Lavender died,
Lieutenant Cross found himself trembling. He tried not to cry.” (p. 377, line 20)
10. Weight and weightlessness: “Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried thirty-four rounds
when he was shot and killed outside Than Khe, and he went down under an exceptional
burden, more than 20 pounds of ammunition…pus the unweighed fear. He was dead
weight.” (p. 369, line 35), “It was this separate-but-together quality, she wrote, that had
inspired her to pick up the pebble and to carry it in her breast pocket for several days,
where it seemed weightless…” (p. 371, line 16), “And then suddenly, without willing it,
he was thinking about Martha. The stresses and fractures, the quick collapse, the two of
them buried alive under all that weight.” (p. 373, line 35), “They did not submit to the
obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall….Go limp and tumble to
the ground…” (p. 381, line 21), “…it was flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of
falling…through the vast, silent vacuum where there were no burdens and where
everything weighed exactly nothing…and so at night, not quite dreaming, they gave
themselves over to lightness, they were carried, they were purely borne.” (p. 382, line 21)
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11. Concentration and disassociation: “Kneeling, watching the hole, he tried to concentrate
on Lee Strunk and the war, all the dangers, but his love was too much for him, he felt
paralyzed, he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered.”
(p. 374, line 1), “Lieutenant Cross gazed at the tunnel. But he was not there. He was
buried with Martha under the white sand at the Jersey shore.” (p. 374, line 14),
“Henceforth…he would shut down the daydreams.” (p. 383, line 30)
12. Destructive items and comforting items: “…they took turns humping a 28-pound mine
detector…Kiowa always took along his New Testament and a pair of moccasins for
silence…Lee Strunk carried his slingshot; ammo, he claimed, would never be a
problem…Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried the starlight scope…Henry Dobbins
carried his girlfriend’s pantyhose.” (p. 372, line 12), “To blow the tunnels, they carried 1pound blocks of pentrite high explosive, four blocks to a man, 68 pounds in all.” (p. 372,
line 34)
13. Humor and tragedy: “…the others clapped Strunk on the back and made jokes about
rising from the dead…The men laughed. They all felt great relief.” (p. 374, line 24),
“After a time, someone would shake his head and say, No lie, I almost shit my pants, and
someone else would laugh, which meant it was bad, yes, but the guy had obviously not
shit his pants, it wasn’t that bad…” (p. 380, line 1), “They found jokes to tell…They
made themselves laugh.” (p. 380, lines 16 and 34)
14. Gentleness and violence: “Norman Bowker, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a
thumb that had been presented to him as a gift by Mitchell Sanders.” (p. 375, line 3),
“…then he patted the stomach, almost affectionately, and used Kiowa’s hunting hatchet
to remove the thumb.” (p. 375, line 15), “They used a hard vocabulary to contain the
terrible softness.” (p. 380, line 17), “They imagined the quick, sweet pain, then the
evacuation to Japan, then a hospital with warm beds and cute geisha nurses.” (p. 382, line
36)
15. Discard and abundance: “They would often discard things along the route of march.
Purely for comfort, they would throw away rations, blow their Claymores and grenades,
no matter, because by nightfall the resupply choppers would arrive with more of the
same…the resources were stunning…it was the great American war chest—the fruits of
science, the smokestacks, the canneries, the arsenals at Hartford, the Minnesota forests,
the machine shops, the vast fields of corn and wheat…they would never be at a loss for
things to carry.” (p. 377, line 5)
16. Life in the trenches/life back in the U.S.: “In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he
would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters…and spend the
last hour of light pretending.” (p. 366, line 4), “She was an English major at Mount
Sebastian, and she wrote beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm
exams, about her respect for Chaucer…she never mentioned the war except to say,
Jimmy, take care of yourself.” (p. 366, line 13), “Lieutenant Cross gazed at the tunnel.
But he was not there. He was buried with Martha under the white sand at the Jersey
shore.” (p. 374, line 14), “This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world, where
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there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of
carelessness and gross stupidity.” (p. 383, line 31)
17. Emotion/numbness: “They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood
that Love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it
meant.” (p. 366, line 18), “Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers…” (p.
367, line 15), “…by and large they just shrugged and carried out orders.” (p. 373, line 3),
“…he tried to concentrate on Lee Strunk and the war, all the dangers, but his love was
too much for him, he felt paralyzed…” (p. 374, line 1), “…it was automatic, it was
anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage…a kind of inertia, a
kind of emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect and conscience and hope and human
sensibility.” (p. 376, line 29), “He tried not to cry. With his entrenching tool, which
weighed 5 pounds, he began digging a hole in the earth.” (p. 377, line 27), “He would
dispense with love; it was not now a factor.” (p. 384, line 30)
18. Composure and panic: “For the most part they carried themselves with poise, a kind of
dignity. Now and then, however, there were times of panic, when they squealed or
wanted to squeal but couldn’t, when they twitched and made moaning sounds and
covered their heads and said Dear Jesus…” (p. 379, line 18)
19. Fear and denial: “They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the
instinct to run or freeze or hide…They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the
fear of blushing.” (p. 381, line 9), “It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor.
Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards.” (p. 381, line 27)
20. What is carried outwardly/what is hidden: “By and large they carried these things inside,
