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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. According to the narrator, what is a characteristic of a "true war story?"

2. Which man cut off the thumb of a dead Viet-Cong boy?

3. What does Dave Jensen do when he snaps?

4. Who did the monks take a special liking to and call "Soldier Jesus?"

5. What part of Lee Strunk's body is broken?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Lee Strunk react to his injury?

2. Explain how the rhyme "Step out of line, hit a mine; follow the dink, you're in the pink." changed meanings?

3. How were Lieutenant Cross's tears misinterpreted after the death of Ted Lavender?

4. Who did you think was the victim as you read the chapter, and who did you think was the victim once you finished it? Why?

5. What was the story for Mitchell Sander's moral of "Nobody listens?"

6. How would you describe Martha's "separate-but-together quality" her and Lieutenant Cross share? What does she send to represent this quality?

7. Why does Rat Kiley write a letter to Curt Lemon's sister, and what does the letter contain?

8. Why does the narrator he is a bad fit to be drafted into the war?

9. Why did the men have to see the dentist?

10. Give examples of how the men dealt with death.

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The chapter titled "How to Tell a True War Story," gives very specific advice on what constitutes a war story and how lessons or morals should be pulled from a war story by the listener. Using the principles in this chapter given by the author, analyze any of the war stories told in another chapter of the book "The Things They Carried." Be sure to identify the main components of the war story, and how the war story complies or deviates from the principles in the chapter "How to Tell a True War Story."

Essay Topic 2

The concept of truth is challenged repeatedly in "The Things They Carried." Men tell embellished stories, exaggerate their own lives, and even the narrator casts doubt as to the honesty of the stories contained within the novel. What are your thoughts about the truth of "The Things They Carried" and why? Are there places you feel the accounting is accurate, and other places where the story has been stretched and skewed? What textual evidence leads you to these conclusions?

Essay Topic 3

Although the book is labeled "a work of fiction," it reads very similar to a memoir- a recollection of events and people from the author's past. Explain any indications that Tim O'Brien may not be a trustworthy narrator. Where in the text are there signs he is leaving something out, or passages where the reader should second-guess his account? Are there particular passages where a reader may be more likely to believe O'Brien's narrative? Use no less than three specific areas of text to evaluate Tim O'Brien as a reliable or unreliable narrator.

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