1. This novel doesn't quite have a real plot sequence because it is a collection of stories Tim O'Brien is retelling from his service in Vietnam along with the wisdom he has gained from it.
The Things They Carried- This chapter starts off with talking about First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his love for a woman named Martha. She doesn't love him back but Jimmy still pretends and hopes she does... Then it moves to the tactical things the men had to carry like weapons and ponchos. But then they discuss the things they "humped" or didn't need to carry but wanted to anyways. Jimmy humped Martha's letters and a picture of her. Then it moves to Ted Lavender and how he humped extra tranquilizers because he was afraid of the war. One day, they were in charge of clearing out a drainage pipe. Lee Stunk cleared in and when he came out safe and sound the men were excited but just as they finished cheering, Lavender was shot in the head. They move on to talk about morals of the war... and they couldn't come up with any. The men concluded that imagination was a killer out there.
Love- Tim visits Jimmy after the war and talks about their time there. He talks to Tim about Martha still and tells him that Tim can write about her if he wants to, hoping that maybe she will read it one day.
Spin- Tim writes about peace in war. He talks about how there are moments in the war where you feel peace like looking up at the clear blue sky with silence surrounding you. Norman Bowker would recieve some peace if only his father would send him a letter that wasn't demanding so many medals out of him but rather offering support. He also talks about how Kiowa tried teaching the platoon how to rain dance.
On The Rainy River- Tim tells a story he hasn't told anyone: running away from the draft. He up and left his family at the end of the summer as he planned on running off to Canada. As he makes his way toward the border, he stops at a cozy cabin for the night run by a man named Elroy. Elroy doesn't ask Tim any questions about why he is there but rather, gives him odd jobs around the property. On one of the last days there, Elroy even takes him to the lake on the border basically offering Tim the chance for escape. Tim, however, decides against his plans and goes back home for the draft.
Enemies- One day in July, Jenson and Strunk get into a fight when Jenson accuses Strunk of stealing his knife. The fight gets so heated that Jenson breaks Strunk's nose with one punch. The tension continues after the fight but Jenson grabs the butt of his pistol one night and breaks his own nose with it to get even for what he did to Strunk... Strunk laughs because he actually did steal his knife!
Friends- Strunk and Jenson agree that if either of them were to end up paralyzed or in a wheelchair, that the other was to shoot him to put him out of his misery. Strunk gets his leg blown off in battle and pleads that Jenson doesn't kill him. Jenson says he wont as he rushes Strunk to the chopper. Strunk later dies in a foreign hospital.
How to Tell a True War Story- Rat Kiley writes a letter to the sister of his dead best friend, Curt Lemon. He never hears back from the gal even after he watched her brother step on a land mine and explode into a tree. The men had to pick the pieces of his body out of the tree. It then moves to Mitchell Sanders telling the platoon a war story. He tells the men that one platoon out in the hills, stationed at a radio center, was assigned a the job of just listening to the enemy radio silently. As the nights move on and on, they hear songs and celebrations and start to get freaked out. They order an air strike on the canyon they were in but it turns out their radio frequency was changed to a local radio station... He explains a true war story is marked by how it never seems to end and how it doesn't really have a moral to it. He explains that it doesn't necessarily have to be completely true but rather can be fabricated a bit in order to convey the true feeling behind it.
The Dentist- Curt Lemon passes out on the way to the Dentist's office. Out of embarrassment, he avoids the platoon the whole day after the occurrence but that night he wakes up the dentist with a "tooth ache". The dentist pulls out a tooth for Lemon even if he knows there is nothing wrong with it.
Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong- Rat Kiley tells his own war story from when he was previously stationed with a guy named Fossie. Fossie was daring enough to fly his girlfriend Mary Anne out into the Vietnam jungle. It worked because the base they were on was relatively quiet since it was mainly a medic site. The men on the base came to love Mary Anne and she came to love the jungle. She adapted to the men and the army way of life, even picking up on medical procedures and learning to shoot. But after awhile, she started vanishing from Fossie's bed at night. He figured she was just wandering but one night she doesn't even return. Fossie finds the next morning that she had gone out with the Greenies (Green Berets) on an ambush. Fossie fights with her and tries to force her back to the bright eyed blonde she used to be but Mary Anne just dies inside. She just leaves with the Greenies and goes rogue. One night, Fossie finds his animalistic girlfriend with a necklace of black tongues and camouflage covering her body. She has caught jungle fever and is completely in love with the thrill of the war.
