1 Name: Major Works Data Sheet: Title: The Things They Carried Author: Tim OBrien Date of Publication:

1990 Genre: Fiction Historical information about the period of publication or setting of the novel: Though Vietnam has a long history of conflict over its independence from its founding in 208 B.C., U.S. involvement in the affairs of Vietnam began to crystallize during the final years of World War II. At the Potsdam Conference, the Allied powers determined that Britain would occupy Vietnam and force out Japanese troops occupying the area south of the sixteenth parallel. After a summer of internal political unrest in Vietnam, in September 1945, British forces arrived. Though Vietnam had long been a French colonial interest, the Vietnamese resisted French influence and clamored for independence, even attempting to enlist the United States' assistance. Biographical information about the author: O'Brien was drafted for military service in 1968, two weeks after completing his undergraduate degree at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he had enrolled in 1964. He earned a bachelor's degree in government and politics. An excellent student, O'Brien looked forward to attending graduate school and studying political science. During the course of his college career, O'Brien came to oppose the war, not as a radical activist but as a campaign supporter and volunteer of Eugene McCarthy, a candidate in the 1968 presidential election who was openly against the Vietnam War.

2 Characteristics of the genre:

Plot Character place or setting Fairytale Something that is not necessarily true

Plot Summary: First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is in love with a junior in college named Martha while he is in the middle of a war in Vietnam. While he travels around, he and Martha write letters to each other, in which he writes with love and she just writes back as a friend. Throughout the story, OBrien lists all of the supplies they all carry, such as guns, knives, and ammunition. It is also revealed that the men in Jimmy Crosss platoon carry objects that reveal their personalities as well. One morning Cross and his men come across a tunnel. It is Lee Strunks turn to search it so he goes inside with apprehension. In a few minutes, he comes back out shouting with joy and relief that hes still alive, while all this time, Cross is only thinking of Martha. After a few seconds, another one of Crosss men, Ted Lavender, is shot in the head. After Lavenders body was removed and taken back to safety, Cross starts to cry. He hates himself for being so distracted by a girl who might not even love him back as well as Martha who is distracting him. The story ends by Cross reminding himself that his obligation was not to be loved but to lead. From now on, he will not let anything or anyone get the best of him.

3 Major Works Data Sheet Memorable Quotes Quotation

1. 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. (Page 15) They carried their reputations. They carried the soldiers greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory and dishonor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. Right then, with the shore so close, I understood that I would not do what I should do. I would not swim away from my hometown and my country and my life. I would not be brave. That old image of myself as a hero, as a man of conscience and courage, all that was just a threadbare pipe dream. (Page 57) True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis. For example: War is hell. As a moral declaration the old truism seems perfectly true, and yet because it abstracts, because it generalizes, I cant believe it with my stomach. Nothing turns inside. It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe. (Page 78) The town could not talk and would not listen. Howd 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. (Page 143)

Significance 1.
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 theyve accomplished anything - no battles won or lost. This increases the sense of ambiguity in the war and in the book. Courage is also interlocked with fear and shame. OBrien believes many of the things we do are not motivated by courage, but by shame. Men killed, and died, he writes, because they were embarrassed not to. (Page 21) Men did not march up and down the mountains of Vietnam because they were brave, but because they were afraid to be cowards, afraid to be humiliated in the eyes of their peers. While out fishing on the Rainy River, OBrien reaches a crucial point of self-realization. The soldiers within a platoon formed intimate relationships, but when death occurred language helped trivialize those bonds to make the separation less painful. They used words like greased, zapped, offed, lit up, to describe the deaths of their friends. 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.