maintaining the masks of composure.” (p. 381, line 29), “In those burned letters Martha
had never mentioned the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself…She signed
the letters Love, but it wasn’t love…” (p. 383, line 9), “It was very sad, he thought. The
things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do. He almost nodded at
her, but didn’t.” (p. 384, line 2), “He would dispense with love; it was not now a factor.
And if anyone quarreled or complained, he would simply tighten his lips and arrange his
shoulders in the correct command posture.” (p. 384, line 30)
Record your own notes: thoughts, other instances of tensions/contrasts, etc. Additional space is
on page at end of this section.
Shadows
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Questions, missing pieces, elements that are oblique or not fully explained.
1. Does Lieutenant Jimmy Cross love Martha? Does she love him? Why is she writing to him?
Why does he cherish her letters?
2. Why does O’Brien note the weights of everything—from the 10-ounce letter to the 23-pound
M-60?
3. Why does Kiowa carry his grandmother’s distrust as “a hedge against bad times”? How
would distrust help him?
4. What were the “burdens far beyond the intransitive” implied by the word “hump”?
5. Cross wishes he had done “something brave. He should have carried [Martha] up the stairs to
her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left knee all night long.” Why does he think
of this as a “brave” act?
6. Why does O’Brien return several times to the scene when Ted Lavender is killed? Does the
story change with each telling? How?
7. Cross believes that “Ted Lavender was dead because he loved [Martha] so much and could
not stop thinking about her.” Is that true? Is Lavender’s death the lieutenant’s fault?
8. What does Martha mean by the “separate-but-together quality” that made her pick up the
pebble, then send it to Lieutenant Cross?
9. Why do the men carry the things they do—moccasins, night-sight vitamins, M&Ms, a
girlfriend’s pantyhose?
10. In what way was “imagination a killer”?
11. Why does Cross want Martha “to be a virgin and not a virgin, all at once”?
12. Why does Sanders cut the thumb off the corpse of the Viet Cong boy? Why does Bowker
carry it?
13. What does O’Brien mean by “the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage, the hump
was everything, a kind of inertia, a kind of emptiness”?
14. Why do the men burn and trash Than Khe after Lavender is shot?
15. Kiowa says that the way Lieutenant Cross was crying “wasn’t fake or anything, it was real
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heavy-duty hurt. The man cares.” Is that true? Why is Cross crying?
16. What is “the burden of being alive” (p. 379, line 31)?
17. Why do the men repeat “There it is”? What does this phrase mean to them?
18. Why does Lieutenant Cross decide to burn Martha’s photographs and letters?
19. What does he “understand” when he does this (p. 384, line 1)?
20. Is there a moral to this story? What is it?
Record your own notes: thoughts, other instances of shadows, etc. Additional space on page at
end of this section.
Issues
Themes, ideas and arguments raised by the text.
1. Convention and sincerity: When Martha signs the letters with “Love,” does she really mean
that? Does Lieutenant Cross really love her? Are there other instances of characters truly
feeling, or pretending to feel, various emotions?
2. Power and military hierarchy: What is the relationship between Lieutenant Cross and his
men? Does that change as the story progresses? Who is really in charge, in this war?
3. War and civilian life: What are the differences between the men’s lives in Vietnam and the
lives they might be living back in the U.S.? What do they imagine, long for or miss about
civilian life? What will it be like when they return?
4. Necessity: What is necessary in wartime? Which items carried by the soldiers strike you as
essential; which seem extraneous, odd or excessive?
5. Fantasy and imagination: What role does fantasy play in the lives of these soldiers? Are their
fantasies helpful to them? Destructive? Distracting? Necessary?
Study Guide – The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
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6. Virginity: Why is Cross preoccupied with thinking about whether or not Martha is a virgin?
Why, at the end, does he say, “virginity was no longer an issue”?
7. Responsibility and guilt: Is Ted Lavender’s death Lieutenant Cross’s fault? Why does he
shoulder the blame? Is it anyone’s fault? Is it possible to “burn the blame”?
8. Ways of grieving: How do the soldiers respond to Lavender’s death? Is this different from
the ways people respond to a death in the civilian (non-military) world? How?
9. Post-traumatic stress: After Lavender’s death, how do the men react? Do any of them exhibit
signs of post-traumatic stress? What are they? Are their reactions typical or unexpected?
10. Violence: Why do the men burn Than Khe after Lavender’s death? Why does Sanders cut the
thumb off the corpse? Is that kind of violence and destruction inevitable in wartime? Are
such acts a matter of choice? Are they crimes? Are the soldiers just following orders?
11. Emotion and numbness: Are there instances of genuine feeling in this story? What do the
soldiers do with their emotions? Is there a place for emotion, in wartime? What are the
consequences of how the soldiers handle their feelings?
12. Morality: Does morality change in times of war? Is there a different morality in the trenches
than in civilian, peacetime life? What is this morality? Is there a moral to this story?
Record your own notes: thoughts, questions, other instances of “issues” in this story. Additional
space on page at the end of this section.
Experience
Questions designed as a bridge between the reader’s lived-life and the story.
1. Have you ever kept letters, postcards, e-mail or text-messages with you and read them
repeatedly? Have you ever had a long-distance relationship with someone?
2. Have you ever gone on a backpacking trip, or another trip for which you had to pack only
necessities? What did you bring? If you were a soldier in Vietnam or elsewhere, what
items would you most want to have with you?
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3. What are the things you carry with you every day, in your backpack, pockets or purse?
