The Things They Carried

Part of a unit of study called When the Truth Isn’t Sufficient. Preceded by The Age of the Essay, What Is Literature For?, The Practice of Empathy, and Organization: Getting Things Done. These preceding units covered the art and purpose of writing essays and reading literature; the central skill taught through literature, which is empathy; and the substructural organization needed to tackle complex texts and tasks.

Animating quotation by Tim O’Brien, author of the assured novel, The Things They Carried:

That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.


The Things They Carried


The central text and assured experience for this unit is Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Every study has a copy of this, plus plenty of time to read it, before the unit’s official start. Here are some more resources related to the book and its author.

First, the Goodreads page: Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried. The reviews and responses offer plenty of insight into why this novel is taught so often in English classes.

Second, an excellent piece on NPR’s Talk of the Nation to mark the 20th anniversary of the novel: ‘The Things They Carried,’ 20 Years On. The program is about 30 minutes.

Finally, a more recent piece on O’Brien: Tim O’Brien, a Veteran of War and Fatherhood, Opens Up to His Sons. This is a review of the audiobook of O’Brien’s Dad’s Maybe Book, which is read by the author.

The central work for The Things They Carried is the central work for the entire unit. It is outlined here:

Required Writing: When the Truth Isn’t Sufficient

The reader’s response is the central means of responding to the novel, and that is explored more below.

The best reader-response essays will use a complete reading of the novel, start to finish, as their basis. It’s possible, however, to use selections from the text without having finished the rest. This is absolutely not the best way to explore O’Brien’s writing — but it does allow the inevitable students who don’t read to practice the essay.

Suggested Selection #1: “Ambush” and surrounding chapters

“Ambush” is on page 125 in our edition. We use it as an anchor because we have a recording of it being read by O’Brien himself. Here is a direct link: User Clip: Tim O’Brien Reads Ambush.

The suggested readings around “Ambush” add up 13 pages total. Here they are, with the page numbers from our edition indicated first:

Suggested Selection #2: “The Ghost Soldiers”

“The Ghost Soldiers” is a self-contained story that works well for reader-response writing. It’s 27 pages long and starts on page 180 in our edition.

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