The Things They Carried, Part 2

How does Dobbins react to his girlfriend dumping him in “Stockings?”

He continues to wear the stocking anyway.

Why does Henry Dobbins claim he could never be a minister in “Church?”

He believes he isn’t smart enough.

In “Stockings,” why does Henry Dobbins wear his girlfriend’ stockings around his neck?

He believes they are a sort of good luck charm or protective talisman.

How do the monks react to the soliders’ presence in “Church?”

They’re kind and welcoming to the soldiers.

In “Church,” who does Alpha Company find in the nearly abandoned pagoda?

A pair of monks.

How is Azar further portrayed as an unlikeable character in this chapter?

He shows glee over the dead body.

The quote does NOT represent Kiowa’s relationship with the narrator.

“Kiowa picked up the rubber sandals, clapping off the dirt, then bent down to search the body. He found a pouch of rice, a comb, a fingernail clipper, a few soiled piasters, a snapshot of a young woman standing in front of a parked motorcycle.”

"His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman's, his nose was undamaged, there was a slight tear at the lobe of one ear, his clean black hair was swept upward into a cowlick at the rear of the skull, his forehead was lightly freckled, his fingernails were clean, the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless, there was a butterfly on his chin, his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that had killed him."

What BEST describes this passage?

This sentence is written in short phrases and contains graphic imagery and a matter-of-fact tone.

In the description of the young man's body, which image is NOT repeated throughout "The Man I Killed?"

He was a tall man.

What is one thing that is NOT revealed about the narrator in this chapter?

The anonymity of the narrator represents the commonality of the soldier experience.

Which TWO of the following are the BEST examples of imagery from “The Man I Killed?”

"The grenade made a popping noise - not soft but not loud either - not what I'd expected - and there was a puff of dust and smoke - a small white puff - and the young man seemed to jerk upward as if pulled by invisible wires." and "The brush was thick and I had to lob it high, not aiming, and I remember the grenade seeming to freeze above me for an instant, as if a camera had clicked, and I remember ducking down and holding my breath and seeing little wisps of fog rise from the earth."

What is the purpose of repetition in “The Man I Killed?”

The repetition reveals the narrator's trauma of killing the young man.

Select the ONE section of the passage that is an example of the narrator's imagination.

“Frail-looking, delicately bones, the young man would not have wanted to be a soldier and in his heart would have feared performing badly in battle. Even as a boy growing up in the village of My Khe, he had worried about this. He imagined covering his head and lying in a deep hole and closing his eyes and not moving until the war was over. He had no stomach for violence. He loved mathematics. His eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman's, and at school the boys sometimes teased him about how pretty he was, the arched eyebrows and long shapely fingers, and on the playground they mimicked a woman's walk and made fun of his smooth skin and his love for mathematics. The young man could not make himself fight them.”

What theme is BEST represented in "The Man I Killed?"

In war, the lines between good and bad are blurred; the enemy and hero may be a similar person.

What does the narrator NOT imagine about the young man?

He dreamed about being a solider from a young age.

Select the TWO sentences that connect this story back to "The Man I Killed."

“I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of morality or politics or military duty” and “...He lay at the center of the trail, his right leg bent beneath him, his one eye shut, his other eye a huge star-shaped hole.”

What does Henry Dobbins mean when he says "dance right" at the end of the chapter?

If Azar is going to dance, Henry wants him to stop mocking the girl's moves.

"Even now I haven't finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don't. In the ordinary hours of life I try not to dwell on it, but now and then, when I'm reading a newspaper or just sitting alone in a room, I'll look up and see the young man step out of the morning fog. I'll watch him walk towards me, his shoulders slightly stooped, his head cocked to the side, and he'll pass within a few yards of me and suddenly smile at some secret thought and then continue up the trail to where it bends back into the fog."

What does fog represent in this passage?

Memory

What is the purpose of the narrator's daughter Kathleen in the chapter "Ambush?"

Kathleen prompts the narrator to connect the man he killed and why he writes war stories.

What is the significance of the title "Style?"

The title refers to the girl's unique style of dancing.