Stockings- Henry Dobbins greatest luck charm in the war was his girlfriends stockings. When he was going out on an ambush or clearing a town, he tied it around his neck for good luck. It worked well for him as he escaped death multiple times. It even worked after his girlfriend broke up with him.
Church- Kiowa and Dobbins discuss how they might want to be ministers when they get back from the war. They both have found a peaceful feeling in the church and even as they are in Vietnam and they make their fort up in a pagoda, they still seem to find peace.
The Man I Killed- Tim describes the man he killed in Vietnam and all of the gore the grenade had done to his body. He imagines what his life was like and if he felt the same about the war as Tim had. He wonders if he was as afraid as Tim was. Tim can't help but stare at the slim body of this Vietnamese man who probably wasn't even part of the VC but just a man protecting his property. Tim is speechless at what he has done...
Ambush- Tim explains how he killed the man in Vietnam. He expounds his scenario from the grenade to the circumstance. He threw the grenade before he even could really think about it and that he might not have been in any danger from the man since he had not been seen. Tim's reactions weren't even thought out but rather just instinctual.
Style- Azar makes fun of a girl dancing in the middle of her bombed village. Her family had been incinerated and Dobbins stands up for her and makes Azar stop.
Speaking of Courage- Norman Bowker drives around his little town in the midwest on Fourth of July evening. He has just gotten back from the war and has nobody to really talk to. He wants to tell people of how he almost got a silver star for bravery but he can't come to actually tell people. He feels like his father would just listen to the "almost" part and drift off. He feels so alone. His high school sweetheart is married with kids. He can't talk to his parents. He watched his friend sink into the mud and die in Vietnam.
Notes- Norman Bowker actually wanted Tim to write a story about a Vietnam vet who just lost himself in with the war. He wanted a story that showed how veterans like himself don't pity themselves but rather just feel so alone that they become depressed and isolated. He didn't expect a parade for his service but he at least expected someone to listen... Norman Bowker hung himself in August 1978.
In the Field- This story is about how Kiowa died in the mud/latrine field. Under heavy rain, the field was waist deep in mud when the ambush attacked. Kiowa was blasted and Bowker grabbed his boot and tried to save him but the stench of the fetid mud made him cringe away and lose him altogether. The men look for Kiowa's body as Jimmy Cross writes a letter to Kiowa's parents in his head as he explains that he was fully responsible for Kiowa's death. Some of the men feel like Cross was the one to blame too but one boy feels like he is to blame because he shined a flashlight that signaled their location to the enemy.
Good Form- War stories are true and false. They could be completely true in how they feel but completely false in every aspect of the story. Tim explains that he could say he killed a man because he was their when it happened but he could also say that he didn't kill a man because he didn't actually do it by his gun or hand.
Field Trip- Tim takes his daughter to Vietnam and shows her all the touristy spots before they see where he actually fought. He goes straight to the mud field where Kiowa was killed and sets Kiowa's moccasins down where they found the body. His daughter is young and doesn't quite realize the importance of this spot and moment.
The Ghost Soldiers- Tim was shot twice in Vietnam. The first time, Rat Kiley took care of him and he was fixed up perfectly. The second time, the new medic, Bobby Jorgenson, was so scared stiff that it took him ten minutes before he could even work on Tim. The job he did on him was bad, too. Tim got gangrene from the botched procedure and he almost died of shock as he was being worked on. Tim began to hate Jorgenson. He planned on murdering him and torturing him... So when they finally met up again, Tim proposed that Azar would scare him in order to get him back for what he did. So they rig up a bunch of rounds and claymore to go off outside his tent and Bobby took it like a man even when Tim told Azar to stop. Bobby says that they are even and they both agree they hate Azar because he doesn't know when to quit. Tim realizes the war made him cruel and mean.
