The Things They Carried

A meticulous catalogue of what the soldiers of Alpha Company carry — physical weights in ounces, emotional weights in grief — culminating in Ted Lavender's death and Lieutenant Jimmy Cross's guilt.

Three stories: Cross visits O'Brien years later and asks him to write about Martha. 'Spin' offers fragmentary memory-images of the war without narrative shape. 'On the Rainy River' tells the story of O'Brien receiving his draft notice and almost fleeing to Canada.

Jensen and Strunk fight and form a mutual destruction pact; Curt Lemon dies in a tree. The landmark chapter 'How to Tell a True War Story' dismantles the possibility of a moral war story while telling one anyway.

Four stories ranging from comic to mythic: Curt Lemon's dental phobia; Mary Anne Bell's transformation from all-American girlfriend into something war has made feral; Henry Dobbins's pantyhose ritual; Alpha Company's complicated stay in a Vietnamese pagoda.

O'Brien kills a young Vietnamese soldier and cannot stop describing the body. 'Ambush' complicates the account. 'Style' offers a Vietnamese girl dancing in her ruined village. Norman Bowker drives in circles unable to tell the story of Kiowa's death. O'Brien's metafictional note explains Bowker's actual fate.

Alpha Company searches the shit field for Kiowa's body. O'Brien confesses — and recants — authorial responsibility. He takes his daughter to the field where Kiowa died. A story of revenge against the medic who let O'Brien suffer through two wounds.

Rat Kiley shoots himself in the foot to escape the war. The final story moves backward through O'Brien's life to his first love, Linda, who died at nine, arguing that storytelling is resurrection.