What do these items indicate about you?
4. If you carry photographs with you (either prints or cell-phone photos), who is pictured in
them? Why are these particular pictures important to you? What memories do they
evoke?
5. If you have witnessed violent scenes in movies, how are those scenes different from what
happens in real life? How do you feel about the violence you’ve seen, whether it was onscreen or real?
6. Did you ever wish, in retrospect, that you had “done something brave” in a particular
situation? What do you wish you had done? What would have happened, if you had?
7. Have you ever been part of a group in which one person held responsibility for others—
perhaps at a camp, an Outward Bound course, or even while babysitting younger siblings
or cousins? What is it like to hold responsibility for other people’s well-being? What is it
like to depend on someone else for your own life and safety?
8. Have you ever held a weapon? What did it feel like? How did it make you feel? Did you
ever feel something like what the soldiers feel, “a silent awe for the terrible power of the
things they carried” (p. 371, line 7)?
9. Have you ever blamed yourself for someone else’s injury, misfortune or death? Why did
you feel you were at fault? How did you respond? What impact did this incident have on
you?
10. Right after Lavender is killed, the soldiers burn and trash the village of Than Khe. Have
you ever become aggressive or violent in response to grief, or do you know someone who
has? What was the situation?
11. Have you ever witnessed or experienced something traumatic and felt that you needed to
tell the story again and again, the way Kiowa retells what happened when Lavender was
shot? Did it help you to repeat the story of this trauma? Why or why not?
12. Have you ever had a good-luck charm? How did it come into your possession? What
made you feel it brought you luck or good fortune? Do you believe in such lucky charms?
13. O’Brien says that the soldiers “all carried ghosts.” Who are the “ghosts” you carry? How
do those ghosts affect your actions and attitude toward life?
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14. Did you ever feel that anticipating or imagining a situation was worse than actually
experiencing it? Have you ever felt, in your own life, that “imagination was a killer”?
15. Have you ever felt so preoccupied by your emotional state—whether you were in love,
grieving, worried or overwhelmed with some other feeling—that you weren’t able to pay
attention to your actual circumstances? What happened?
16. Have you ever felt that you were just going through the motions, performing some action
without thinking about or choosing it? What was the situation? What did it feel like to be
on “automatic pilot”? What were the consequences of acting this way?
17. If you know anyone who has served in the military, has that person told you stories about
life in combat? How do you think military life is different from civilian life?
18. Do you allow others to see you cry? Why or why not? What are the consequences of
hiding one’s tears or other emotions?
19. Have you ever used humor to deflect your anxiety, grief or discomfort with a situation?
What were the circumstances? How did others react to your use of humor?
20. Have you ever felt “pleased to be alive” (p. 379, line 2)? What was the situation?
21. Have you ever feared for your life? What was the situation? How did you react? How did
you feel in the aftermath of this incident? How do you feel about the incident now?
22. Have you ever thought about joining the military? If so, what made you want to do that?
If not, why not? Do you feel any different about military life after reading this story?
23. Have you ever destroyed something—letters, photographs, objects belonging to
someone—as a symbol of your changed attitude toward that person? How did destroying
those items affect you?
24. Have you ever decided to “dispense with love” or with another emotion that you felt was
getting in your way? Did you succeed in banishing this feeling? What was the effect?
25. Do you think real-life situations have “a moral to the story”? Can you think of a situation
in your life that had a moral? What was the situation? What was the moral you drew from
it? Thinking about it now, do you still believe that was the “moral of the story”?
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Record your own notes: thoughts, other instances of experience, etc. Additional space on page at
end of this section.
Study Guide – The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
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Coordinator Notes
Record your own notes: thoughts, other instances of poetics, tensions/contrasts, shadows, issues,
experience, possible discussion paths, questions you might consider.
Study Guide – The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
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DISCUSSION PATHS
Introducing the story
before reading the story, you might want to:
1. Share biographical information about Tim O’Brien.
2. Ask participants if they know anyone in the military, or who is a veteran. Ask if they know
anyone who fought in Vietnam. Do a quick round-robin, asking each person to say one word that
comes to mind when he/she thinks of war.
3. If you plan to conclude the session by inviting participants to write, you might offer either of
these prompts: Write about the things you carry—both tangible and intangible OR Write about a
time when you witnessed something traumatic. How did you react? How did it change you?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Poetics  P
Tensions/Contrasts  C Shadows  S
Issues  I Experience  E
______________________________________________________________________________
1. Fantasy and imagination
“In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands
under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers and spend
the last hour of light pretending.” (p. 366, line 4), “…Love was only a way of signing
and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant.” (p. 366, line 19), “…the
waiting was worse than the tunnel itself. Imagination was a killer.” (p. 373, line 19),
“They imagined the muzzle against flesh…They imagined the quick, sweet pain, then
the evacuation to Japan, then a hospital with warm beds and cute geisha nurses.” (p.
381, line 35)

