Summary and Analysis of The Things They Carried

Based on the Book by Tim O'Brien

• Publisher: Worth Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781504043762
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of The Things They Carried tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Tim O'Brien's book. Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader. This Summary of The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien includes:

• Historical context
• Story-by-story summaries
• Character analysis
• Themes and symbols
• Important quotes
• Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the source work

About The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien: A New York Times Book of the Century and Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Things They Carried is a modern classic and an essential work of literature about the Vietnam War. Brilliantly blending fact and fiction, autobiography and imagination, Tim O'Brien draws on personal experience to tell the stories of a platoon of American soldiers sent to fight Vietnam. As they trek through jungles and across mountains, the young men of Alpha Company carry radios, assault rifles, C-rations, and good luck charms—as well as grief, love, terror, and the shame of cowardice. Most of all, they carry the dream of escape, not yet knowing that the burden of memory will haunt them long after the war is over. Taught in classrooms all over the world, The Things They Carried is a groundbreaking work of art that reveals the true nature of war and celebrates the healing power of storytelling. The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of fiction.

Summary

The Things They Carried

The titular story introduces the members of Alpha Company. The soldiers, or legs, are identified by the things they carry with them on missions, from common items such as dog tags and C-rations to personal mementos such as Kiowa’s illustrated New Testament and Rat Kiley’s comic books. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries letters, photographs, and a good-luck charm from Martha, a college classmate. Ted Lavender carries tranquilizers and marijuana because he’s scared.

In addition to tangible items, the men carry emotional baggage, including grief, terror, love, fear of cowardice, and the knowledge that they might die.

Lieutenant Cross’s memories of his halting romance with Martha at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey are interspersed with the story of Ted Lavender’s death during a mission to find and destroy tunnel complexes near the village of Than Khe. Because he can’t stop daydreaming about Martha, Cross blames himself when Lavender is shot in the head by a sniper. Afterward, Cross leads the men into Than Khe to burn the village to the ground. He spends the night weeping in his foxhole. In the morning, he burns Martha’s letters and photographs and vows to be a better, more disciplined officer.

Love

Many years after the war, Jimmy Cross visits his war buddy “Tim O’Brien.” They look at photographs from their time in Vietnam, and after coming across a picture of Ted Lavender, Cross admits that he’s never forgiven himself for his death.

Cross reveals that he saw Martha at a college reunion in 1979. She’d become a Lutheran missionary and a trained nurse, and had never married. When Cross confesses he wanted to pick her up and carry her to his dorm room after one of their college dates, Martha says she doesn’t understand how men can do the things they do. The impossibility of a relationship with Martha becomes clear to Cross. Nevertheless, he still loves her. He gives “O’Brien” permission to write a story about his feelings, but asks to be portrayed as courageous and handsome, and a great platoon leader.

Spin

“Tim O’Brien” is a forty-three-year-old writer with a young daughter named Kathleen. He writes war stories but contends that he is not obsessed with Vietnam. A writer takes his material from his life, and “O’Brien” remembers so many stories from the war he can’t help but tell them.

Many episodes briefly referred to in “Spin”—Kiowa sinking into a field of muck, Curt Lemon’s body parts splayed across a tree, a young Vietnamese man dead on a trail outside of the village of My Khe—are the focus of later stories in the collection. Other fragments capture the surreal nature of the war, the strange blend of boredom, adventure, absurdity, friendship, and terror. Mitchell Sanders mails his body lice to his draft board in Ohio. Azar straps Ted Lavender’s puppy to a Claymore mine and fires.

“Spin” takes its title from the things the men of Alpha Company did to alleviate their boredom and fear: “On occasions the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put fancy spin on it, you could make it dance.” In many ways, Vietnam was a different world where the normal rules of society and nature did not apply.

On the Rainy River

The summer after he graduates from college, “Tim O’Brien” lives with his parents and works at a meatpacking plant in his hometown of Worthington, Minnesota. He is against the war, but purely from an intellectual standpoint, not realizing that his own life is at risk—until the day the draft notice arrives.

“O’Brien” thinks seriously about fleeing to Canada. One morning he drives a few hundred miles north to the border. On the south shore of the Rainy River he checks into Tip Top Lodge, an old fishing resort. It’s the off-season and the only other person at the lodge is the owner, an old man named Elroy Berdahl, who seems to know what his guest is contemplating but never asks any questions. One day, Berdahl takes “O’Brien” fishing and deliberately stops the boat only twenty yards from the Canadian border.

Confronted with the reality of his decision, “O’Brien” is unable to choose between the two courses his life might take. He imagines crowds of people—everyone from his brother and sister to Jane Fonda to the young man he will one day kill outside the village of My Khe—urging him to swim toward one shore or another. He tries to will himself overboard, but the fear of ridicule makes it impossible. In that moment, he submits and decides to go to war—he is too embarrassed not to. Berdahl’s presence makes the decision real, and the next morning, “O’Brien” starts the journey that will take him to Vietnam.

Enemies / Friends

In “Enemies,” Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen get into a fistfight over a missing jackknife and Strunk is hurt so badly he has to be helicoptered back to the rear for medical treatment. He returns two days later with a splint over his nose. Fearing retribution, Jensen grows increasingly paranoid, until one day he breaks his own nose with the butt of a pistol. He shows Strunk what he’s done and asks if they’re square. Strunk says sure, but can’t stop laughing—he really did steal Jensen’s jackknife.

In “Friends,” Jensen and Strunk learn to trust each other in the months following the jackknife incident. They sign a pact that if one of them gets a “wheelchair wound” the other will put him out of his misery. A couple of months later, Strunk steps on a rigged mortar round, losing his right leg below the knee. He makes Jensen promise not to kill him—the wound is not so bad, his leg can be sewn back on. Jensen agrees, but when he learns that Strunk died en route to the hospital, he is visibly relieved.

How to Tell a True War Story

“How to Tell a True War Story” can be read as both the full account of Curt Lemon’s death and a statement on the purpose and methodology of the novel’s blending of fact and fiction.

The story of Curt Lemon’s death is told in three distinct versions. Each version reveals new and important details. In the first, Lemon “step[s] from shade into bright sunlight” and the sunlight lifts him into a tree. In the second version, we learn that after Lemon’s death, his best friend, Rat Kiley, shot a baby water buffalo to pieces. In the third version, it becomes clear that Lemon stepped on a booby-trapped artillery round and was blown into a tree.

According to “O’Brien,” true war stories do not leave you feeling uplifted, do not abstract or generalize, often seem untrue, and have no moral. Each of these qualities can be applied both to the story of Lemon’s death and to the novel as a whole. The moment Lemon stepped on the booby trap is told three different ways because such events are never seen in their totality. Running for their lives, witnesses miss key details; the picture gets jumbled. Only by vi...