Night Life- Tim talks about how Rat Kiley lost it. Kiley and his platoon were moving at night and sleeping during the hot heat of the day. When they were awake, the platoon was silent all throughout the night, listening to the chatters of death monkeys and the scary sounds of the Vietnamese jungle. Rat Kiley began to talk to himself and start to come up with weird conversations. He started to think the bugs were after him personally. Then one day, he sat down with his troops and explained that the medic in him made him see things differently. He could picture another man's organs and began to wonder what his own looked like. He didn't see death as death but rather an experiment. So that night, he went to his tent, shot himself full of morphine, and then shot himself in the foot.
The Lives of the Dead- When Tim was little, he went out on a date with a girl named Linda. He was convinced he was in love with Linda. One day, Tim found out ,however, that Linda had a fatal brain tumor. Timmy was shocked and Linda died. Tim when to see her open casket despite his father's warnings. At the time, Tim was petrified after he saw Linda's deformed body. It haunted him for weeks... But now Tim explains how soldiers didn't ever really see death as death when they were over in Vietnam fighting because there was so much death around them they became immune to it almost. He talks about how his platoon would prop up dead people and pretend to have them talk. They would make jokes about the dead as if they were gone and just a thing of the past like with Ted Lavender too. He talks about how now he remembers these people and they live on in his own dreams and sometimes even his own reality.
2. The broad theme of the novel is war but there are many underlying themes within war. Most themes of war are actually contradicting. Tim O'Brien wrote how there was peace in war and even how you can tell a true war story without telling the truth. The point of all of this being is that war isn't a simple matter. War is actually complex and contradicts itself and is completely insane.
3. The tone in The Things They Carried is serious and dark. Tim approaches everything with a straight forward way of talking. Its personable though because he conveys how the war was and how veterans feel about it without dulling down what happened. In a way, he is explaining something so incredibly hard to imagine like the way a professor expounds chemistry to his students. He talks about war without patronizing the reader but accepting us even though we aren't veterans ourselves.
"They were afraid of dying but they were more afraid of showing it." p. 19
"You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead." p. 39
"But here I want to pretend she is a grown up. I want to tell her exactly what happened or what I remember happening and then I want to say to her as a little girl she was absolutely right. This is why I keep writing war stories." p.125 (On when his daughter asks if he killed a man and his response of no)
4. Parallelism- "Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers... they all carried steel helmets... they carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots.. Dave Jenson carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl's foot powder for protection against trench foot." p. 2 Tim O'Brien uses parallelism throughout this passage and continuing through all the different types of things the men carried. It adds an emphasis to how much they had to carry throughout the jungle and shows how strong the men actually were.
Allusion- "She wrote beautifully about her respect for her professors and roommates and midterm exams and her respect for Chaucer and Virginia Woolf. She often quoted lines of poetry but never mentioned the war, only to say, Jimmy, take care of yourself." p. 2 Martha writes to Jimmy about her life and her studies in college, possibly as she reads the Canterbury Tales (like we have in our class!). This always discouraged Jimmy even if he just wanted her to love him but she is so focused on her world and Jimmy is far away in a completely different one.
Onomatopoeia- "Boom-down, he said. Like cement." p. 6 Kiowa explains how Ted Lavender fell dead. Sometimes a sound effect explains it just as effectively as a full paragraph would. This adds to how Tim wrote, simplified but still explaining everything in detail.
Rhetorical Questions- "Will your flashlight go dead? Do rats carry rabies? If you screamed, how far will the sound carry? Will your buddies be able to hear it? Would they have the courage to drag you out?" p. 10 Tim asks these questions as he watches one of his friends climb through a drainage pipe in order to clear it for their safety. Such simple questions but you can only imagine what is on the minds of soldiers as they risk their life for their country.