Why does Lieutenant Cross spend “the last hour of light” pretending? What is he
pretending?
P, S

Is it true that “love” is sometimes only a way of signing a note and does not
signify actual love? Are there other words people use casually, without intending
their true meaning? What are they?
P, C, S

What role does fantasy and imagination play in the lives of these soldiers? Are
their fantasies helpful to them? Destructive? Distracting? Important? Is it true that
“imagination was a killer”?

S, I
Why do the soldiers imagine “quick, sweet pain”? Why would pain be described
in this way? Have you ever experienced pain as being “sweet” or “quick”?
P, E
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


Have you ever maintained a long-distance relationship? What role did fantasy or
pretending play in that relationship? Was there a difference between your idea of
the relationship and its actuality?
E
Have you imagined a situation to be worse or more frightening than it actually
turned out to be? Did you ever experience your own imagination “as a killer”?
E
At the end, Lieutenant Cross resolves that he will have “no more fantasies,” and
he burns Martha’s letters and pictures. Is this rejection of fantasy a helpful or a
destructive act for him? Why do you say so? Do people need fantasies?
C, I
2. Necessity
“Among the necessities or near-necessities were P-38 can openers, pocket knives,
heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, candy, cigarettes,
salt tablets, packets of Kool-Aid…Henry Dobbins…was especially fond of canned
peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake…Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley
carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament.”
(p. 367, line 5) “On ambush, or other night missions, they carried peculiar little odds
and ends.” (p. 372, line 18)


