Who Carried What
He carried a Bible, a hatchet, and the bad news of his own death in the sewage field.
Who is Kiowa
Tim O'Brien's home state, which he considers leaving behind when he drives north toward Canada.
What is Minnesota
He spent the war daydreaming about a college girl named Martha.
Who is Lt. Jimmy Cross
Tim O'Brien's childhood sweetheart who tragically dies of a brain tumor at age nine, introducing him to grief.
Who is Linda
According to O'Brien, these are never really about war, but about love, memory, and sorrow.
What are true war stories?
He carried stockings belonging to his girlfriend around his neck.
This young soldier tragically drowned in a sewage field during a mortar attack at the Song Tra Bong.
Who is Kiowa
He died a horrible death and Tim and Kiowa are ordered to climb the tree to collect his body parts.
Who is Curt Lemon
He hangs himself at a YMCA locker room because he cannot adjust to civilian life after the war.
Who is Norman Bowker
The two types of truth O'Brien distinguishes in war stories: happening truth and this.
What is story truth
He carried extra-strength doses of tranquilizers before he was killed.
Who is Ted Lavender
Norman Bowker drives endlessly around a lake in this midwestern state, unable to talk about the war.
Where is Iowa
He ran the Tip Top Lodge and silently helped a young Tim consider his options regarding the draft.
Who is Elroy Berdahl
This is the name of Tim O'Brien's young daughter, who accompanies him on a trip back to Vietnam years after the war.
Who is Kathleen
The specific reason Tim O'Brien says he continues to write stories about the war forty years later.
What is to keep the dead alive
He carried comic books and M&M's, reserved for "especially bad wounds".
Who is Rat Kiley
This bizarre base camp location is where Mark Fossie invites his high school sweetheart, Mary Anne Bell.
What is the medical detachment at Tra Bong
This cruel and volatile soldier mocked Kiowa's death and enjoyed tormenting the new medic, Bobby Jorgenson, just to see him uncomfortable.
Who is Azar
Jimmy Cross visits Tim years after the war and confesses that he still carries a replacement copy of this from Martha.
What is a photograph
The primary emotion that ultimately forced Tim to go to war instead of fleeing to Canada.
Comrades who made a pact to kill the other if one of them became wheelchair-bound or severely maimed. (carried a promise)
Who are Dave Jensen & Lee Strunk
This is the specific body of water or river where Tim spends six days deciding whether to flee the draft.
What is the Rainy River
He picked lice off his body and sent them back to his draft board in Ohio as an ironic joke.
Who is Mitchell Sanders
This college town is where Jimmy Cross reunites with Tim years after the war to drink gin and look at old photos.
Where is Wellesley, MA
Curt Lemon's death is described beautifully as he steps on a booby trap while playing a game of this.
What is catch