1. The Things They Carried 2.

Love

Points out all the different things that all the solders carried, that reflected upon their unique personality. They also carry some figurative things, such as hope, fear, imagination, etc. Love between Jimmy Cross (lieutenant) and Martha: - Jimmy had a photograph of Martha during the war, and burned it because she was his WEAKNESS (which made him become the blame for Ted Lavenders death). - Martha gave Jim a new photograph and he well kept it after the war - He still loved her, and still carried hope that she would come back and find her Maybe, shell read it and come begging. Theres always hope, right?. - Martha was a conservative girl - In the end Jimmy tells Tim to make him look like a good guy, brave, handsome, and other stuff. (write in fiction) In this chapter, Tim used first person that creates intimacy with the readers: - talks about remembering of the war - present and past, Im forty-three years old, and a writer now, and then war has been over for a long while. - emphasize how he still clearly remembers about those times of the war. - talked about old poppa-san who guided the soldiers through mine fields out on the Batangan Peninsula. (they were sad when they left and gave him canned food) - Shifts back to himself (present TIM): He talks about how Kathleen suggests that Tim should just forget about war, however, he said it is not easy and will not be able to forget (remembering) - (memory-traffic feeds into a rotary up on your head, where it goes in circles for a while then pretty soon imagination flows in and the traffic merges and shoot off down a thousand different streets.) - reflects on the title - purpose of stories are to join the past with the future

3. Spin

4. On the Rainy River

Tims personal story (of shame): - talks about courage being in finite quantities it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward; it justified the past while amortizing (transfer) the future. - when he got drafted and really did not want to go to war (hated it) - uncertainty of the war and the PURPOSE of it. - worked as a de-clotter in pig factory (slaughter + war = blooooody hands) - didnt want to die at a war that didnt make sense to him (feared walking away from his whole life) - escaped to rainy river and thought about escaping into Canada; which many people who got drafted did. In order to escape the war. - Meets Elroy Berdahl, an old man: quiet, experienced, and great listener to Tim, because Tim needed someone to listen to him. - could not endure the mockery and embarrassment after escaping so he went back; figuratively/imagining seeing everyone on the other side of the river. Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen getting into fistfight: - Daves missing jackknife missing - Hit Lees nose and snapped = silent tension - Jensen couldnt relax like he was fighting two different wars = no safe ground (not only the vietnam war they are fighting here) - Lost of control - Jensen in the end used a pistol and gripped it by barrel and hammered his own nose = everything was square between them - in the end the funny part was that Lee did really stole his jackknife

5. Enemies

Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen began learning to trust each other: (connection to - teamed up more in ambushes chapter title - serious contract: end the person when one of them are in really bad form before) wheelchair wound. - Lee steps on rigged mortar, and took of his right leg: unable to walk and losing a lot of blood. - Dave came over and Lee began to beg him not to kill him. And he didnt. = trust - When Lee died, Dave felt relieved showing the friendship (seeing Lee hurting and unable to walk in pain, makes him feel it too) 6. Friends

7. How to Tell a This is true. - Rats friend (Curt Lemon) gets killed and he wrote an True War Story emotional and touching letter to his sister but then she never wrote back to him. - Curt Lemon died by playing with Rat, with a smoke grenade. They were goofing around and he grenade exploded on him and he died (sudden and beautiful death) nature sucking him making his death looking beautiful. - Rat hurting a water buffalo by shooting it (he felt pain and needed someone to blame but there was no one...) - Talks about a true war story: never moral, and if you read one that seems moral and you feel uplifted by it (it is a lie). - Tell true war story if it embarrasses you - If you do not care about immoral principles, then you dont care about the truth (because not all truths are moral, ugly truth) - Hard to separate what happened from what seemed to happen in a true war story: because angles of vision gets skewed (eyes closing, looking away = missing a part of the truth) - Surreal seemingness makes story seem untrue, but in fact it represents the exact truth. - Talks about the proximity of death that makes you more alive than ever. - people who never listen because, all they think about are the moral and cliched truth of a war story. - Feel cheated if the cliched scenarios never happened in the war sotry - Example: Mitchell Sanders (moral guy) wanting Tim to feel that the story is true so he emphasizes his points/events in the story that happened = power of language. (story about 6 man patrol go up to mountains and hearing voices like a cocktail party - noises of Nam, it talks. Then they called to burn the mountains. - Went back to visit the mountains and they became silent; because it seemed like they were hearing figurative things in themselves. 8. The Dentist Quick story about Curt Lemon (tough soldier role): - Army dentist came to visit and Curt began to tense up, because he had any terrible experiences with dentists. - In the end he still went inside the tent to get his teeth checked (did not want to get embarrassed. - Funny part, he fainted before the man touched him. - He felt embarrassed afterwards, and he was all smiles after he got his teeth pulled out (not embarrassed anymore). Rat telling a story about Mary-Anne and Mark Fossie: - Mary- Anne came to see Mark at the war ground, and she became someone different (total change) - She became Nam; which made her body seem foreign to Mark - War completely changes everyone who goes there. (Vietnam = powerful drug like heroine to Mary-Anne) - lost inside herself

9. Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

10. Stockings

Henry Dobbins (good man, and strong/big): - sentimentality (nostalgia, sadness) - believer in simplicity and directness and hard labor - had a panty hose wrapped around him (talisman from his girlfriend) - kept him safe (spiritual world) - after few months girlfriend send letter to Henry to break up with him, but them he still believes that the stockings are still is talisman and will always be. Buddhist (temple) Church on west of Bantangan Peninsula: - all destroyed and broken - monks were kind to all of them specially to Henry Dobbins - Shared quietness together (monk and Henry) = spirituality - Henry was not religious but he believed in the true power of being nice to people (decency) - Talking to kiowa (thinks that camping in the church is wrong): because it is a place of piece not a place of war. Description of the Man Tim killed: - remorse - this was the only title that used first person (denial) - use of definite article THE man makes it pointed to one specific man. - the Man seemed to be innocent and like Tim did not want to go to war - In some ways Tim is trying to create a future that the Man could of had if he wasnt killed by him. - Feels like Tim is reflecting himself to the Man he had killed (walking inside his shows - seeing himself dead) - kiowa is the bystander, who tries to calm Tim down but ironically he should be doing that to himself (foil character) Tim and Kathleen (asking him if he had killed anyone before: - Tim said no (not the truth, because she was only 9), but he hopes she can ask him again so he can tell her the exact truth. - He only said what people wanted to hear. (self possessed truth) - Writing the war stories to Tim is a coping mechanisms after the war, because he had killed somebody. - Tim killed the man by going to the ambush site, and feeling lost. - there was a morning fog, and he saw a young man, and suddenly his stomach churned (fear): prepared a grenade in his hands - He threw the grenade without the intention of doing so (automatic reaction that fear is possessing him) - Kiowa tells him that it is a good kill: was moral kill. However, Tim still pondered and felt remorse (forgives and denies himself)

11. Church
(Spirituality)

12. The Man I Killed

13. Ambush
(Connection to previous chapter: the man Tim killed)

14. Style

Vietnamese girl dancing around, in front of the burned village/hamlet (maybe 14/young): - Azar keeps asking why she is dancing and making fun of her (however, this can be seen as his way of coping; making fun of the serous situations so he wouldnt have to confront it and become all weak) - Henry Dobbins was there to, and respected her decision to dance (said that it didnt matter) - In the end, the girl closes her ears when she sees her familys dead body (her own way of coping = dancing and closing ears = does not want reality to get in/truth to get in her head) - Azar in the end imitates her and Henry comes lifted him up and carried him over to deep well (tell him to dance right) - Henry Dobbins respect to spirituality/ and others from another society (kindness) Norman Bowker (nowhere to go): - He felt deep remorse for losing Kiowa and watching him sink because all he cared bout was to get out of the shit field and get cleaned. - drove around the lake after the war in his car big chevy: the time when he felt protection and comfort after the war. (spinning around in circles; remembering and observing) - many imagery in this chapter = NB observing all the things he had missed - seemed like everything changed because everything moved on, when he was still in the war. - Flashes back to his past with his friends and with Sally Kramer - Passing the lake that had drowned in the lake (Max Arnold) = reflects on Kiowa and the shit field. - Max = just an IDEA (talking about existence of God.. living causation...) - Sally Kramer (NB long lover and had a photo of her): moves on and is happily married (became Sally Gustafson). - NB had many imaginations when he saw her, he imagined scenarios of them talking and her listening to his war stories but nobody would want to. - He didnt talk to anyone, but only the waitress (but in the end he didnt and just went away).