Look at the list of items the soldiers carry. Which items strike you as necessary?
Which strike you as non-essential? Were there any items that surprised you?
What items do you regularly carry in your backpack, pockets or purse? Are these
items essential? If not, why do you carry them?
P, C
E

What do the men’s possessions tell you about each of them? If someone were to
look at the items you carry regularly, what could they tell about you?
P, S, E

What are the basic necessities of civilian (non-military) life? How about in a war
zone? Are they different? Why?
C, I
Have you ever been on a backpacking trip or another excursion where you could
take only what was necessary? What did you take? What did you leave behind?
Did this story make you think differently about what objects are most essential to
you?
E

3. Power, hierarchy and responsibility
“As first lieutenant and platoon leader, Jimmy Cross carried a compass, maps, code
books, binoculars, and a .45-caliber pistol…He carried a strobe light and the
responsibility for the lives of his men.” (p. 369, line 8), “Lieutenant Cross felt the pain.
He blamed himself.” (p. 370, line 10), “Most often, before blowing the tunnels, they
were ordered by higher command to search them…but by and large they just shrugged
and carried out orders.” (p. 373, line 1), “They had no sense of strategy or mission.
They searched the villages without knowing what to look for…” (p. 376, line 34), “He
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had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead,
and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest
of the war.” (p. 377, line 29), “Lavender was dead. You couldn’t burn the blame.” (p.
383, line 1)

What is the relationship between Lieutenant Cross and the men in his platoon?
Does he carry different things than the other men (both tangible and intangible)?
Does his relationship with the platoon change as the story progresses?
C, S
Have you ever been in a group in which one person held responsibility for
others—perhaps at a camp, an Outward Bound course or even while babysitting
younger siblings or cousins? What is it like to hold responsibility for other
people’s well-being? What is it like to depend on someone for your own life and
safety?
I, E

Why does Cross blame himself for Ted Lavender’s death? Was he responsible?
S, I

What is the relationship between the “grunts” and those in “higher command”
who give their orders? Who is really in charge, in this war?




C, S, I
Are the men responsible for their actions, given the exhausting and traumatic
circumstances they are in? Who is to blame for Lavender’s death?
S, I
Have you ever blamed yourself for someone else’s injury, misfortune or death?
Why did you feel you were at fault? How did you respond? What impact did this
inident have on you?
P, E
At the story’s end, Cross decides to burn Martha’s photographs and letters. Why
does he do that? What happens to his guilt, as a result? Is it possible to “burn the
blame”?
P, S, I
4. Weight and weightlessness
“Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried thirty-four pounds when he was shot and
killed outside Than Khe, and he went down under an exceptional burden, more than 20
pounds of ammunition…plus the unweighed fear. He was dead weight.” (p. 369, line
35), “It was this separate-but-together quality…that had inspired her to pick up the
pebble and to carry it in her breast pocket for several days, where it seemed
weightless…” (p. 371, line 16), “And then suddenly, without willing it, he was
thinking about Martha. The stresses and fractures…the two of them buried alive under
all that weight.” (p. 373, line 35), “They did not submit to the obvious alternative,
which was simply to close the eyes and fall…Go limp and tumble to the ground…” (p
381, line 21), “…it was flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling…through the vast,
silent vaccum where there were no burdens and where everything weighed exactly
nothing…” (p. 382, line 21)

Why does O’Brien note the weights of everything, from the 10-ounce letter to the
23-pound M-60? What effect do all these numbers and weights have on you?
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P, S




What is the heaviest thing the soldiers carry, in your opinion? Can intangible
things “weigh one down” more than actual objects? How?
S, I
Look at the contrast between the weight of what the men carry and Martha’s
“weightless” pebble? What does that contrast indicate about the differences in
their characters? In their lives?
P, C
Why does Cross imagine being crushed under “all that weight” with Martha?
What weight is he imagining? Can love feel like a heavy weight? How?
P, S, I
Have you ever felt “weighed down” by something intangible? What was it? How
did you cope with carrying it?
E

