Book Section 3 Study Questions
"The Ghost Soldiers"
1. What was it about Rat’s care of Tim that took courage?
2. Where was Tim’s second wound?
3. How long did the medic take to get Tim during the battle?
4. What did Tim devote a lot of time to once he "could think straight"?
5. How did his feelings about his wound and his recovery affect his feelings about Jorgenson?
6. After his second wound, where was Tim deployed? How did his new assignment change his relationship to the other guys in his platoon?
7. After his confrontation with Jorgenson, what did Tim feel had changed about himself after "seven months in the bush"?
8. What did Tim become as he watched Jorgenson reacting to the noisemakers?
9. How does Azar change the game they are playing against Jorgenson?
10. When he was wounded, what did Tim keep trying to tell Jorgenson, but couldn’t?
11. What did Azar do to Tim "as an afterthought"?
12. What happens between Jorgenson and Tim afterwards?
1. What do the soldiers mean by "living the night life"?
2. Who did Tim get this story from?
3. What happened to Rat after five or six days?
4. What did he keep talking about?
5. How does Rat describe "this whole war"?
6. What did Rat do to himself the next morning?
7. How does Cross say he’ll explain what happened?
8. What did the guys say to cheer him up about being in Japan?
"The Lives of the Dead"
1. What can stories do?
2. What can happen in a story sometimes?
3. What did the soldiers do with the body they found in the bombed out village?
4. What did Kiowa say about Tim’s actions?
5. Who did the old man’s body remind Tim of?
6. How old were Tim and Linda when they went out on their first date?
7. What did Linda wear on her head?
8. What did Linda say to Tim after she was dead?
9. What did the class find out about Linda?
10. What can you steal in a story? What can happen?
11. How could the soldiers keep the dead alive?
12. What was Tim’s "worst day at the war"?
13. What had become "a secret meeting place" for Tim and Linda?
14. What does Linda say being dead is like?
Adapted from Amy Reynolds, Engl. 098, CSUN English Department http://www.csun.edu/~alr2303/TTCHome.html
Book Section 1 Study Questions
handout of section 1 Qs here.
"The Things They Carried"
Before you start, number the sections.
1. What is section 1 about? Section 2? Section 3? Do you detect a pattern? What is it?
2. When is Lavendar’s death first mentioned?
3. When is his death first described?
4. What were the soldiers doing when Lavendar was killed?
5. What is the "good luck charm" that Norman Bowker carries?
6. What was the young dead VC boy carrying? How does what he carries differ from what the American soldiers carry?
7. What did the platoon do in the village of Than Khe?
8. How does Kiowa feel about Lavendar’s death?
9. What was, "in many respects…the heaviest burden of all"?
10. What were they more afraid of than dying?
11. What did Cross do with Martha’s pictures after Lavendar’s death?
12. How did his feelings for her change?
13. What might Martha stand for or signify?
14. How does Lt. Cross change his way of commanding after Lavendar’s death?
1. What could Jimmy Cross never forgive himself for?
2. How did Jimmy get a new picture of Martha playing volleyball?
3. What does Jimmy ask Tim to do when he writes his story?
4. What does he tell Tim NOT to mention?
1. What do we learn about Azar’s character in this story?
2. How was the war NOT like a game of checkers?
3. How did the "old poppa-san" help the platoon? What was his special skill?
4. What does Norman Bowker wish for, more than anything?
5. What does Kiowa say when his rain dance doesn’t work?
6. What did Azar do to Ted Lavendar’s puppy?
7. What does Azar say about his action?
8. Identify in this story moments of beauty and/or serenity.
9. How is this story structured? What can you say about all these short sections?
10. According to Tim, what are stories for?
"On the Rainy River"
1. How did Tim feel about the Vietnam War while he was at college?
2. What was Tim’s job in the summer of 1968?
3. What were Tim’s options once he received his draft notice?
4. Who did he hold responsible for his situation?
5. Who did he think should go to war instead of him?
6. What did he do at work when he decided to leave?
7. What does Tim say is Elroy Berdhal’s role in his life?
8. What was the financial deal Elroy made with Tim?
9. Where did Elroy take Tim & Elroy on the day six?
10. What typical images of boyhood did Tim remember about himself while on the river?
11. Who are the following people: LBJ, Abbie Hoffman, Jane Fonda as Barbarella?
12. What was Elroy Berdhal’s role that day?
13. What did Tim end up doing about his situation?
1. Who broke whose nose?
2. What was the effect of the fight on Jensen?
3. What did Jensen finally do to resolve the conflict between them?
1. What was the pact that Dave Jensen & Lee Strunk made together?
2. What happened to Lee Strunk?
3. What was he afraid of when he saw Jensen, and what did he make him promise?
"How to Tell a True War Story"
1. What happens when you "send guys to war"?
2. What were Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley doing when Curt stepped on the land mine?
3. Why is it difficult "to separate what happened from what seemed to happen"?
4. What was the mission of the patrol that went up to the mountains?
5. What did they hear while they were there?
6. What did they end up doing about it?
7. What happened to the VC water buffalo?
8. What did Rat do afterwards?
9. What does "proximity to death" bring with it?
10. What did Tim think Curt Lemon must’ve thought killed him?
11. What does the nice middle-aged woman think Tim should do?
12. What does he want to say to her about the baby buffalo, and everything else in the story?
13. According to O’Brien, what is a true war story NEVER about?
Questions to Consider
Why is it "difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen"? (p. 67, How to Tell a True War Story).
