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[hidetoc]UW-Stout Summer Reading Program
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is the selection for UW-Stout's Into the Book program for 2006/07 first year students. Students are encouraged to read the book over the summer. Group discussions of the book will be held in September 2007.
The UW-Stout English Department coordinated much of this project including selection of the book, recruiting faculty and staff as discussion leaders, and providing guidance.
About the Book
Tim O’Brien is one of America’s greatest chroniclers of the Vietnam War, author of the highly regarded memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, the bestselling novel Going After Cacciato, and The Things They Carried, a book which hovers uneasily on the border between novel, memoir and short story collection, and which was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
The narrator of most of the stories is a young man named Tim O’Brien, although the author has stated that many of the events in the book are fictional. The power of The Things They Carried lies in its memorable characters—Tim, Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley and the others—and in O’Brien’s dead-on depiction of their loneliness, terror, and anger. This is a violent book—it’s about life in a war zone after all and it doesn’t pull any punches, but it’s also a book about love and the way in which strangers, under the most painful of circumstances, recreate family and do what they can to hold on to their humanity. The Things They Carried is a powerful testimony to one of the most controversial and difficult times in the history of our nation. -- Mike Levy, Chair of UW-Stout English and Philosophy Deptartment.
Reviews
- Reviews from Amazon.com
- Reviews of Things They Carried
- From BookRags Includes 54 pages of background info and chapter summaries
- From New York Times Archives
- From Ken Lopez - Bookseller Includes reivews of several O'Brien books
About the Author
- Tim O'Brien from Wikipedia
- Tim O'Brien Novelist O'Brien's home page
- Tim O'Brien Meet the Writers (Barnes and Noble)
- "(William) Tim(othy) O'Brien" in Contemporary Authors Online
Discussion Questions and Faculty Guides
- Discussion Questions for The Things They Carried Chicago Public Library
- Essay Questions CliffsNotes study help
- Random House's Reader's Guide 15 study questions
- The Things They Carried Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (Dept. of Education) Study guide for the book
- Tim O'Brien: The Things They Carried Study questions for an English class (UWRF)
Additional Resources
Books in the UW-Stout University Library
- If you liked The Things They Carried, try these books and videos on the Vietnam War
Vietnam Resources on the WWW
- The Vietnam War Includes a photo gallery and links to additional resources.
- Battlefield: Vietnam PBS.org, with special features of Stories After the War and additional resources
- American Experience: Vietnam Online Also from PBS.org, a companion to Battlefield: Vietnam. Includes primary documents relating to the Vietnam War and a study guide
- In Pictures: The Vietnam War BBC News
- The Vietnam Project "In November 1989, the Board of Regents of Texas Tech University established the Vietnam Center, with the dual missions of funding and guiding the development of the Vietnam Archive and encouraging continuing study of all aspects of the American Vietnam experience." Inlcudes oral histories.
- Vietnam War Bibliography Comprehensive bibliography compiled by Richard Jensen, Professor of History Emeritus, University of Illinois at Chicago.
Last Updated: 03/07/2008 and Last Revised: 6/8/07
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