15. Speaking of Courage

16. Notes
(talking about writing about speaking of courage)

Norman Bowkers letter to Tim (big impact on him): - made him realize how quickly he had moved on while others didnt (NB) - Talks about metafiction (writing about writing fiction) = telling stories is the way you pin down certain truths and make up others. - Write about a true incident, and make up others that help explain/emphasize on the incident. - In the original speaking of courage story; Tim was forced to leave out the shit field, and the rain and the death of Kiowa (who? well seems like the media). - Lead him to lose his natural counterpoint, between lake and the field. (metaphoric unity was broken) = losing the terrible killing power of that shit field. - Tim was frightened by the story, because he was afraid to remember, and afraid to speak of it. - Norman wrote back again to Tim saying that he had left out so many parts about Vietnam, Kiowa, and the shit. = 8months later NB HANGED himself. - the end of chapter: Tim reflects on the present: hoping that the story does reflect back on NB and is what he wanted it to be. (the part when NB talks about being responsible for Kiowas death, and experiencing failure --> was all made up by Tim) --> implied that all that part was how Tim felt during Kiowas death not in NBs perception but in his own. (why the book is fiction: because Tim cannot know what each of the soldiers thought about...)

17. In the Field (song tra bong river)

Talks about the shit field: - Kiowa was gone in the mud and water; into the war itself (trying to find him) - Jimmy Cross determined to find the man (felt responsible and knew that Kiowa was a good man) - Jimmy blamed himself for setting up in the shit field (felt sick about it) - began composing a letter in his head (imagination) to Kiowas father. - felt hesitant to include the phrase my fault (embarrassed about it) - Jimmys confrontation: never wanted to be a leader and never wanted the responsibility for his men. He did not care about the war - a mysterious young soldier searching for a photograph (not helping kiowa): was not NB could have been Tim (in previous chapter he said that the experiencing of failure was his own). - young soldier felt bad because he did try to get Kiowa back to the surface but he couldnt he lost everything, and his photograph of Billie (wasnt his girl anymore.): felt like confessing that he had killed Kiowa because he was the one that switched on the flashlight and at that moment was when everything exploded around them. - Other soldiers felt lucky to be alive, and bad for kiowa. (because being alive was a matter of happenstance/coincidence.) - In the end Jimmy Cross (finding something else to blame besides himself - infinite of them), decided to not apologize (WHAAAT) figured that the war was one of those freak things and nothing could have changed. - to him was the exact truth.

18. Good Form Tim stating that everything else is false except that fact that he was 43 years old and a writer, and being a foot oldier at Quang Ngai Province: - Not a game to invent things it is a form of invention. - He made up all the stories because he wanted the readers you, to feel what he had felt, all the emotions: story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. - Happening-truth( general and not very appealing/to simple ) vs. Story truth( much more appealing + more abstract ) - STORIES: makes things present: I can be brave. I can make myself feel again.

19. Field Trip

Tim returning (trip) to the shit field with his daughter (birthday present for her): - peaceful, quiet, not so menacing (cause harm) - felt the feeling of sentiment and time - smells rotten as usual - Tim wanted to show her all the things he had experienced before in Vietnam - Tim confronting the field: swallowed so much. my best friend. my pride. my belief in myself as a man of some small dignity and courage. - Blamed the shit field for what he had become (taking away the person he had once been - Timmy) - Tim goes into shit field and puts Kiowas old moccasins deep inside and suddenly he felt the sense of recognition. - 20 years later Tim finally feels more contentment, by revisiting the shit field, and confronting his remorse (kiowas death): Id gone under kiowa, and now after two decades Id finally worked my way out.: feels refreshed and new.