What TWO reasons does the narrator have for throwing the grenade?

Pulling the grenade pin was an automatic response and the narrator was scared.

Select the TWO quotes that BEST explain why the girl dances in this chapter.

"Later we found her family in the house. They were dead and badly burned" and "It wasn't a big family: an infant and an old woman and a woman whose age was hard to tell. When we dragged them out, the girl kept dancing."

"A good war story, he thought, but it was not a war for war stories, nor for talk of valor, and nobody in town wanted to know about the terrible stink. They wanted good intentions and good deeds. But the town was not to blame, really. It was a nice little town, very prosperous, with neat houses and all the sanitary conveniences."

What is the meaning of this passage?

The story of Kiowa's death did not contain the heroics of a traditional war story, and the town could not relate.

What is ONE of the sights that Norman DOES NOT observe during his rotations along the lake?

His father's house.

"And his father would have nodded, knowing full well that many brave men do not win medals for their bravery, and that others win medals for doing nothing."

What is the significance of this quote?

Sometimes medals do not equate bravery.

In what TWO ways does the setting of the lake connect to central ideas in the chapter?

The lake connects to the field that claimed Kiowa's life; Norman struggles with his inability to describe this experience during his rotations and the lake connects to Norman continually reliving the memory of Kiowa's death; the sights he sees during his rotations are similar to feeling tapped in an endless cycle of his trauma.

What is the overall mood of the chapter "Speaking of Courage?"

Slow and monotonous

What is one of the reasons Norman DOES NOT stay silent in "Speaking of Courage?"

Norman is afraid to fully relive the memory of Kiowa's death.

How is time used in "Speaking of Courage?"

Time goes quickly from late afternoon to night as Norman drives, which emphasizes the loop he is trapped in.

Which TWO of the following quotes BEST demonstrate the significance of the setting in "Speaking of Courage?"

"But there had always been a lake, which was the town's first cause of existence, a place for immigrant settlers to put down their loads" and "Now in the late afternoon, it lay calm and smooth, a good audience for silence, a seven-mile circumference that could be traveled by slow car in twenty-five minutes."

What is the significance of the title "Speaking of Courage?"

Norman wants to speak to someone about almost winning the Silver Star.

"A tour bus feeling, in a way, except the town he was touring seemed dead. Through the windows, as if in a stop-motion photograph, the place looked as if it had been hit by nerve gas, everything still and lifeless, even the people. The town could not talk, and would not listen. 'How'd you like to hear about the war?' he might have asked, but the place could only blink and shrug. It had no memory, therefore no guilt. The taxes got paid and the votes got counted and the agencies of government did their work briskly and politely. It was a brisk, polite town."

How does this quote relate to Norman's struggles in this chapter?

Norman feels alone and the town, never having seen the horrors of the Vietnam war, cannot relate.

Who tries to stop the men from camping in the field of sewage in “Speaking of Courage?”

Some older Vietnamese women from the nearby village

Where does Norman Bowker watch the fireworks from in “Speaking of Courage?”

He watches them at the lake.

How does Bowker claim he lost the Silver Star medal in “Speaking of Courage?”

He could have earned the medal if he had saved Kiowa, but instead he let him die.

In “Speaking of Courage,” who does Norman see mowing the lawn as he drives by?

His old girlfriend, Sally

Where is Norman Bowker driving in “Speaking of Courage?”

He is driving in circles around a lake.

For what reason did Tim NOT change so much of Norman’s story.

To add Kiowa’s death as a climax to the story.

Select the TWO phrases that contain figurative language in the excerpt below.

“Like clearing the throat” and “it was a way of grabbing people by the shirt and explaining what had happened to me.”

For what reason did Norman NOT first write Tim a letter?

To ask for help on how to cope with his PTSD.

What is the purpose of "Notes" in relationship to "Speaking of Courage?"

"Notes" questions both the purpose and craft of storytelling thorough the framework of Norman's post-war story in "Speaking of Courage."

Which quote DOES NOT connect to the idea that telling stories is "partly catharsis" and "a natural, inevitable process, like clearing the throat"?

