Novel Guide

Major Works Data Sheet Title: The Things They CarriedAuthor: Tim O’BrienDate of Publication: 1990Genre: Fiction | Biological information about the author:Tim O’Brien grew up in Worthington, Minnesota and now lives in Massachusetts. In 1968 he was drafted into the Vietnam Conflict and served one tour of duty from 1969-1970. After returning home he enrolled in graduate school at Harvard University and studied government. After finishing his studies he worked as a national affairs correspondent for the Washington Post. O’Brien has written several novels based on his experiences in Vietnam. The Things They Carried (published 1990) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. | Historical information about the period about the publications: The United States sent troops to Southern Vietnam in the early 1960’s to help stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. In 1954, the Viet Cong gained control over Northern half of Vietnam, but the Southern half maintained a government friendly to the United States. Beginning in the late 1950’s, Northern Vietnam began waging a guerilla war to bring all of Vietnam under its control. The United States began supporting South Vietnam during the Eisenhower administration. The governments of South Vietnam were corrupt, unstable, and did not have the support of the people. Americans found themselves fighting a guerilla war, of which they had little experience. Because of overwhelming American firepower and technological capabilities, the Viet Cong relied on ambushes, land mines, and other surprise attacks to confuse and demoralize American troops. | | | Characteristics of the genre:A good realistic fiction novel is about people, their problems, and their challenges. The characters in the novel should be believable and their language and actions should be appropriate for the setting of the story and reflective of the culture and social class in which they live. Some realistic fiction is expected to include violence; in fact, the genre would be failing in its mission if some novels did not mirror the violence that many young people experience. | Plot Summary:“The Things They Carried” displays the variety of things soldiers in the Alpha Company brought on their missions. Several of these things are intangible, including guilt and fear, while others are specific physical objects, including matches, morphine, M-16 rifles, and M&M’s candy. The first member of the Alpha Company to die is Ted Lavender, who deals with his anxiety about the war by taking tranquilizers and smoking marijuana. Lavender is shot in the head on his way back from going to the bathroom, and his superior, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, blames himself for the tragedy. When Lavender is shot, Cross is distracting himself with thoughts of Martha, a college crush. It is revealed in “Love” that Cross’s feelings for Martha, whom he dated, were never reciprocated, and that even twenty years after the war, his guilt over Lavender’s death remains. In “On the Rainy River,” O’Brien explains the series of events that led him to Vietnam in the first place. He receives his draft notice in, and his feelings of confusion drive him north to the Canadian border, which he thinks about crossing so that he will not be forced to fight in a war in which he doesn’t believe. Sitting in a rowboat O’Brien decides that his guilt about avoiding the war and fear of disappointing his family are more important than his political views. He soon leaves, and heads for Vietnam. Lee Strunk, another member of the company, dies from injuries he sustains by stepping on a landmine. In “Friends,” O’Brien remembers that before Strunk was fatally hurt, Strunk and Dave Jensen had made a pact that if either man were irreparably harmed, the other man would see that he was quickly killed. However, when Strunk is actually hurt, he begs Jensen to spare him, and Jensen complies. Instead of being upset by the news of his friend’s swift death, Jensen is relieved. The death that receives the most attention in “The Things They Carried” is that of Kiowa. In “Speaking of Courage,” the story of Kiowa’s death is relayed through the memory of Norman Bowker, years after the war. As Bowker drives around a lake, he thinks that he failed to save Kiowa. O’Brien realizes that he has dealt with his guilt over Kiowa’s death differently than Norman Bowker in “Notes.” Just before the end of the war, O’Brien receives a long letter from Bowker that says he hasn’t found a way to make life meaningful after the war. O’Brien resolves to tell Bowker’s story, and the story of Kiowa’s death, in order to negotiate his own feelings of guilt and hollowness. In “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien imagines the life of his victim, from his childhood to the way things would have turned out for him had O’Brien not spotted him on a path and thrown a grenade at his feet. In “Ambush,” O’Brien imagines how he might relay the story of the man he killed to his nine-year-old daughter, Kathleen. In the last story, “The Lives of the Dead,” O’Brien gives another twist to his contention that stories have the power to save people. In the stories of Curt Lemon and Kiowa, O’Brien explains that his imagination allowed him to grapple successfully with his guilt and confusion over the death of his fourth-grade first love, Linda. | Describe the