The Things They Carried

trauma-and-survival

• A true war story is never moral. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue.

  OBR-TTC-RC-042

• By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths.

  OBR-TTC-RC-094

shame

• What it came down to, stupidly, was a sense of shame. Hot, stupid shame. I did not want people to think badly of me.

  OBR-TTC-RC-033

• All around us, there was a vastness to the world, an unpeopled rawness, just the trees and the sky and the water reaching out toward nowhere.

  OBR-TTC-RC-035

grief

• The town could not talk, and would not listen. It had no memory, therefore no guilt.

  OBR-TTC-RC-086

• He recognized his own guilt and wanted only to lay out the full causes. He pictured Kiowa's face. They'd been close buddies.

  OBR-TTC-RC-101