The Things They Carried

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1990

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Summary

Background

Story Summaries & Analyses

Stories 1-3

Stories 4-6

Stories 7-9

Stories 10-13

Stories 14-16

Stories 17-19

Stories 20-22

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Symbols & Motifs

Carrying Things

In “The Things They Carried,” the items soldiers physically carry with them during the war characterize each of them and resonate with symbolism. These items signify not only the soldiers’ rank and personality but also the weight they carry emotionally and psychologically. In this way, the act of carrying something takes on both a literal and figurative meaning:

To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, to hump meant to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive (3).

Jimmy carries a photo of Martha as well as the symbolic weight of his love for her. Ted Lavender carries “34 rounds” (6) of ammunition, but also his deep fear of war and death; it is because of this combination of literal and figurative weight that the narrator says, “he was shot and killed outside Than Khe, and he went down under an exceptional burden” (6).

The close relationship between literal and metaphorical carrying continues beyond the first story. In “Friends,” Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen make a pact to kill one another if the other is ever seriously injured. Lee Strunk loses a leg to mortar fire, and Dave Jensen promises to not end Strunk’s life. However, “[l]ater, we heard that Strunk died somewhere over Chu Lai, which seemed to relieve Dave Jensen of an enormous weight” (63). The burden of a friendship with Strunk is revealed to be another symbolic weight that Jensen carries with him in the war, just as at the beginning of the book when he carried “a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he’d stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia” (2) for his field hygiene. The inclusion of these items juxtaposes their triviality with the enormous burden of carrying the responsibility for a friend’s life.

Sinking and Submersion

In his letter to the narrator, Norman says, “It’s almost like I got killed over in Nam… Hard to describe. That night when Kiowa got wasted, I sort of sank down into the sewage with him… Feels like I’m still in deep shit” (130). This image of sinking into sewage, mud, or water is repeated several times throughout The Things They Carried. These images of sinking and submersion symbolize the impossibility of processing the experiences of war and stand in for the cycle of death and rebirth.

At the end of “Speaking of Courage,” Norman Bowker enters the lake he has been circling throughout the story: “The water felt warm against his skin. He put his head under. He opened his lips, very slightly, for the taste” (148). At the end of “In the Field,” Jimmy lies in the mud field in which Kiowa dies. In “Field Trip,” the narrator wades into the river near the same field and buries Kiowa’s moccasins. All these submersions into water mirror the death of Kiowa, who drowned in a field of muck.

When Kiowa dies, it is not only Norman who feels a part of himself “[sink] down into the sewage with him” (13); by entering and submerging themselves beneath the surface of rivers and fields of muck, the narrator and Jimmy do as well. These ritual submersions symbolize the characters’ guilt over Kiowa’s death, as Norman articulates when he says, “Feels like I’m still in deep shit” (130). All the characters remain submerged in their memories of the war long after the war has passed.

Baby Water Buffalo

In “How to Tell a True War Story,” Rat Kiley loses a close friend, Curt Lemon, and shortly after expresses his grief by torturing a baby water buffalo. The baby water buffalo is a scapegoat for the people Kiley wishes he could blame for his friend’s death and the war in general. The juxtaposition of the water buffalo’s innocence with the cruelty of the torture underscores the suffering Kiley wants to inflict on those responsible: Kiley shoots it in the front knee and, “[t]he animal did not make a sound. It went down hard, then got up again, and Rat took careful aim and shot off an ear. He shot it in the hindquarters and in the little hump at its back” (75). This torture continues for a long time until Rat finally shoots the buffalo in the throat. Afterward, Dave Jensen expresses his amazement at witnessing such torture: “Mitchell Sanders took out his yo-yo. ‘Well, that’s Nam,’ he said. ‘Garden of Evil. Over here, man, every sin’s real fresh and original’” (76).

Although the men take part in the burning of villages and greet dead bodies to keep their spirits up, it is the torturing of an animal that provokes Dave Jensen to say, “My whole life, I never seen anything like it” (76). The suffering of the water buffalo symbolizes the pain and waste of the Vietnam War, as well as war in a more general sense. Whereas the deaths of Kiowa, Curt Lemon, and Ted Lavender provoke thoughts of blame and regret in both the narrator and soldiers such as Jimmy Cross, the torturing of the water buffalo is a symbol that evokes the carnage and pain of war for those who have never been to war: “Usually it’s an older woman of kindly temperament and humane politics” (80). Such a person usually doesn’t like war stores, “[b]ut this one she liked. The poor baby buffalo, it made her sad” (80). In this way, the water buffalo symbolizes both the senseless carnage of the Vietnam War and the role of storytelling. Such symbols enable those who have never experienced war to understand it, even if only in a limited sense.