20. The Ghost Soldiers

Tim getting shot and went through shock when Bobby Jorgenson (nooby) freaked out: - Rat Kiley was best and responsible medic to Tim but then he had to leave because he was wounded and shipped off to Japan. - Bobby Jorgenson, was a nooby (all new and unexperienced): covered in fear and incompetence. - Tim got shot in Song Tra Bong, took Bobby long time to come help; so Tim began blaming Bobby and hated him after that incident. - When Tim got shot, he felt as if he had just experienced a spiritual world: feeling his soul half in and half out of his body (genie) - Talks about how getting shot is somewhat had a feeling of pride: shows that youve been through courage and no embarrassment. - Tim missing the adventure and his troop members; and then he feels like a civilian than a soldier (the social group), because no matter how hard Tim tries he can never go back to becoming close with his troops again, because everything moved on. SANDERS - People change. Situations change I hate to say this, man, but youre out of touch. Jorgenson--hes with us now. - Story telling by Bowker about Morty Philips, going out for a swim and got sick afterwords (maybe polio or paralyzed) (could have been because he swallowed bad water wasted his luck on swimming/enjoying himself). - Tim wanting to find Bobby for revenge, and Sander knows Tims intentions, so he tells Tim to feel pity for Bobby at that time because he was brand-new to the war. - In the end Tim thinks of a prank and tells Azar to help him out (making a ghost out of sand bags): this is when Tim imagines how Bobby could be feeling, all fear, coward-like. However, he was wrong, instead Bobby came out and was no longer a coward. (Juxtaposition between perception and reality.) - In the middle of Tims revenge he cries, because he felt pity to what Bobby might be experiencing at the moment when he played the prank . Rat Kiley and being part of the night life: - lost his cool when being part of the night life - too much strain, and couldnt make the adjustment - night life: pure black : the blackness of the night made people get jumpy and fear/anxious if the other members/platoon were still around because you couldnt see anyone. - whole personality of Rat changed: our of kilter (balance): he felt scared, and he started to picture alive people looking dead (psychotic impact on Rat + he couldnt off the pictures in his mind). - That is why Rat got shipped off to Japan (feared of the night life and got a bit mentally damaged). - chapter shows the impact of fear and the power of it; relation to previous chapter is fear (Tims fear, and imagination of it in relation to Bobby).

21. Night Life

22. The Lives of the Dead

Tim still thinks about Ted Lavender, Kiowa, Curt Lemon, etc all the dead (lives of the dead people aka connection to title): - Story makes the dead alive; dream it as you tell the story, hoping others would do the same and believe in it. - talks about when he was brand new to the war (no sense of humor, and still trying to be in touch with reality - war) - He sees dead bodies for the first time which reminded him of Lindas face (first date he had to the movies when they were all only 9) - Linda died of cancer, and before she died Nick was a bully that teased her until he realized why she always wore a hat (she was bald form cancer) - Tim referred himself as Timmy at that time (when he was still young and pure) - He wanted to save Lindas life badly, because he loved her a lot: he accepted the fact that she was dying: this is when stories are helpful to Tim, because helped him bring Linda alive and remember her as the way she was before she died. - Tim started to dream and go to bed early in order to see Linda again (in his dreams) - After Linda died Tim asked to go see Lindas body: It didnt seem real. A mistake, I thought. The girl lying in the white casket wasnt Linda. There was a resemblance, maybe, but where Linda had always been very slender and fragile-looking, almost skinny, the body in the casket was fat and swollen. but in his heart he knew that it was Linda (he just didnt want to believe it). - This part was probably when began transitioning to Tim (the lost of innocence, by facing reality of death) - Tim then transitions to the deaths during the war (Ted, Kiowa, and Curt): worst time of the war for him was to carry the dead and pile them up. _________________________________________________________ - transitions to the present time (Tim as 43 years old) - He still carried the memories - He still dreamt of Linda (Linda: was actually made up character, her identity and her name) However, most important part was the Tim loved her and she died. - Last part of the last chapter: Tim can sometimes see Timmy (young self) skating with Linda...Young and happy. Ill never die. INNOCENCE - skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when i take a high lead into the dark and come down 30 years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmys life with a story. (BEST PART) : shows how Tim was trying to save Timmy by writing stories, and remembering every moment of how and what he was like. skimming across the surface of [his] own history is like am imagery, of Tim reflecting back on all his past (depicted in his stories) and remembering them, and searching for himself through them. loops and spins symbolizes change in time, and self also challenges faced throughout Tims history.