The Things They Carried
Tim O’Brien

The Vietnam in Me | The New York Times | Tim O’Brien | October 2, 1994
This article was written four years after the publication of The Things They Carried, and is about O’Brien’s return (literal and figurative) to Vietnam in 1994.
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The Undying Uncertainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried | Steven Kaplan | Weber.edu
This article is about how O'Brien tries to “reveal and understand the uncertainties about the war…by looking at it through the imagination.”
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Two famous authors discuss one war: Tim O’Brien, Tobias Wolff on writing about Vietnam
’”Two award-winning writers discuss ethics, writing and war, drawing from their own experiences as American soldiers in Vietnam.”
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The textual “truth” behind Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried | Ransom Center Magazine | John Young | June 20, 2017
This article focuses on the chapters “On the Rainy River” and “Field Trip,” and explores the different concepts of truth within those chapters.
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The Sorry of The Things They Carried: The American War in Viet Nam and Stories told by Combat Soldiers from Both Sides
Association for Asian Studies | Yasuko Sato | Winter 2019
This 5-page article is also available as a downloadable PDF (link at top of article), and is about how war can be comprehended through literature.
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Please Don’t Thank Me for My Service | The New York Times | Matt Richtel | February 21, 2015
This article is about American soldiers and how their experiences reflect what O’Brien wrote about in his novel, “that his war’s vets who believed in the mission liked to be thanked. Others, himself included, find that ‘something in the stomach tumbles’ from expressions of appreciation that are so disconnected from the ‘evil, nasty stuff you do in war.’”
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Worth Its Weight: Letter Writing with “The Things They Carried” | Read Write Think | Susan Rubenstein | 4 50-minute lessons
These lessons don’t focus enough on critical analysis to suit an IB or AP classroom, but for teachers using The Things They Carried in a standard English classroom, these lessons could be a good fit.
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