Tim O'Brien's writing constantly seeks to give meaning to the events that happened in Vietnam. Create a written portrait of Tim O'Brien using three or four carefully selected passages that describe the narrator's inner thoughts as evidence to support your ideas. What does each reveal about his concerns, hopes, and fears? How do certain word choices reveal the way he sees the world?
Throughout the book, O'Brien casts doubt on the veracity of his stories. Why does he do so? Does it make you more or less interested in the book? Does it increase or decrease your understanding? What is the difference between facts and truth? Is it fair to readers that the author uses elements of his own life and blurs the lines between fact and fiction in these stories?
Tim O'Brien once made the following assertion in an interview with Texas Monthly: "Good movies -- and good novels, too -- do not depend upon 'accurate portrayals.' Accuracy is irrelevant. Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape; finally makes us look inward at ourselves." (Texas Monthly, Nov. 2002. Qtd. In http://illyria.com/tobhp.html#Newsletter )
What is an "accurate portrayal?" How does The Things They Carried function as art? Does it provide "accurate portrayals?" Of what?
From NEA Big Read website.
Audio - PRI reading of Chapter 1: "The Things They Carried"
Audio - The Big Read Audio Guide Introduction. (30:00)
Audio - Leonard Lopate show O'Brien interview (18:10)
Audio - Fresh Aire radio show on 20th ann. (15:00)
Video - PBS newshour - O'Brien interview 1 (4:31)
Video - Tim O'Brien reading TTTC (2:00)
Video - "Talismans in Iraq" photo essay in NYT
Critical Essay - Kaplan, Steven. "The Undying Certainty of the Narrator in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried." Studies in Contemporary Fiction 35:1 (1993): 48. PDF.
Critical Essay - Silbergleid, Robin. "Making Things Present: Tim O'Brien's Autobiographical Metafiction." Contemporary Literature. 50.1 (2009): 133. PDF.
Talking Points #1
Prepare a one page single-spaced response for the discussion on Friday. The prompt: How does your personal understanding of the experience of Alpha Company (or individual soldiers) change over time, with the accumulation of chapters? What's the cumulative effect of the series of chapters in the first section on your understanding? (How does what happens in chapter two "alter" your understanding of what you found out in chapter 1? How does chapter 3 modify what you've found in chapters 1 and 2, etc.? Focus on THREE ideas that you have.
*If you will be absent on Friday, do this instead: write for 15 minutes on each of the following topics:
1. In the first third of the book, what's being said by O'Brien about story-telling? Review each chapter to look for story-telling within the chapter or for details about how and why stories are told.
2. The cover of your book says that the NY Times said that TTTC is "a book that matters not only to the reader interested in Vietnam, but to anyone interested in the craft of writing as well." Review the chapters in the first third of the book and comment (with examples) about O'Brien's "craft of writing." What is O'Brien doing in terms of diction, syntax, choice of details, figurative language. Can you focus on 3 aspects of his style?
Talking Points #2
In "Good Form" O'Brien writes, "I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening truth.
Here is the happening truth.... [read this paragraph]
Here is the story-truth.... [and this one]
What stories can do, I guess, is make things present."
What does he mean? How does it makes sense? Why does it alter our "normal" definition of truth? You might want to review the video we watched in class (Video - PBS newshour - O'Brien interview 1 (4:31)) when responding.
Consider someone who would challenge O'Brien's conception about truth. What would they say?
How does this debate connect to "the real world"? Why should we CARE about this debate?
*If you are going to be absent on Friday, May 24, please do the following: write for 15 minutes on each of these questions:
1. Write about Mary Anne's transformation from an innocent high school girl into a predatory killer. How does her gender change the reader’s expectations about her reactions to the war? How does she defy those expectations? What does the story tell us about the nature of the Vietnam War?
2. Identify some of the many other symbols in the book (i.e., Kiowa’s moccasins and feathered hatchet, Mary Anne’s tongue necklace,
Lieutenant Cross’s pebble, the young Vietnamese soldier, Kathleen, Linda, the thumb Norman Bowker carried in Vietnam, and his desire for the Silver Star Medal, plenty of other is "Church," "Ambush," and "Style".) How does the symbolic value of items help the reader better understand the personality of the character? If the character is a symbol, what does that person represent?
Talking Points #3
"Read THREE texts
1. Finish the book ("The Ghost Soldiers," "Night Life," and "The Lives of the Dead")
Listen to TWO audio interviews:
2. Audio - Leonard Lopate show O'Brien interview (18:10)
3. Audio - Fresh Aire radio show on 20th ann. (15:00)
Choose a total of three moments (quotes) from the three texts (one from each) that you find intriguing, that cause you "cognitive dissonance" about your understanding of the book's themes. Write about 1/3 of a page (single spaced) that illustrates your cognitive dissonance of each of the 3 texts. Feel free to relate the three sections to earlier parts of the book (or the other 2 texts read) that you find meaningful.
If you won't be in class on Wednesday, please do the same thing, but BE SURE to "relate the three sections to early parts of the book" (and highlight that section for me).