author’s style:The style here is brutally conversational. Grammatical niceties are not observed and it does not censor conversational tics such as an unnecessary "man" at the end of a sentence or casual cursing. It feels like something you would hear on the street. The combination of epic, beautiful sentences that you would definitely not hear on the street and sentences that would not be out of place in a high school hallway gives the impression that O'Brien is in love with language of all types, and will use whatever style he needs to make the content ring true. | An example that demonstrates the style: * Grammatical niceties: "I don't see no moral" * Henry Dobbins thought about it. * Yeah, well, he finally said. I don't see no moral. * There it is, man. * Fuck off. | Memorable Quotes | Quotation | Significance | “They moved like mules. By daylight they took sniper fire, at night they were mortared, but 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.” | This quote, coming early in the book, explains how the Vietnam War was different from WWII. Instead of engaging in open battle with a distinct front, Vietnam was more about search and destroy. Locating the enemy was more difficult than killing him. The endless monotony of the march deprives the soldiers from feeling as though they’ve accomplished anything - no battles won or lost. This increases the sense of ambiguity in the war and in the book. | “Mary Anne made you think about all those girls back home, how clean and innocent they are, how they’ll never understand any of this, not in a billion years. Try to tell them about it, they’ll just stare at you with those big round candy eyes. They won’t understand zip. It’s like trying to tell someone what chocolate tastes like.” | Rat Kiley talking about the sense of isolation soldiers feel from their peers back in the United States. While friends are working at fast food restaurant of going to college, these boys are killing people and blowing things up. They have little in common with former friends when they return. | “The town could not talk and would not listen. “How’d you like to hear about the war?” he might have asked, but the place could only blink and shrug. It had no memory, therefore no guilt. The taxes got paid and the votes got counted and the agencies of the government did their work briskly and politely. It was a brisk, polite town. It did not know shit about shit, and it did not care to know. | A scathing criticism of attitudes towards the war on the home front. America grew increasingly weary of a war that seemed to make no progress and be no closer to the end than to the beginning. Many Americans who had supported the war and expected young people to fight, then gave these young soldiers a thankless homecoming years later. Since the war was ultimately not successful, many people chose to pretend it had never happened at all. Unfortunately, for the soldiers who had killed, and bled, and sacrificed years of their youth, this was not as easy. | “He wished he could’ve explained some of this. How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be. The distinction was important.” | Another exploration into the nature of bravery. Each of us has a different standard for courage. When Norman reflects on his past deeds, he realizes he has outdone his own expectations for himself, yet he was not brave enough to pull Kiowa out of the muck or earn the Silver Star. This, of course, does not mean that he wasn’t brave, only that he won’t be recognized for bravery. | “Azar shrugged. After a second he reached out and clapped me on the shoulder, not roughly but not gently either. ‘What’s real?’ he said. ‘Eight months in fantasyland, it tends to blur the line. Honest to God, I sometimes can’t remember what real is.” | Azar exemplifies the problems created when you give an American teenager an automatic rifle and throw him into a situation where normal laws of civilization do not apply. Because of his youth and immaturity, Azar begins to forget the established norms of everyday life and accept Vietnam as his new reality - a fantasyland for violent youth. | Characters | Name | Role in Story | Significance | Adjectives | Tim O’Brien | The main character and narrator of most of the stories | He shares his recollections of the war, from receiving his draft notice until he eventually returns to Vietnam as a middle-aged father. The main conflict in the novel is an inner conflict as O’Brien struggles to release the pain and anguish that has built up as a result of his war experiences. | * Has a good memory * Trustworthy * Confused * Considerate | Azar | Azar is the result of taking an aggressive, immature American teenager and showing him how to use an M-16 rifle. | He treats his claymores as if they were firecrackers and has little respect for human of animal life. Azar can always be counted on for an insensitive joke at an inappropriate moment. O’Brien is able to count on him to help scare Bobby Jorgensen when no one else will. O’Brien later treats him with contempt for being weak - even kicking him in the head. Most of the platoon detests Azar because of his behavior. Henry Dobbins once held him over a well for mocking the dance of the little Vietnamese girl. | * Aggressive * Immature * Unsympathetic * Arrogant | Kiowa | A deeply religious American Indian who carries a tomahawk and a bible in his rucksack when on