The Things They Carried

Rat Kiley is one of the narrator’s friends in Vietnam. After a friend of Rat’s dies, Rat writes a heartfelt letter to the man’s sister. He describes how good of a man the friend was: “Anyways, it’s a terrific letter, very personal and touching. Rat almost bawls writing it” (64). The sister never responds to Rat’s letter. The narrator observes that “[a] true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done” (65). A true war story tells of evil and obscenity, like Rat’s reaction to not receiving any response from his dead friend’s sister: “Cooze, he says. He does not say bitch. He certainly does not say woman, or girl. He says cooze. Then he spits and stares” (66).

The friend who died was named Curt Lemon. He was “goofing” (66) with Rat along a trail in the jungle, throwing smoke grenades back and forth under the shade of some giant trees. Mitchell Sanders played with his yo-yo nearby while other men slept. There was a noise. Lemon stepped into the sunlight from the shade and the sunlight “came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss” (67).