"I drafted the piece in a week or two, fiddled with it for another week, then published it as a separate short story."

What is the narrator's role in this story?

The narrator compares his ability to communicate about the war through his writing vs. Norman's inability to talk.

What conclusions can NOT be drawn from Tim's revelations of the storytelling process?

The message of the story depends on its adherence to facts.

What quote does NOT best explain the purpose of storytelling this chapter.

"To provide a dramatic frame, I collapsed events into a single time and place, a car circling a lake on a quiet afternoon in midsummer, using the lake as a nucleus around which the story would orbit."

"'It's not terrible,' he wrote me, 'but you left out Vietnam.'"

What does Norman mean by this in his follow-up letter to Tim in "Notes?"

Tim left out the intensity, grime and trauma when he omitted Kiowa and the field from his story.

"When a man died, there had to be blame. Jimmy Cross understood this. You could blame the war. You could blame the idiots who made the war. You could blame Kiowa for going to it. You could blame the rain. You could blame the river. You could blame the field, the mud, the climate. You could blame the enemy. You could blame the mortar rounds. You could blame people who were too lazy to read a newspaper, who were bored by the daily body counts, who switched channels at the mention of politics. You could blame whole nations. You could blame God. You could blame the munitions makers or Karl Marx or a trick of fate or an old man in Omaha who forgot to vote."

What thematic statement is explored in this passage?

In war, it is impossible to place blame on one person or thing as there are too many factors involved.

Select the FOUR sentences that contain sensory imagery.

“At one edge of the field was a small ville, and right away a couple of old mama-sans had trotted out to warn him,” “But it was a war, and he had his orders, so they'd set up a perimeter and crawled under their ponchos and tried to settle in for the night,” “He remembered how the water kept rising, how a terrible stink began to swell up out of the earth,” and “It was a dead-fish smell, partly, but something else, too, and then late in the night Mitchell Sanders had crawled through the rain and grabbed him hard by the arm and asked what he was doing setting up in a sh** field.”

In which TWO ways are the concepts of guilt and blame addressed in the chapter "In the Field?"

Many of the characters in the chapter experience their own form of guilt about Kiowa's death and the chapter explores the idea that no one is to blame, while also everyone is to blame.

"They were tired and miserable; all they wanted now was to get it finished. Kiowa was gone. He was under the mud and water, folded in with the war, and their only thought was to find him and dig him out and then move on to someplace dry and warm."

How is figurative language used in this passage?

The metaphor "folded in with the war" is used to show how Kiowa is forever part of Vietnam.

"When the war was over, he thought, maybe then he would write a letter to Kiowa's father. Or maybe not. Maybe he would just take a couple of practice swings and knock the ball down the middle and pick up his clubs and walk off into the afternoon."

How does this passage reflect Lieutenant Cross's character?

He copes with trauma by escaping.

In what way does Lt. Cross NOT cope with the loss of Kiowa?

He blames himself for not being able to pull Kiowa out of the muck when he was shot.

Which quote BEST gives further insight into the character of Lt. Cross?

"In a funny way, it reminded him of a municipal golf course in his hometown in New Jersey. A lost ball, he thought."

Which TWO quotes BEST demonstrate characterization of the soldiers searching for Kiowa in this chapter?

"Azar sat down on the dike next to Norman Bowker. 'Listen,' he said. 'Those dumb jokes - I didn't mean anything’” and "They felt bad for Kiowa. But they also felt a kind of giddiness, a secret joy, because they were alive, and because even the rain was preferable to being sucked under a sh** field, and because it was all a matter of luck and happenstance."

How does the structure of "In the Field" relate to its theme?

The chapter is told from multiple perspectives to reflect the theme that everyone looks for blame, or feels guilt when death occurs.

"This picture, it was the only one I had. Right here, I lost it."

Why is the young soldier so adamant about finding the picture?

He blames himself for Kiowa's death because he was using a flashlight to show him the picture.

What quote is NOT the most revealing about the young soldier?

"He pictured Kiowa's face. They'd been close buddies, the tightest, and he remembered how last night they had huddled together under their ponchos, the rain cold and steady..."