The Things They Carried

Chapter 19: Analysis Questions

While reading the chapter, focus on the elements of craft commonly found in prose literature,
while also using the following questions to help guide your analysis and annotations. Then
answer each of the following questions in at least 3-4 concise sentences.

DO NOT RESEARCH THESE ONLINE!

CHALLENGE YOUR INTELLECT AND DO THE WORK YOURSELF!

1. Examine the dual meaning of the chapter title, “Field Trip,” and then discuss the main theme
attached to one of those meanings (each meaning has a theme--so pick one!). Support your
analysis with a direct quote(s).

Field Trip takes place when Tim O’Brien plans a legitimate ‘field trip,’ or summer vacation, with
his daughter, Kathleen, to Vietnam; the same places where the Vietnam War took place.
Essentially, his personal history ‘field trip’ down ‘memory lane’ with his daughter by his side
this time, that is one meaning. The second derives from O’Brien’s sarcastic nature towards the
childlike term, ‘field trip.’ While his daughter enjoys the “foreignness of it all, exotic food and
animals” of current Vietnam, it seems that her father just cannot be within the moment with his
daughter nor shrug the feeling of guilt off his shoulders (174). Although he mentions a universal
symbol of reincarnation, free and fluttering “yellow butterflies,” he clearly has not when he
automatically reminiscences of the place “where [he] had laid out Kiowa’s body after pulling
him from the muck” (173). And through the difference between these two severely drastic
viewpoints, O’Brien even points out the fact that the “war was as remote to her as cavemen and
dinosaurs” (175). With their opposing conversation with one another, it is quite evident that there
are just some things Kathleen, a child, cannot understand in the presence of her father, a veteran
of war as she consistently asks “Why?” and comments on how foolish she believes the war to be
and quite bluntly, useless (175). While she perceives Vietnam as a place of adventure and fresh
spirit, O’Brien, our author, exploits this as the one location of misery and desolation. He
witnessed guiltless Vietnamese civilians killed there and even murdered a man himself for no
viable reason other than to “stay alive” (175). The fact that he brings Kathleen there as her
BIRTHDAY PRESENT just proves how simplistic her views are from his. Instead of venturing
to the one place he imprisoned his own individual being in order to heal his own soul in some
manner, he travels out in hopes of appeasing his own shame because, in his mind, he still
believes Kiowa is dead because of him. He ‘buries’ “Kiowa’s old moccasins” under a deep lake,
attempting to relinquish his ‘wrongdoing’ in a personal manner by allowing them to sink in the
spot where he predicts Kiowa’s corpse was last seen (177). When exiting the lake, almost bare
naked, it is obvious that he sees this as a makeshift cleansing ceremony, aware of how filthy and
squalid the water is. He wishes to regain the courage to become who he was before the war,
wishing to abandon his past guilt of death and murder, wishing to just be at peace with himself.

2. Discuss what O’Brien was expecting to accomplish by revisiting Vietnam and make a case for
his success or failure. Support your analysis with a direct quote(s).
Already mentioned through the first page of the chapter, O’Brien bluntly expresses his wish to
find some kind of “forgiveness or personal grace” to ‘pardon’ himself of his sins and crimes
against his own species of blood, because the “coldness had never entirely disappeared” (173 &
176). He even reveals that he wished to “tell Kiowa that he’d been a great friend,” but all he
could do was “slap hands with the water” (178). All the regret floods within his mind, and
eventually, overtakes it as a whole. He does not and never forgave himself for what happened to
Kiowa and his victimized teammates that also succumbed to the “vulgarity and horror” of the
battlefield (176). His “pride,” his “belief in [himself] as a man of some small dignity,” and his
remembrance of his “swallowed” being still distinctly pressured and linger upon O’Brien’s
shoulders as he attempts to cleanse himself of them when entering the lake, and making an effort
to let go of all these excruciating memories through the passing of Kiowa through the former’s
shoes (176). Keep in mind, they were not Kiowa’s combat boots. They were the normal
day-in-life slippers that he kept in order to remember who he was before the war had he chose
the pathway to sacrifice it. O’Brien did not see Kiowa as a simple combat teammate, he
recognized him as a “best friend,” the “very best” friend (176 & 178). In general, he “blamed
[Vietnam] for what [he] had become” and “blamed it for taking away the person [he] has once
been” (176). Even when all those memories flash-forwards within his mind when revisiting the
country of his suffering, even when he could loath the Vietnamese for instigating an agonizing
war he did not need to be a part of, he simply tells his daughter that “[a]ll that [fighting] is
finished” (179). He strives to forgive his past endeavors with Vietnam, despite his remaining
sense of torture and torment. Whether I believe it was a failure or a success, I recognize this
personal experience for Tim O’Brien as a success, in spite of the fact that he cannot move on
from the terrors of the past, he accepts them as a memoir of his own history and distinguishes it
as an era within the days of yore that has shaped him as a human being.