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Who are the main The Things They Carried characters? How do their stories demonstrate both the humanity of soldiers and the dehumanizing effects of war?
The Things They Carried is a collection of interconnected short stories about the experiences of a company of young American men serving in the Vietnam War. We’ll cover the primary The Things They Carried characters and their main scenes in the book.
The Things They Carried
The Things They Carried Character: TIM O’BRIEN
The primary The Things They Carried character is Tim O’Brien himself.
The book blurs the line between fiction and autobiography. It is told mainly from the first-person perspective of a middle-aged writer named Tim O’Brien, who is looking back on his time during the war. Tim O’Brien, however, is also the name of the actual author of The Things They Carried—it is unclear if the main character (and narrator) of the book is meant to be the same person as the author (who is also a Vietnam veteran).
We see O’Brien’s early experiences with grief and loss as he recounts the death of his childhood girlfriend in the 1950s, his reluctance to go to war when he is drafted, the trauma and chaos he experiences when he is in Vietnam, and his attempts to make peace with his past and achieve closure with the war when he revisits the combat scenes of his youth with his daughter.
The Things They Carried Character: LIEUTENANT JIMMY CROSS
First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, commanding officer in charge of Alpha Company, a unit of the U.S. Army in the Vietnam War, is reminiscing about a girl named Martha whom he knew back home. He is in love with her, but fears that his love is unrequited—although she signs off her letters to him with the customary “Love,” Cross knows that it is perfunctory and without meaning.
Cross is a reluctant commander, who never wanted the responsibility of leading men in combat. He had joined the officer training program in his sophomore year of college because it seemed preferable to the draft. He has no deep commitment to the war, and, at 24 years of age, feels himself to be entirely unsuited to be making life-or-death decisions for others. The responsibility is too much for him to bear.
To cope with his war burden, he clings to the memory and to the idea of Martha in any way he can, including tasting the envelope flaps of her letters (knowing that her tongue has been there) and keeping a small pebble in his mouth that she sent to him from a beach back home. He also endlessly ponders whether or not she is a virgin. His feelings about Martha are his tether, his connection to a world apart from the horror and mayhem of Vietnam.
The Things They Carried Character: MARTHA
Cross believes that he was daydreaming and distracted while thinking about Martha, and that this led to soldier Lavender’s demise. Wracked with guilt and shame, he is afraid to cry in front of the men. He retreats to his foxhole to weep, for Lavender, for his unrequited love for Martha, and for the world he has lost to war. The morning after Lavender’s death, Cross burns Martha’s letters and photos. He would sever the connection to his old life, commit now to his duties as a soldier—and nothing more. “Love” would no longer be a factor.
Years later, after the war, Cross reunites with the narrator, O’Brien, at the latter’s home in Massachusetts. O’Brien asks Cross what became of Martha. He tells O’Brien that he ran into her again at a college reunion in 1979 and told her that he still loved her. He’d even confessed to her his fantasy about tying her to her bed and touching her knee (which Martha had said she was glad he never acted upon).
The Things They Carried Character: DAVE JENSEN & LEE STRUNK
Other The Things They Carried characters include Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk.
Back in Vietnam—or rather, ahead in Vietnam—soldiers Lee Strunk and Dave Jensen get into a fight over a jackknife that one supposedly stole from the other. Jensen, being stronger, overpowers Strunk and breaks the latter’s nose.
This leads to a tense situation between the two men, as Jensen grows increasingly paranoid that Strunk is plotting his revenge. He scrupulously avoids Strunk at all turns. The anxiety causes Jensen to snap—one day, he starts firing his rifle indiscriminately into the air, yelling Strunk’s name.
Later that evening, Jensen takes a pistol and uses the barrel to break his own nose, to preempt Strunk’s feared retaliation. This act of penance brings about a reconciliation between the two men. They begin sharing foxholes and going on patrol and guard duty together.
They also make a solemn pact. If either of them should become seriously maimed in the course of combat, the other man agrees to mercy-kill him. They put this agreement in writing and even have some of their fellow Alpha Company men stand as witnesses.
This grim covenant is shortly put to the test when Strunk loses his right leg after stepping on a mortar round. When Jensen comes to see his friend’s wound, however, Strunk pleads with him not to kill him. Jensen assures Strunk that he will not kill him, and the company has Strunk airlifted into the chopper to be taken to a field hospital. The men later learn that Strunk dies from his wounds while he’s en route. Jensen is relieved to be spared from performing his harsh duty.
The Things They Carried Character: HENRY DOBBINS
O’Brien recalls another man in Alpha Company, Henry Dobbins, as being highly drawn to sentimentality. Dobbins carried his girlfriend’s pantyhose around his neck, but not out of a sexual predilection. For Dobbins, the pantyhose were a talisman, a good-luck charm, something that made him feel protected.
O’Brien recalls Dobbins as being more drawn to the idea of being nice to people as a minister rather than grappling with any weighty theological considerations, remembering Dobbins saying, “All you can do is be nice. Treat them decent, you know?”
The Things They Carried Character: NORMAN BOWKER
A significant The Things They Carried character is Norman Bowker.
After the war, a soldier from Alpha Company named Norman Bowker returns to his hometown in Iowa. He is unable to find a meaningful use for his life after the war, and spends his days and nights wistfully driving his car along the lake in his town, remembering friends lost and a life gone by. He thinks about his best friend from high school who drowned in the same lake and about his teenage sweetheart, Sally Kramer, who is now married.
He imagines conversations that he’d like to have with all the people in his life, but never actually does. He fantasizes about visiting Sally and impressing her with his war-taught skill of being able to tell time without looking at a clock. He is haunted by the Silver Star medal for uncommon valor that he almost won in Vietnam, but never did. His life has become a series of regrets, unfulfilled promises, and dreams unrealized.
O’Brien tells us that Norman Bowker shared this story with him in 1975, three years before Bowker hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA. He had sent O’Brien a long, rambling, and disjointed letter in which he shared his thoughts on life after Vietnam; his resentment toward “patriotic idiots” who knew nothing about what the war was actually like; and his feeling that he had actually died back in the shit field all those years ago, rendering his life after that moment a mere addendum or epilogue to his story.
The Things They Carried Character: RAT KILEY
O’Brien reflects on two separate occasions in which he was hit by gunfire in Vietnam. The first time was when Rat Kiley was still with the company. As a skilled medic, Kiley had been able to successfully apply a compress, stop the bleeding, and get O’Brien to an emergency evacuation helicopter. O’Brien even recalls Rat Kiley almost hugging him as he was being helped into the chopper. After a short hospital stay, O’Brien returned to the company in the field.
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Here's what you'll find in our full The Things They Carried summary :
- What the Vietnam War was like for soldiers on the ground
- How Vietnam soldiers dealth with the psychological stress of death around them
- How fictional stories can be truer than the truth