Simile- "I sometimes felt the fear spreading inside me like weeds." p. 42 Tim conveys how scared he was in Vietnam but also suggests how it is unwanted with connotation of weeds which also conveys a darker tone.
Paradox- "War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead." p. 76 War is a long extended oxymoron. It is full of opposite sayings that somehow make sense together. This ties into the theme of the novel.
Metaphor- "You can't tell where you are, or why you are there, and the only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity." p. 78 In war, the unknown is the only constant along with a vague sense of what you're mission is there. War is completely confusing to everyone and especially to the people fighting in it.
Pathos- "'Sorry about that. I'm no basket case- not even any bad dreams. And I don't feel like anybody mistreats me or anything, except sometimes people act too nice, too polite, like they're afraid they might ask the wrong question... But I shouldn't bitch.'" p. 150 Norman Bowker explains what it feels like living in America after going to fight for our country in the Vietnam war. He experiences what most veterans have felt since coming back and it ultimately leads him to hanging himself.
Repetition- "His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut and the other was in a star-shaped hole." P.120 Tim repeats this multiple times in order to show the state of confusion and shock he was in when he looked upon the man he had killed. He was just so mortified as he looked over his disfigured body and face.
Imagery- "The left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips. The wounds at his neck had not yet clotted, which made him seem animate even in death, the blood still spreading out across his shirt." p. 122 Tim uses imagery to show the gore that he had seen in the war. He also uses this to emphasis how horrible the bloodshed actually was in Vietnam.
Characterization
1. Indirect characterization
Tim - "...I sometimes felt the fear spreading inside me like weeds. I imagined myself dead. I imagined me doing things I could not do- charging an enemy position, taking aim at another human being." p. 42
Tim- "... but after seven months in the bush I realized that those high, civilized trappings had somehow been crushed under the weight of the simple daily realities. I'd turned mean inside. Even a little cruel at times." p. 190
Direct Characterization
Tim- "Lavender's left cheek bone was gone." p.218
Tim- "There was a large Band-Aid at the back of her head, a row of black stitches, a piece of gauze taped above her left ear." p. 223
In order to show psychological development, Tim uses more indirect characterization. This adds to the effect that Vietnam was this crazy place where you slowly lose your mind if you haven't already lost yourself as a whole. To emphasis the horrors of the war, Tim is more blunt with direct characterization. By telling you exactly how it looked, you can envision it for yourself rather than get a feeling of what the ineluctable gore was.
2. When Tim focuses on characterization, he gives each character a unique personality but with similar voices since nearly every character in the novel is male and under 24. Some characters talk more than others but the majority of the book isn't told by dialogue but rather recollection of events and descriptions. (Rat Kiley and Mitchell Sanders are the raconteurs of the group.) But for the most part, when he focuses on character, he doesn't change his syntax or diction.
3. It is hard to say whether Tim is a static or dynamic character. Yes, some stories strictly revolve around him but other are about other characters entirely without him even in it. So I would say for the most part, Tim would be considered a dynamic and round character. With the stories he is in, you get a full feel for the way he thinks and acts which causes him to be a completely developed character. Also, he is the one writing and retelling his encounters so it is only natural for him to be a full character.
4."They didn't know history. They didn't know the first thing about Diem's tyranny or the nature of the Vietnamese nationalism, or the long colonialism of the French- this was all too damned complicated, it required some reading- but no matter, it was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple, which was how they liked things, and you were a treasonous pussy if you had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons. I was bitter, sure. But it was so much more than that. The emotions went from outrage to terror to bewilderment to guilt to sorrow and then back to outrage. I felt a sickness inside me. Real disease." p. 43
This passage shows all of Tim's emotions as he faces the draft and being forced into a war he didn't agree with. He explains that the people didn't even understand the complexity of the situation but rather just want you to whole heartedly go out and defend American interest even if it meant killing and dying for it. He shows all the frustration he felt when he faced what was the rest of his life decided by simpletons who merely chauvinists to our country that didn't care to expound the war in Vietnam but rather truncate the details and move on even if it meant losing thousands of lives in the process.
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