patrol. | Like O’Brien he is disturbed by a lot of what goes on around him - although he doesn’t always mention it. Although he doesn’t intend to become a man of the cloth, he is bothered most when the war infringes on religious territory. If there is a mentor figure for O’Brien, it is Kiowa. This is why his death in the muck field is such a traumatic event in the author’s life. | * Father-like * Trustworthy * Affable * Capable | Norman Bowker | He is the veteran that returns home and can’t relate to anyone or find meaning in employment, relationships, or school. | Everyone in his hometown has moved on with their lives, but he can’t make the transition from soldier to civilian. In part, this is due to his inability to communicate with other people, express what has happened to him and come to terms with his new reality. He feels that he has much to say, but lacks the words. | * Afraid * Bore * Glum * Gloomy | Rat Kiley | The platoon’s medic, Rat has a reputation for embellishing his stories. | O’Brien writes that you need to take the square root of Rat’s claims, and that would probably be close to the truth. Although the platoon trusts him as their medic, he seems to be somewhat unstable mentally. Towards the end of the novel, he comes unglued after a series of night marches and shoots himself in the foot to get out of the war. | * Cautious * Intelligent * Diligent * Facetious | Lieutenant Jimmy Cross | The platoon’s commanding officer | Is consumed by his love for a girl in his hometown. Try as he might, he cannot push the thoughts about Martha out of his mind and concentrate on the war. He is representative of the young officers that fought the war in Vietnam, brave boys who did the best they could despite their youth and inexperience. The platoon realizes his leadership is flawed, but most respect him because he cares. | * Respectable * Shattered * Fidgety * Caring | Setting | Significance of opening scene | Because this novel is a compilation of various episodes from the author’s life, the settings vary in terms of both time and space. Most of the stories take place in Vietnam, during his tour of duty in the late 1960s. But he also relates memories from life in his hometown in Massachusetts, before the war and after the war in the 1980s. A few do not involve him at all, except as the narrator, and instead concern his buddies or legends from the conflict. | | Symbols * The Lake / Field * Mary Anne Bell: Mark Fossie’s girlfriend symbolizes everything good about the United State of America. * Linda: symbolizes a form of youthful innocence. Or more specifically, she represents the desire to remember things as they once existed, before they were scarred by catastrophe. | Significance of the ending/closing sceneIronically the final chapter takes place as O’Brien first enters the platoon, furthering demonstrating the irrationality of the war through an irrational non-linear story line. This chapter focuses on two intertwined stories. The first is O'Brien's experience with a mutilated body after an airstrike, which he feels very uncomfortable about. Especially because the other soldiers are dehumanizing the corpus through there mocking handshakes and high-fives with the corpus. They are not doing this to disrespect the dead but to rather cope with the horror of war. O’Brien still new to scene is disgusted and refuses to participate. Kiowa then forces O’Brien to discuss the matter with him, and the story segways into a separate narrative of O’Brien’s elementary school sweetheart. O’Brien gives a compelling story of his relationship with a 9 year old girl named Linda. Tim's dad ends up taking him to the funeral where he is forced to face the reality of death. Every night Tim O'Brien "dreams her alive" in his sleep so that he can with the tragic lose. Even in O'Brien's middle age he dreams Linda alive. In fact O'Brien dreams all of his dead friends including Linda alive. In the final scene, O'Brien imagines Linda ice-skating with him and discusses the topic of death. Linda replies that death is like being in "a book that nobody's reading" and that you can only hope that someone is going to pick it up and just read. This final scene alludes to why O'Brien writes: to bring his character to life, fictional or non-fictional.the things they carried SIGNIFICANCE final chapter | Possible Themes- Topics of Discussion * Isolation: The soldiers constantly remark on their inability to communicate their experiences in a way that their family or peers will understand. Because of this, they feel a sense of isolation once they return home. * Language: O’Brien constantly remarks on how the language of war is purposely constructed to make pain and death seem less real. It is merely the dialogue of an elaborate play, in which they all act their part. * Truth: Stories that never happened may contain more truth than actual events. Stories can reveal truth in a way that makes the stomach believe. * Courage: Many heroic feats are done not because of an abundance of courage, but because men will do anything to avoid shame. Men kill and die because they are scared not to. Following one’s conscious often requires the greatest courage. * Redemption: The hero (O’Brien) struggles to understand his past and his involvement in the Vietnam War. When he returns to Vietnam and sees the country has moved beyond the war, he realizes he can do the same. |