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Ms. Hume – Senior Cont. Literature
“The Things They Carried” Study Guide Questions
REVISED 4/7/15
As you read through the assigned chapters, write out your responses to the assigned study guide questions in your
journal notebook. These responses will help you review for quizzes and the final unit exam
Chapters 1 & 2 (pages 1-29)
1) Note the personal items carried by the various soldiers. What do these items tell us about each individual soldier?
2) “To carry something was to hump it, to hump meant to walk…but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive”
Discuss what O’Brien means here.
3) What things did the soldier carry due to superstition?
4) What is “moral” about the scene with the young Viet Cong boy and Mitchell Sanders cutting off the boy’s
thumb?
5) “The hump was everything, a kind of inertia – a kind of emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect and
conscience and hope and human sensibility.” Discuss what O’Brien means here.
6) Why was Lieutenant Cross crying in this scene?
7) What are Kiowa’s reactions to Lavendar’s death?
8) According to Tim O’Brien, what is the “heaviest burden” the men carry?
9) What does O’Brien mean when he says “They were too frightened to be cowards.”
10) What does Lieutenant Cross realize his obligation is at the end of this chapter? What change do we see in him?
Chapters 3 & 4 (pages 30-58)
11) What does “Tim mean when he says the war was “aggressively boring.”
12) Explain/discuss the peace story where the awol guy goes back to duty after being with a nurse because “All that
peace, man, it felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back.”
13) Discuss the three short memories of Norman Bowker, Kiowa and Ted Lavender.
14) In 1968, what were Tim O’Brien’s feelings about the Vietnam War?
15) Would war be different if those who take our country to war had to risk their own kin to fight?
16) Explain the “moral split” Tim experienced while awaiting his draft notice.
17) In his hometown of Worthington, Minnesota, how does the local folks’ view of the war differ from Tim’s?
18) Explain why Tim says Elroy Berdahl “saved him”. List the specific actions or characteristics of Elroy that
explains Tim’s opinion of him.
19) What was Tim’s job in Worthington? What were his feelings about this job? Does his feelings about this job
reveal anything about why Tim would not support fighting in the Vietnam War?
20) What is the significance of Elroy saying “Ain’t biting” at this point in this chapter?
Chapters 5-8 (pages 59-84)
21) What do you think caused Dave Jensen’s violent fear”
22) Why do you suppose Lee Strunk was afraid Dave Jensen was going to kill him after Lee lost one of his legs?
23) Why does O’Brien say that a “true war story is never-moral.”
24) Recount/summarize the “true war story” that cannot be believed.
25) Explain Saunders statement “Hear that quiet man? –just listen…there’s your moral.”
26) Note the contradictions O’Brien states about war: “War is grotesque. But in truth, war is also a beauty – the
majesty of combat.”
27) Explain and discuss the following statements by O’Brien about the truthfulness of war.
a. “In the midst of evil, you want to be a good man, You’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead.”
b. “In a true war story, nothing’s ever absolutely true.”
28) Why does Curt Lemon insist on having a good tooth pulled by the dentist?
Chapters 9-11 (pages 85-117)
29) Mary Ann, Mark Fossie’s girlfriend, states “When I’m in there at night, I feel close to my own body. I’m on fire
almost – I’m burning away into nothing – but it doesn’t matter because I know exactly who I am.” What does this
statement say of her and how does her statement shed light on her fate in this reading?
30) What irony, if any, exists in this scene with the monks in the pagoda in the “Church” chapter?
Chapters 12-16 (pages 118-154)
31) In “The Man I Killed”, note the way Tim describes the Viet Cong whom he killed. What does his narrative
description and details of the victim suggest about Tim’s emotions or feelings about this man’s death? What are
Tim’s feelings implied here?
32) In (“Speaking on Courage,” what is Norman Bowker’s war story? What effect has this “war story” had on him?
Is he able to tell it? Why/why not?
33) What does O’Brien mean when he says “sometimes the difference between courage and cowardice was
something small and stupid?”
34) Why does O’Brien say that “this war was not a war for war stories, for nobody in town wanted to know about
the terrible stink. They wanted good intentions and good deeds.”
35) Describe Norman Bowker’s attempts to make a life for himself after the war.
36) What was Norman Bowker’s opinion of his junior college classes?
37) What request does Norman Bowker make to Tim O’Brien?
38) What realization does Tim come to as a writer in “Notes”
Chapters 17-19 (pages 155-179)
39) Identify the causes of Lieutenant Cross’s struggle to write Kiowa’s father a letter.
40) Describe the difference between “story-truth” and “happening-truth”
41) What does Tim do when he turns to the field of dung twenty years later?
Chapters 20-23 (pages 180-233)
42) Explain Tim’s statement “The presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake…like when
you are afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before. You pay attention to the world.”
43) What are Tim’s feelings as a soldier when reunited with his Alpha Company buddies at the base camp.
44) What effect had seven months in the “bush” had on Tim O’Brien?
45) What does Azar say about their little “war game”? What does his perspective tell us about war in general?
46) What does Tim realize after his attempt to “get even” with Bobbie Jorgenson?
47) Describe Rat Kiley’s, the medics, breakdown?
48) What does this quote by Tim O’Brien tell us about him as a writer and veteran of this war?
“The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping others might then dream along with you, and in
this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head.”
49) What value does Tim see in telling stories about the dead? Specifically, in “Lives of the Dead,” what purpose
does the story of Linda, the nine year old, serve in his memoir of the war experience?