Assignment

Tim O’Brien: “The Things They Carried” 

1. what is the point of the insistent repetition of the words “the things they carried”? what sorts of things does Lieutenant Cross carry?
2. we are told that “Kiowa admired Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s capacity for grief “ ( paragraph 60 ) but we are also told that although Kiowa “wanted to share the man’s pain” he could think only of “boom-down” and of “the pleasure of having his boots off and the fog curling in around him and damp soil and the bible smells and the plush comfort or night” . what might account for the different responses of the two men?

less than 200 words STUDY QUESTIONS ABOUT Wilfred Owen: “Dulce et Decorum Est” 283

3.Why do you think Owen describes the mad “fumbling” to put on gas masks by the soldiers in line 9 as “an ecstasy of fumbling”? 

4.Why does the speaker in Owen’s poem think that it is a lie to claim that “it is sweet and honorable to die for your country”? Do you agree with the speaker?