The Things They Carried:

Chapter 7 How to Tell A True War Story

Big Questions: Were all (or any) of the war stories O'Brien included in the book "true"? Why does O'Brien care about
truth? Why would a reader care? Does it matter to you if these stories are true? Why or why not?
Lesson Objectives:
1) Students will identify descriptive language in the text.
2) Students will recognize explicit prescriptions (what the author claims war stories should be).

Prescriptions-paying attention to what war stories should be according to chapter 7.

It does not instruct nor encourage virtue nor suggest models of proper
human nature.
A true war story should never be moral.
A true war story is evil.
A true war story should be embarrassing.
To tell a true war story you need to be skeptical.
A true war story cannot be believed.
In a war story you should hear things you would never hear anywhere
else.
A true war story should not be believable.
A true war story should never end.
A true war story does not generalize or indulge in abstractions.
A true war story has things you should never tell.
You cant tease it out.
At the end the audience shouldnt be able to say anything but oh.
It makes the stomach believe.
Often in a true war story there isnt really a point.
There is no final or definitive truth; nothing is absolutely true.
The truths are contradictory.
A true war story should be told by the questions you ask.
A true war story has a thing that maybe happen and may be a total lie
and have a thing that may not happen and be truer than the truth.
A true war story is never about war, it is about love, memory, and
sorrow.
Separate what happened, and what seemed to have happened.
In a war story you should hear things you would never hear anywhere
else.

Descriptions-paying attention to sensory language in the chapter.

On Halloween, this real hot spooky night, the dude paints up his body
all different colors and puts on this weird mask and hikes over to a ville
and goes trick or treating almost stark naked, just boots, balls, and an
M16.
The soft dripping sound somewhere beyond the trees, I remember the
smell of moss.
I could see the mountains rising in silhouette, all the mysteries and
unknowns
Nam, it truly talks.
There was a light bubbling sound.
They freaking crashed that cocktail party.
Deep, pinkish red spilled out.
The normal make it so the crazy can be relieved.
War is hell. The old truism seemed perfectly true and yet because it
abstracts and generalizes I cant believe it with my stomach.
The smell of smoke and filth and deep greenery.
You listen to your wifes breathing, the war is over, you close your
eyes, you take a feeble sweep at the dark and think, Christ whats the
point?
You stare out at tracer rounds unwinding through the dark, like brilliant
red ribbons.
Four guys go down a trail, a grenade sails out, one guy jumps on it,
and takes the blast. But its a killer grenade and everybody dies
anyway. Before they die though, one of the dead guys says, The F--you do that for! Story of my life man.

The Things That Stood Out:

This is true.
Sanders had to stop and keep reassuring the listeners that the story
was true. Is OBrien doing this?
The garden of evil--every sin is fresh, original, and real.
To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace.
War is hell.
None of it happened.