The Things They Carried

1. The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien Final Presentation / Meyer

2. The Things Writers Carry Preliminary thoughts • Memory can be highly unreliable. Our remembered truths may be completely different from the remembered truths of those who grew up in the very same house. (Examples?) • Humor is the writer’s armor against hard emotions – and therefore, in the case of memoir, one more distortion of the truth.

3. The Things Writers Carry • From author Toni Morrison: • “The act of imagination is bound up with memory. They straightened out the Mississippi River in places to make room for houses and live-able acreage. Occasionally, the river floods these places. ‘Floods’ is the word they use, but it’s not flooding, it’s remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back where it was.”

4. The Things Writers Carry • Writers are like that: remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory: the rush of our imagination is the flooding. • All of us live with a life history in our mind. We are storytelling creatures. The crux is how well we tell our stories and how well we recognize that there is no true history. (Explain this)

5. The Things They Carried Themes • Physical and emotional burdens • Fear of shame as motivation • Subjection of truth to storytelling

6. The Things They Carried Storytelling • Fact and fiction is blurred: The objective truth of a war story is less important than the act of telling the story itself. • Technical facts around any one event are less important than the subjective truth of what the war meant to the soldiers and how it changed them. • Notes adapted from Jill Collela,Wiley Publishing Inc. New York 2001

7. The Things They Carried The book’s different storytellers are designed to relate the “truth of experience.” O’Brien: Stories contain immense power; tellers and listeners confront past together and share otherwise unknowable experiences. By telling stories, O'Brien is able to gain some distance from the harrowing experience he had in Vietnam. But while stories are a coping mechanism, they are also blueprints for communicating in life.

8. “On the Rainy River” • How the Vietnam War differed from other wars • Average age of soldier: 19 (WW II: 26) • In Vietnam War, many went to college to avoid war • Men had to explain why they served: not serving was acceptable • Soldiers served a tour of duty • In combat, there was no safety in the rear – there was no rear in Vietnam • There was little support for either the soldier or the war from the general population of the U.S. • Vietnam had not directly threatened the U.S.

9. “On the Rainy River” • The war was fought in a country whose history, culture, religions, and values were quite different from ours • The war’s goal was unclear: There was never a clear indication that America would do whatever was necessary to win • The officers in charge were often inexperienced and/or inconsistent. • Fighting casualties exceeded those in WW II • Territory was taken, lost, and taken repeatedly • There were no clear combat zones; there was no front • No emotional support was offered returning soldiers

10. “On the Rainy River” • All of the soldiers did not return home at the same time • No war since the Civil War caused such a split in U.S. public opinion, leading to social unrest and violence • Vietnam was the first war the U.S. lost • The war was broadcast on TV daily • Drug use was part of the combat scene; problems in the military included financial corruption, racism, low morale, theft, murder, and suicide

11. The Things They Carried The Things They (and we) Carry The metaphor of carrying gives weight to the idea that the things we carry —whether physical or emotional —enable us to navigate life’s inconsistencies.

12. “Spin” • The unconnected anecdotes here echo the fragmentation of the war experience. • War has no winners or losers, unlike Dobbins and Bowker’s game of checkers. • O’Brien’s relationship with his daughter, Kathleen, reveals the importance of storytelling: to deliver the past into the future, for giving perspective and understanding.

13. “Spin” Jot down these important quotes: As a writer, “You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present.” “Remembering leads to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”

14. “How To Tell A True War Story” • This chapter really blurs the distinction between truth and fiction. O’Brien immediately brands the story as true; then he states later that “none of it happened.” • He doesn’t lie: He changes the definition of telling the truth. • Lemon’s sister doesn’t get the “truth” of the story Kiley is telling her: Kiley’s brotherly love for Lemon. • On one hand, Lemon’s sister doesn’t respond to Kiley’s letter; on the other hand, her “response” is that she doesn’t answer Kiley’s letter. (How is this a response?)

15. “How to Tell A True War Story” • According to University of Maryland professor Jill Colella, who has critiqued the novel, this suggests a meaning that can be applied to readers and hearers of stories: that they can “tell” when stories hold a truth, whether the events of the story actually occurred, based on certain criteria. • Colella says that according to O’Brien, then, the truth of a story depends solely on the audience hearing it told. • If it strikes you as “true,” then it is.

16. “Field Trip” • The scene in the field is the climax of the story. • O’Brien finds a sense of closure through the physical act of wading into the water and depositing Kiowa’s moccasins. • Still, he is unable to explain this to his daughter, Kathleen, who represents the future. • O’Brien’s lingering questions about Vietnam 20 years later: Is it a country, a memory, both, or neither?

17. “The Lives of the Dead’ • This is the story that encapsulates the novel’s purpose: writing in order to make sense of life, especially in relation to others’ deaths. • Linda is O’Brien’s first love – and his first realization that fiction can overcome death. • When this beautiful, little child dies, her innocence, and O’Brien’s, dies with her. • Linda’s visits to O’Brien’s dreams begin a life-long process of addressing difficulty through imagination and illusion: an ability he carried with him to Vietnam. • By keeping Linda alive – as well as his Vietnam comrades – O’Brien is keeping himself alive.

18. “The Lives of the Dead” Important quotes from Tim O’Brien: • “The act of writing is an act of compassion. It entails sympathy for human frailties, weaknesses, and strengths: sympathy for a human condition in which we can never be that to which we aspire. • “Novels are made out of a sense of outrage at the world, the way the world treats us; the way we treat ourselves; the mistakes we make ourselves. Books come out of that sort of thing, that tension to make things better. • “The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you ... There is the illusion of aliveness.”