Top 4 The Things They Carried quotes
“It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do.”
Story 1
The stories in the book highlight the trauma of war that accompanies a soldier long after the war is over. In several of the stories, the narrator focuses on the sadness that chases soldiers out of the war, and how some soldiers are unable to overcome that sadness.
“Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it—the wind coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. You’re at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You’re twenty-one years old, you’re scared, and there’s a hard squeezing pressure in your chest.”
Story 4
The narrator attempts to communicate a deeper feeling through his words rather than just offering descriptions of the events occurring. This idea of communicating true meaning through stories serves as a major theme that is explored in several short stories.
“What you should do, Tim, is write a story about a guy who feels like he got zapped over in that shithole. A guy who can’t get his act together and just drives around town all day and can’t think of any damn place to go and doesn’t know how to get there anyway.”
Story 16
Norman Bowker’s story elucidates the difficulty some soldiers have in overcoming the events of war and how it worsens when such soldiers are unable to find a means of communicating their emotions.
“The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.”
Story 22
The narrator explains his belief that stories can resurrect the dead in our minds. In this way, the activity of writing these stories is not simply communicating his own emotions, but a means for him to experience closeness with his deceased comrades as well as his childhood friend.