Why do the men fantasize about going limp? Why do they refuse to submit to this
fantasy?
P, S

Have you ever wished to simply “let go,” to be free and weightless? What made
you feel this way? Is it possible for a human being to be completely released of all
burdens?
I, E
5. Gentleness, grief and aggression
“When the dustoff arrived, they carried Lavender aboard. Afterward they burned
Than Khe.” (p. 370, line 21), “He put his hand on the dead boy’s wrist. He was quiet
for a time, as if counting a pulse, then he patted the stomach, almost affectionately,
and used Kiowa’s hunting hatchet to remove the thumb.” (p. 375, line 14), “After the
chopper took Lavender away, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross led his men into the village of
Than Khe. They burned everything. They shot chickens and dogs, they trashed the
village well…and then at dusk, while Kiowa explained how Lavender died,
Lieutenant Cross found himself trembling. He tried not to cry.” (p. 377, line 20)





The last name of the dead man, “Lavender,” is a soft shade of purple, and the
character is described as “tranquil” (with the help of the pills he takes). Are there
other contrasts between gentleness and violence in this story?
P, C
Why do the men burn and trash the village of Than Khe right after Lavender’s
death? Is their aggression justified? Is it understandable?
S, I
How do the members of the platoon grieve their comrade’s death? Are their ways
of grieving helpful or destructive to them? Are they different from how people
typically grieve in civilian life?
C, I
Have you ever seen someone with a generally mild temperament suddenly do
something brutal or destructive? Have you ever experienced such a severe swing
of mood or temperment? What happened?
I, E
Why do some people respond to grief by doing something aggressive? Has this
ever happened to you? What might be some other ways of responding?
I, E
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6. Humor and tragedy
“…the others clapped Strunk on the back and made jokes about rising from the
dead…The men laughed. They all felt great relief.” (p. 374, line 24), “After a time,
someone would shake his head and say, No lie, I almost shit my pants, and someone
else would laugh, which meant it was bad, yes, but the guy had obviously not shit his
pants, it wasn’t that bad…” (p. 380, line 1), “They found jokes to tell…They made
themselves laugh.” (p. 380, lines 16 and 34)


Were there any moments in this story that you found to be funny? Any that made
you laugh? Did that surprise you, in a story about war?
P, I
Why do the soldiers joke with Strunk about “rising from the dead”? Why is that
funny to them?
P, S

How would you describe the kind of humor the soldiers use? Do you think that
use of humor is helpful to them? Why? Is there any downside to using humor in
that way?
P, S, I

Are there other situations or occupations (emergency room doctor?) in which
people use humor to make a tragic situation bearable, or to relieve anxiety or
pressure? Have you ever used humor in this way? Did it help?
I, E
Sometimes people say that comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin,
and many stories and films about war (Catch-22; the movie and TV series
M*A*S*H) use humor. Why do you think writers/screenwriters do this? Is it
effective?
S, I

7. Life in the trenches/civilian life
“In the late afternoon, after a day’s march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands
under a canteen, unwrap the letters…and spend the last hour of light pretending.” (p.
366, line 4), “She was an English major at Mount Sebastian, and she wrote
beautifully about her professors and roommates and midterm exams, about her
respect for Chaucer…she never mentioned the war except to say, Jimmy, take care of
yourself.” (p. 366, line 13), “It was an action shot—women’s volleyball—and Martha
was bent horizontal to the floor, reaching…There was no visible sweat. She wore
white gym shorts.” (p. 368, line 5), “This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another
world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died
because of carelessness and gross stupidity.” (p. 383, line 31)

How is Lieutenant Cross’s life in the platoon different from his life at home?
What memories and objects does he cling to, from his civilian life? Why are these
so important to him?
C, S

What about the other men? What clues does the story offer about their lives
before they joined the platoon? What helps you know or understand them?
Study Guide – The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
P, S
–24 –



