The Things They Carried

Chapter 1: Analysis Questions

While reading the introductory chapter, focus on the following elements of craft: symbols,
motifs, imagery, metaphors, repetition, character development, syntax, irony, narrative POV,
order of events, and the title (I know it’s a lot to look for, sorry!). Then answer each of the
following questions in 3-4 concise sentences.

DO NOT RESEARCH THESE ONLINE!

CHALLENGE YOUR INTELLECT AND DO THE WORK YOURSELF!

1. Explain the multiple different aspects of the ambiguous term “carry.” Be specific with your
ideas and your paraphrased examples. *You should be able to build a theme from this one word,
which you will elucidate in the last question.
The soldiers carry tangible things, such as weapons, medicine, hygienics, food, and personal
possessions. This is the literal definition of carrying, as the soldiers move heavy loads of
materials in their journey to survive. The soldiers also carry (possess) links to their past, such as
letters, Kiowa’s axe, and things they were fond of in their old lives. This emphasizes the fact that
the soldiers are individual people too, humanizing them. The soldiers also carry internal strife,
such as Cross’s love for Martha and guilt of Lavender’s death. This emotional baggage merges
with their desire to return to the past to create an especially difficult journey for the soldiers,
compromising many of their blinders. The soldiers also carry facades, maintaining expressions
of stoic indifference in order to uphold their masculine identities. They want to seem tough to
deal with the war, so they act apathetic and crude towards life in order to do so.
Theme: The desire to return to a regular world that the soldiers carry ultimately drags them down
in the quicksands of war.
Maintaining masculine identities is a direct response to something that strikes fear into one and
can become troublesome by fostering irrationality.
Regret and guilt merge with PTSD to create war’s nightmarish experience.
Soldiers become dehumanized by the grueling scenes and intense normalcy of war.

2. Analyze Lt. Jimmy Cross’ character development over the course of the chapter. *Wait until
you finish reading the chapter to answer this one. You should also be able to extrapolate a theme
from his development.
Lt. Jimmy Cross begins by being portrayed as a total prisoner of love. He is obsessed with
Martha, his highschool crush, whose letter and pebble he keeps in his pocket. O’ Brian further
develops his characterization as a simp, by describing how Cross has never really had the
courage or confidence to be straight with Martha; instead, even before the war, he was awkward
towards her on their dates, while she generally didn’t seem to care much about him. After his
mind wonders about Martha once more during the death of Lavender, Cross recognizes his
failure as a soldier and leader for worrying about her more than his men. He realizes how
mentally impeding love can be to his service and finally admits Martha may not even love him;
his love for her is now mixed with hatred. The chapter ends with him burning Martha's letters
and promising to himself he would devote himself entirely to his men and their mission.
Theme: We must abandon the personal bonds and memories that we carry throughout a war, or
else we shall truly sink.

3. Identify the image that Kiowa repeatedly connects to Lavender’s death and explain how it
connects to the larger idea of the chapter. Examine how the death affects him and the other
soldiers.
Kiowa continuously compares Lavender’s death with cement, uttering excitedly “boom, down,
not a word.” This connects to the chapter’s larger idea of the danger of holding onto things in
war. Dropping like concrete symbolically illustrates how the connections and worldly
possessions Lavender held onto weighed him down, as he ultimately slammed quickly like a
dense slab of solid cement. Cement is also grey, signifying his death’s insignificance in the grand
scheme of things.

4. Analyze the phrase: “Men killed, and died, because they were too embarrassed not to.” *This
will also form the basis of one of your themes in the last question.
In their attempts to maintain the facade of tough manliness that death doesn’t scare them, the
soldiers end up making stupid mistakes that ultimately cost their lives. They try to be impervious
to death’s scrutiny, though in doing so, they walk blindly into a field of landmines, blown into
obscure smithereens of denatured flesh.
Theme: Traditional masculine standards of extreme stoicism become toxic when men impose
such standards on their identity.

5. Identify at least THREE symbols and/or motifs from the chapter and briefly discuss their
meaning:

1. Concrete: Symbol of the emotional baggage connections to the past bring, the danger
of such carraible things, and the insignificance of soldiers.

2. Letters: Letters are the soldier's windows to their past and an alien world they are
fighting for. The emptiness of them highlight the purposelessness of the war and the social
distance soldiers experience from their home country.

3. Virginity: Symbol of an untampered past and the desire to enter it once more. Symbol
of a perverted image of love. Corruption by war.

6. Visit this website and review the meaning of the literary device known as a vignette. Then,
discuss HOW O’Brien utilizes this device within the chapter and WHY you think he chooses to
do so.
O’ Brian uses the vignette to pry open the thoughts of specific characters and to analyze general
scenes. He shifts between the viewpoints of characters, in order to portray certain events in
different lights. This builds up characterization and establishes the interdental conflicts of the
characters. In doing so, he’s also able to create character dynamics, by revealing how certain
characters think of each other. By examining the general scene, he’s able to pull the reader back
into an omniscient POV, and reveal background information, setting details, and philosophical
commentary.

O’ Brian uses vignette to widen the variety of lenses by which readers interpret the story.
Because readers are able to consume a plot through multiple angles, they are better able to
understand and appreciate the complexity of the story. The multiple POV structure of vignette
also allows O’ Brian to reveal certain plot details that could not be achieved through one point of
view. Vignettes about the general scene provides O’ Brian a way to establish settings and give
commentaries in an almost philosophical manner.

7. Finally, list FIVE themes (these should be in the form of complete sentences that display a
moral lesson) that are conveyed in just this first chapter:

1. War strips soldiers of their identities, turning them into insignificant statistics.
2. A soldier can never truly return to his life that once was; the past is unattainable.
3. Obsessions allow one to effectively part from an unpleasant reality.
4. Connections to the past must be abandoned to maximize chances of survival in war.
5. The obsession to maintain a masicline identity drives men to act irrationally, ultimately
placing men in literal and emotional danger.