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4 Major Works Data Sheet Name

Tim OBrien Azar Kiowa Norman Bowker Rat Kiley Lt. Jimmy Cross Bobby Jorgensen Mary Anne Bell Elroy Berdahl Curt Lemon

Characters Role in the story Significance

Protagonist He treats his claymores as if they were firecrackers and has little respect for human of animal life. A deeply religious American Indian who carries a tomahawk and a bible in his rucksack when on patrol. He is the veteran that returns home and cant relate to anyone or find meaning in employment, relationships, or school The platoons medic, Rat has a reputation for embellishing his stories. The platoons commanding officer who is consumed by his love for a girl in his hometown. The young medic who replaces Rat Kiley and botches OBriens wound so badly that the author almost dies from shock. Mark Fossies girlfriend old man who welcomes Tim into the Tip Top Lodge is the novels example of a type of courage, or of what we sometimes do to convince people that we have courage. symbolizes memory and storytelling, two central themes of the novel. He is a young foot soldier in the Vietnam War, a member of Alpha Company. How teens drafted into do not realize how dangerous the war/situation is. Kiowa symbolizes the wastefulness of war. symbolic of the isolation veterans feel once they return home. OBrien writes that you need to take the square root of Rats claims, and that would probably be close to the truth. Show how some soldiers fantasize about home to escape the realities of the war n/a symbolizes everything good about the United State of America. The entire anecdote is a metaphor for how the war takes American youth and purity and corrupts it, leaving a series of teenage killing machines. a guardian angel Curt Lemon provides an example of the theme that shame causes us to exhibit all types of irrational behavior.

Adjectives
Thoughtful Aggressive, immature Religious, likeable Lost, isolated Liar, heartbreaken, mentally unstable Dreamy, unfocused, guilty, genuine , distracted Careless Innocent, transformed, corrupted Quiet, helpful, compassionate Humiliated, determined

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Linda Henry Bobbins Mitchell Sanders Ted Lavender Martha OBriens nine year old girlfriend who died from a brain tumor. Dobbins is a foot soldier in Alpha Company The radio officer of Alpha Company A soldier in Alpha Company Lt. Cross's love interest symbolizes a form of youthful innocence. she represents the desire to remember things as they once existed, before they were scarred by catastrophe. symbolizes "America itself, big and strongslow of foot but always plodding along. Sanders is the voice of soldierly experience and practical wisdom represents emotional escapism from the war n/a

Youthful, innocent Sympathetic, soft heart, respectable, moral n/a drugged, not sober unloving, mean

6 Major Works Data Sheet Setting Late 1 9 6 0s and late 19 80 s. Primarily Vietnam, but also U.S. locations including Iowa and Massachusetts Significance of the opening scene O'Brien introduces readers to the novel's primary characters by describing the articles that the soldiers carry. The level of detail O'Brien offers about the characters is expanded upon and illuminated in the chapters that follow, though O'Brien distills the essence of each characters' personality through the symbolic items each carries

Symbols or Motifs Motifs: Storytelling; ambiguous morality; loneliness and isolation

Significance of the ending / closing scene The narrative situation that O'Brien presents in the final chapter is complicated because it tries to make Darkness: During the day, it seems that the soldiers can sense of many of the stories that have been told and bear the war but when it turns dark everyone begins to retold throughout. He offers readers a story within a turn on themselves. story within a story. The general frame is one of an Water: Water serves as a symbol throughout the book and it shows up at key life-changing moments in several author and veteran thinking about Vietnam. As the author recollects and presents a story about characters lives. Usually in the form of a river, water is representative of death. Tim OBrien is on a river when animating the dead the scene with the toast to he knows he is going to go to the war, the field where the dead Vietnamese another story within that Kiowa died was flooded with water, and the lake that story unfolds, O'Brien recollecting the death of his Norman Bowker drives around in his hometown is childhood friend, Linda. This layer of stories where his friend drowned. Throughout the novel, water characterizes the power of stories as devices for means death and sorrow. It shows up in On The Rainy River, Speaking of Courage, and In The Field. ordering the events of life and figuring out one's response to those events. Possible Themes Everyone wants to keep a good reputation. Telling stories is partly catharsis. Truth can be portrayed through lies.

Old AP Questions 2004 Critic Roland Barthes has said, Literature is the question minus the answer. Choose a novel ot play and, considering Barthes observation, write an essay in which you analyze a central question the work raises and the extent to which it offers any answers. Explain how the authors treatment of this question affects your understanding of the work as a whole.