Do you think these characters behave differently in Vietnam than they would at
home? What makes you think so? Does being in a war change someone? How?
S, I
What is Lieutenant Cross’s attitude about the civilian world he’s left behind?
Does his feeling about it change as the story progresses?
C, S
What do you think are the important differences between military life and civilian
life? What do non-soldiers fail to understand about the life of a soldier? What
happens when soldiers return home?
I, E
8. Free will/lack of choice
“He was just a kid at war, in love. He was twenty-four years old. He couldn’t help it.”
(p. 374, line 19), “They plodded along slowly, unthinking, all blood and bone, simple
grunts, soldiering with their legs…but no volition, no will, because it was automatic,
it was anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage, the hump
was everything…” (p. 376, line 24), “When someone died, it wasn’t quite dying,
because in a curious way it seemed scripted…” (p. 380, line 19), “There it is, they’d
say…as if the repetition itself were an act of poise, a balance between crazy and
almost crazy...Oh yeah, man, you can’t change what can’t be changed, there it
absolutely and positively and fucking well is.” (p. 380, line 35), “He might just shrug
and say, Carry on, then they would saddle up and form into a column and move out
toward the villages west of Than Khe.” (p. 384, line 34)

What does O’Brien mean when he says that Lieutenant Cross “couldn’t help it”?
Do you agree? Is he, at twenty-four, “just a kid”?
P, I

O’Brien describes the men in the platoon as automatons, with “no volition, no
will.” Are there instances in the story when the men seem to be acting
automatically, without thinking? Are there other instances when you think they
are making actual choices?
P, C, S

What does it mean that even their dying “wasn’t quite dying, because in a curious
way it seemed scripted”? If that is so, who is writing the script? Who is acting it
out?
P, S

What do the men mean by “There it is”? Why do they say that so often?
P, S

Have you ever felt that you were going through the motions, performing some
action without thinking or choosing it? What was the situation? What did it feel
like to be on “automatic pilot”? What were the consequences of acting this way?
E
Are soldiers in a war, or people in some other extreme situation (a natural
disaster, a medical emergency), generally acting out of free will or simply
following a “script”? Do they have a choice?
I


Read the story’s final paragraph. What feeling do you get about the men, their
actions and their future? Are they choosing to continue? What is the alternative?
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S, I
9. Emotion and numbness
“They were signed Love, Martha, but Lieutenant Cross understood that Love was
only a way of signing and did not mean what he sometimes pretended it meant.” (p.
366, line 18), “Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers…” (p. 367, line
15), “…by and large they just shrugged and carried out orders.” (p. 373, line 3),
“…he tried to concentrate on Lee Strunk and the war, all the dangers, but his love was
too much for him, he felt paralyzed…” (p. 374, line 1), “He tried not to cry. With his
entrenching tool, which weighed 5 pounds, he began digging a hole in the earth.” (p.
377, line 27), “He would dispense with love; it was not now a factor.” (p. 384, line
30)?





Are there places in the story where characters show their true feelings? What
happens when they do?
S
Does Martha really love Lieutenant Cross, or is “love only a way of signing”?
Does he really love her? What makes you think so?
P, S
When the men just shrug and carry out orders, what do you think they’re really
feeling inside? What has happened to those feelings?
S, I
Have you ever felt paralyzed by a strong emotion—love, fear, grief, anger? How
did you react? Did you show your feelings to anyone? What happened?
Why does Lieutenant Cross “try not to cry”? Is this typical of men? Of men in
wartime? What are the consequences of holding in one’s tears?
E
P, I

Why, at the story’s end, does Lieutenant Cross decide to “dispense with love”? Is
it possible to do that? What might be the consequences of his decision?
P, S, I

Do you allow others to see you cry? Why or why not? Are there times when you
decide to hide your emotions? What are the consequences of doing this?
E
10. Fear and denial of fear
“…there were times of panic, when they squealed or wanted to squeal but couldn’t,
when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said Dear
Jesus…and made stupid promises to themselves and to God and to their mothers and
fathers, hoping not to die.” (p. 379, line 19), “They were afraid of dying but they were
even more afraid to show it.” (p. 380, line 14), “They carried the common secret of
cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide…They carried the
soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing.” (p. 381, line 9), “It was not
courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be
cowards.” (p. 381, line 27))

What is your reaction to the description of the men’s panic, especially to words
such as “squeal” and “twitch” and “moaning”? What did this evoke for you?
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P

What does O’Brien mean when he says the soldier’s greatest fear is “the fear of
blushing”? Are there other people besides soldiers who carry a similar fear?
P, S, I

What does it mean that the soldiers were “too frightened to be cowards”? Are
people in combat—or in other extreme, life-threatening situations—courageous?
Is cowardice their “common secret”?
P, S, I

What do the soldiers do with their fear? How about other people—firefighters,
rescue workers, emergency-room doctors? How do they cope with fear?

