Whole Class Review Activity
Directions:
• The class will form eight groups, each consisting of four students
(class has 32 students enrolled). Each group, appropriately named
1-8, will discuss and create four questions regarding their assigned
reading of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. These questions
will be submitted to the instructor at the end of the group session.
The following class, students will get back into the groups they
chose and we will begin playing Wheel of Fortune!
• When the wheel stops spinning, the group with the corresponding
number must then answer one of the other 28 questions created by
the seven other groups. Each group will have a chance to answer
four questions. The groups who answer all correctly will be awarded
two points toward the test grade.
• The goal of this is to promote open discussion of the text and
provide a greater understanding of key concepts that will be
assessed.
1
8
3
7
4
6
SPIN
2
5
1
8
3
7
4
6
SPIN
2
5
Q: Other than equipment, what other “things” did the soldiers in the story
carry?
• A: Each soldier carried emotions, memories, love and friendship gained
and lost both at home and in Vietnam. They carried wounds of their own,
they carried friends because of wounds suffered. They carried fantasies
about how home was in their absence.
1
8
3
7
4
6
SPIN
2
5
1
8
3
7
4
6
SPIN
2
5
Q: What unifies the stories in "The Things They Carried?"
• A: The story is unified by the platoon’s typical actions, the threat of death
as focused on Lavender, and the concerns and feelings of Lieutenant
Jimmy Cross. The unnamed narrator also furnishes constant understanding
of the men and sympathy for the burdens of their wartime tasks. This
garners a more relatable story to the many of us who have no experience
with war.
1
8
3
7
4
6
SPIN
2
5
1
8
3
7
4
6
SPIN
2
5
Q: What does Sanders say about the thumb?
• A: At first, Mitchell Sanders is not articulate or expansive in expressing
the meaning and moral of the severed thumb. The most he can do is to
point to the dead man and say, "There it is, man" (paragraph 37). Dobbins
says that there is no moral. Later on (paragraph 75), the men consider the
moral further. A reader might wish to contemplate what it means to repeat
"there it is" as an "act of poise" and the further meaning of "you can’t
change what can’t be changed."
1
8
3
7
4
6
SPIN
2
5
1
8
3
7
4
6
SPIN
2
5
Q: Why is the act of listening so very important in The Things They
Carried?
• A: "Not listening" is a common motif in the novel because O'Brien
subverts the rhetorical dynamics between author, text, and audience. The
problem is between author and audience, or between speaker and
listener. There are listening difficulties between men and women, between
veterans and civilians, within a homogeneous group of soldiers, in the prewar stories, the war stories, and the post-war stories. So, the stories in The
Things They Carried, as a whole, are a way to reconstruct the message so
that a new, younger generation of listeners can make sense of a senseless
war.