The Things They Carried Analysis
Literature Analysis on “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien
Choose a topic—about an aspect of the story’s form or content. Note that a topic is a general subject—you will need to turn that into a thesis later on in this process. Turn the topic into a question. For example, if your topic is characterization in “The Bet,” then turn the topic into a question” How does Chekhov portray the lawyer?” Once you have turned the topic into a question, the rest of the steps will become easier.
Reread the story with your topic as a filter, in this way; you will be isolating the passages from the story that relate to your topic. In other words, find the passages that help you answer the question.
Mark passages in the story that relate to your topic (and it would be helpful to, afterward, type these into a word processing file).
Analyze these passages and develop a thesis from them (the thesis would be your arguable proposition about your topic).
6 Organize these passages in order to most effectively support your thesis (don’t feel you need to follow the same order that they appear in the story).
Properly introduce, present, and interpret each passage.
Link your passages with proper transitions (imagine that each paragraph would be analyzing only one or two passages).
Revise.
Also note that this essay is not a plot summary—you do not spend the entire essay telling what happens in the story—you analyze it.
The first paragraph must include—the author of the story (this means that all your textual citations will only need a page # in parentheses), the title of the story (in quotation marks), and a one or two sentence synopsis of the story, and your thesis. For more information on The Things They Carried Analysis see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Things_They_Carried