Have you ever been in a situation in which you feared for your life? How did you
react? Did you show your fear to anyone? Did you acknowledge it to yourself?
How do you feel about this incident now?
S, I
E
11. Death and life
“…he would always remember the…sound of the gunfire that killed Bonnie and
Clyde, how embarrassing it was, how slow and oppressive.” (p. 368, line 33),
“Kiowa, who saw it happen, said it was like watching a rock fall, or a big sandbag or
something—just boom, then down—not like the movies where the dead guy rolls
around and does fancy spins and goes ass over teakettle—not like that, Kiowa said…”
(p. 370, line 5), “Even his fatigue, it felt fine, the stiff muscles and the prickly
awareness of his own body…He enjoyed not being dead.” (p. 379, line 5), “They
would force themselves to stand…It was the burden of being alive.” (p. 379, line 28),
“Kiowa was right. Boom-down, and you were dead, never partly dead.” (p. 383, line
33)

How is death in the movies different from death in real life?

What does the author mean by “the burden of being alive”? In what way is being
alive a burden? Have you ever felt this way?
P, S, E

Following Lavender’s death, Kiowa is especially aware of his own body; he
“enjoyed not being dead.” When people witness a death, does it change how they
feel about their own lives and mortality? In what way?
I
Have you ever felt especially grateful to be alive, even if you were in a difficult
situation at the time? What was the circumstance? What made you feel grateful?
E
What does Lieutenant Cross realize about life and death at the story’s end? How
does this realization change him?
S



P, C
Compare the death of Lavender with the death of the Viet Cong boy whose thumb
Sanders removes. Why do the soldiers react so differently to these two deaths?
How do you react to both of these incidents? What do you think O’Brien is
saying, in this story, about the value of life and the meaning of death?
C. S, I
12. What is carried and what is hidden
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“Henry Dobbins thought about it. Yeah, well, he finally said. I don’t see no moral.”
(p. 375, line 25), “By and large they carried these things inside, maintaining the mask
of composure.” (p. 381, line 29), “In those burned letters Martha had never mentioned
the war, except to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself…She signed the letters Love, but
it wasn’t love…” (p. 383, line 9), “It was very sad, he thought. The things men
carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do. He almost nodded at her, but
didn’t.” (p. 384, line 2), “He would dispense with love; it was not now a factor. And
if anyone quarrelled or complained, he would simply tighten his lips and arrange his
shoulders in the correct command posture.” (p. 384, line 30)


Why does Martha never mention the war? What else does she not say in her
letters?
P, S
Why do men—especially soldiers—carry things inside? Is this necessary? Is it
healthy? Is it sad? Can you imagine another way for them to behave?
P, S, I

Is going to war something that people “have to do”? Why?
I

What are the things you carry inside? How do they affect you? Would it be
possible to let them out? What do you think would happen?
E


Sometimes a moral is hidden inside a story or experience. Henry Dobbins says he
sees no moral in the death of the Viet Cong boy. Is there a moral in that story?
What is it?
P, S
Is there a moral to “The Things They Carried”? What do you think it is?
I, E
Final Impressions
After the session, take some time to make notes about the discussion: interesting points that
readers raised, questions that arose, disputes, and confusions. Jot down your own impressions of
the session: what worked well; what would you do differently the next time?
Study Guide – The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
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SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Books by O’Brien
Going After Cacciato. New York: Broadway Books, 1999.
In the Lake of the Woods. New York: Mariner Books, 1994.
July, July. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.
The Things They Carried. New York: Broadway Books, 1998.
Tomcat in Love. New York: Broadway Books, 1998.
Books by others:
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1955.
The Color of Absence: 12 Stories About Loss and Hope, edited by James Howe. New York:
Atheneum, 2003.
Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo. New York: Bantam, 1939.
Machine Dreams, by Jayne Anne Phillips. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.
Purple America, by Rick Moody. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1998.
Victory Over Japan, by Ellen Gilchrist. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1984.
Study Guide – The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
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Study Guide – The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
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