By : Tim O’brien published in 1990

1. The Things They Carried By : Tim O’brienpublished in 1990 Donovan Chew Pd.2 05-2-12

2. Setting And Conflicts • Setting (Time): Late 1960’s and Late 1980’s • Setting (Place): Primarily Vietnam • Conflicts: The Men of the Alpha Company, Especially Tim O’Brien, Grapple With the Effects—Both Immediate and Long-Term—of the Vietnam War.

3. Subject/Theme Statement • Theme: The Fear Of Shame As Motivation • Analysis: Fear Of Shame Not Only Motivates Reluctant Men To Go To Vietnam But Also Affect’s Soldiers’ Relationships With Each Other Once There. Concern About Social Acceptance, Which Might Seem In The Abstract An Unimportant Preoccupation Given The Immediacy Of Death And Necessity Of Group Unity During War.

4. Major Characters • Jimmy Cross: His Character Represents The Profound Effects That Responsibility Has On Those Who Are Too Immature To Handle It. Jimmy Cross Was Viewed As A Christ Figure. In Times Of Inexplicable Atrocity, Certain Individuals Assume The Position Of A Group Or Their Own Savior. • Mitchell Sanders: Mitchell Is A Likeable Soldier And Devoted Friend And Also Has A Sense Of Irony. Sanders Often Applies This Pragmatism To His Story Telling. He Believes That A Good War Story Often Lacks A Moral And That Sometimes A Story Without Commentary Speaks For Itself

5. Minor Characters • Henry Dobbins - The platoon’s machine gunner and resident gentle giant. Dobbins’s profound decency, despite his simplicity, contrasts with his bearish frame. He is a perfect example of the incongruities in Vietnam. • Curt Lemon - A childish and careless member of the Alpha Company who is killed when he steps on a rigged mortar round. Though O’Brien does not particularly like Lemon, Lemon’s death is something O’Brien continually contemplates with sadness and regret. The preventability of his death and the irrational fears of his life—as when a dentist visits the company—point to the immaturity of many young American soldiers in Vietnam.

6. Major Symbols And Motifs • The Dead Young Vietnamese Soldier: Although O’Brien is unclear about whether or not he actually threw a grenade and killed a man outside My Khe, his memory of the man’s corpse is strong and recurring, symbolizing humanity’s guilt over war’s horrible acts. In “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien distances himself from the memory by speaking in the third person and constructing fantasies as to what the man must have been like before he was killed. • Ambiguous Morality: O’Brien’s stories show that the jungle blurs boundaries between right and wrong. The brutal killing of innocents on both sides cannot be explained, and in some moments of disbelief, the men deal with the pain of their feelings by pointing out the irony. Exposed to these horrors, the men’s notions of right and wrong shift and bend.

7. Protagonists Significance • The protagonist, Tim O’Brien, begins by describing an event that occurred in the middle of his Vietnam experience. “The Things They Carried” catalogs the variety of things his fellow 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 work recounts his personal experience in the Vietnam War and allows him to comment on the war. He enters the war a scared young man afraid of the shame that dodging the war would bring him and leaves the war a guilt-ridden middle-aged man who tells stories about Vietnam in order to cope with his painful memories.

8. Quotes With Analysis • Quote: “He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole.” • Analysis: This quotation, from “The Man I Killed,” describes the corpse of a young Vietnamese soldier whom O’Brien killed with a grenade. In this story, the narration is from a third-person perspective, and is largely a series of unconnected observations and fantasies about the young, dead soldier. This particular passage is an example of the concrete description O’Brien uses to come to terms with his killing of the boy.

9. Quotes Cont. • Quote: “They carried the soldier’s 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 or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment.” • Analysis: This quotation from the first story, “The Things They Carried,” is part of a longer passage about the emotional baggage of men at risk of dying. O’Brien contends that barely restrained cowardice is a common secret among soldiers. He debunks the notion that men go to war to be heroes. Instead, he says, they go because they are forced to and because refusal equals cowardice. This detached generalization foreshadows several later references to courage and juxtapositions of courage and cowardice.