The Things They Carried

Though he is not a natural leader, Jimmy Cross is the commander of the Alpha Company unit. At the book’s beginning, he constantly daydreams about a woman named Martha. After Ted Lavender is shot and killed, Jimmy resolves to be a better, meaner, more disciplined leader. When another man of his company, Kiowa, dies, he once again blames himself. Long after the war is over, he remains in love with Martha, although she never returns his interest.

Kiowa is an Indigenous American and “a devout Baptist” (3), who carries around an illustrated copy of the New Testament. He is kind, gentle, and wise. After the narrator kills a man, Kiowa encourages him to stop staring at the body and to talk about it. When Kiowa dies in a field of muck, the men work through rain and exhaustion to recover his body while Jimmy mentally composes a letter to Kiowa’s father describing what a good man he was. This event connects many of the story’s narratives and shows the importance Kiowa had to the group. Their commitment to finding his body represents both their Survivor’s Guilt and the true bond they share as soldiers.

Rat Kiley is the field medic for Alpha Company. He tells the story of Fossie and Mary Anne in “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong.” He tends to exaggerate when he tells stories but is a competent field medic. When the men must move by night, he breaks under the psychological strain and shoots himself in the foot. Kiley’s actions emphasize the deep mental and emotional trauma that soldiers face in the field and how death is ever present in their minds.

Norman Bowker is the central character in “Speaking of Courage.” Although he wins seven medals, he doesn’t win a Silver Star. When Kiowa goes under the muck, Norman grabs his boot but fails to rescue him. In “Speaking of Courage,” he drives around a lake in his hometown several times and imagines telling this story to various people but not actually connecting with any of them. After the war, he has difficulty finding meaning in life and hangs himself. Bowker’s character arc highlights the importance of Talking as a Way of Processing Trauma and shows the consequences of failing to do so.

Mary Anne is a teenage girl who flies from Cleveland to Vietnam to join her boyfriend, Mark Fossie, but soon becomes involved with the Green Berets, goes out on ambush, and indefinitely stays behind in Vietnam. Mary Anne is significant because she is the collection’s only female character and civilian who has a story devoted to her. Though Rat’s story about her seems far-fetched, with her wearing a necklace made of human tongues and disappearing into the mountains, she represents the fear American culture at the time had about sending women into war. While they worked as nurses, entertainers, and support forms of support staff, women were not allowed to engage in combat. The belief was that they were too weak physically and emotionally to handle fighting and would cause distraction among the troops. Mary Anne’s transition from a soldier’s civilian girlfriend into a feral being who felt at home in the Vietnam mountains partly illustrates the patriarchal fear that women will become uncontrollable if they are allowed to leave the domestic space.

Curt Lemon is a soldier in Alpha Company. He is close friends with Rat Kiley and dies while the two of them are playing a game with smoke grenades. On one Halloween he dressed up in a sheet and went trick-or-treating in a village in Vietnam.

Henry Dobbins is a large man and machine gunner who wears his girlfriend’s pantyhose around his neck. He believes in being kind to others, above all.