The Things They Carried
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50 free The Things They Carried trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is one of the most widely taught books about the Vietnam War: a set of linked stories that follows one platoon of foot soldiers and keeps asking what makes a war story true. It reads like a memoir, yet O'Brien insists much of it is invented, and that tension is a big part of why readers still argue about it. This quiz moves through the book the way a class does. It opens with the title story and the objects each man hauls, then visits "On the Rainy River", "How to Tell a True War Story", "The Dentist", "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong", "The Man I Killed", "Speaking of Courage", "The Ghost Soldiers" and "The Lives of the Dead". Expect questions on characters such as Jimmy Cross, Kiowa, Rat Kiley, Norman Bowker and Henry Dobbins, plus a few on the author and how the book was published and received. It suits students checking their reading before a test, teachers who want a quick multiple-choice review, and anyone revisiting the book years later. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still sends you back to the right scene.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The Things They Carried, what does big machine gunner Henry Dobbins wear around his neck as a protective charm?
His girlfriend's pantyhose
His girlfriend's pantyhose stay around his neck even after she dumps him, because, as he puts it, the magic doesn't go away.
Q 02By the end of "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong", what is the necklace worn by Mark Fossie's girlfriend made of?
Human tongues
Human tongues hang from the necklace of a girl who had flown in wearing a pink sweater and culottes. Rat Kiley swears every word of the tale is true.
Q 03In The Things They Carried, what good-luck charm does Martha mail to Lt. Jimmy Cross, who keeps it in his mouth?
A pebble
A pebble she found on the Jersey shoreline, where things felt "separate-but-together", becomes the charm he daydreams over instead of watching his men.
Q 04In "On the Rainy River", which country does Tim O'Brien nearly flee to after his draft notice arrives in the mail?
Canada
Canada lay just twenty yards from the fishing boat when O'Brien broke down crying and stayed in his seat, too embarrassed to swim for it.
Q 05In "How to Tell a True War Story", which animal does grieving medic Rat Kiley shoot piece by piece?
A baby water buffalo
A baby water buffalo takes the bullets as Kiley, crying, shoots it bit by bit after Curt Lemon dies. O'Brien insists the episode is really a love story.
Q 06In The Things They Carried, which frightened soldier carrying tranquilizers is shot dead outside Than Khe?
Ted Lavender
Ted Lavender falls on his way back from relieving himself, and Jimmy Cross, who had been daydreaming about Martha, blames himself for years.
Q 07In "The Man I Killed", what shape is the hole Tim O'Brien keeps describing where the dead man's eye was?
A star
A star is the shape he fixes on, repeating that one eye was a star-shaped hole while he invents a whole gentle life for the stranger.
Q 08In "Speaking of Courage", what does veteran Norman Bowker circle again and again in his father's Chevy?
The town lake
The town lake is a seven-mile loop he keeps driving because nobody is left to hear his war story. At dusk he parks and wades in.
Q 09In "The Dentist", how does swaggering soldier Curt Lemon react when he first steps into the Army dentist's tent?
He faints
He faints before the dentist even touches him, a humiliation for a soldier who loved playing the fearless tough guy in combat.
Q 10In The Things They Carried, which young soldier blows up an adopted puppy, then protests "I'm just a boy"?
Azar
Azar straps the puppy to a mine and sets it off, then wonders why everyone is upset. O'Brien notes the platoon's average age was about nineteen or twenty.
Q 11In "Friends", what do Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk agree in writing to do if either suffers a wheelchair wound?
Kill the other
They vow to kill the other, yet when a mortar round takes Strunk's leg he begs Jensen not to. Jensen seems relieved when Strunk dies on the way out.
Q 12In The Things They Carried, what does Lt. Jimmy Cross burn in his foxhole the morning after a soldier is shot?
Letters and photos
Letters and photos from Martha go into the flames, though the burning strikes him as a futile gesture and he still feels responsible.
Q 13In "On the Rainy River", where does Tim O'Brien spend his draft summer removing blood clots from dead pigs?
A meatpacking plant
Q 21In The Things They Carried, which US Army unit do Lt. Jimmy Cross and his platoon belong to?
Alpha Company
Alpha Company is where O'Brien places his invented men, and he dedicates the book to them by name, one way he gives made-up stories the form of a war memoir.
Q 22In "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong", which elite soldiers does Mark Fossie's girlfriend join on night ambushes?
Green Berets
Green Berets, six of them, kept their own hut at the edge of the medics' compound. She returns from one three-week mission with them a changed person.
Q 23How does "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" end for Mark Fossie's girlfriend, as Rat Kiley hears it?
She walks into the mountains
A meatpacking plant in his hometown of Worthington, Minnesota, left him smelling of pig all summer. He couldn't get a date, and the draft notice sat in his wallet.
Q 14What does Tim O'Brien call himself in the last lines of "On the Rainy River", after choosing to go to war?
A coward
A coward is his verdict on himself: he went to the war, he says, only because he was too embarrassed to do what he believed was right.
Q 15In "The Lives of the Dead", what illness kills Linda, the nine-year-old classmate young Timmy O'Brien loves?
A brain tumor
A brain tumor takes her at nine, and the grown narrator says he still brings her back in dreams and stories, where the two of them go ice skating.
Q 16In "Ambush", which weapon does Tim O'Brien use to kill a young man walking a foggy trail outside My Khe?
A hand grenade
A hand grenade is in the air before he has thought it through, and he fights an urge to shout a warning. He believes the man would simply have walked past.
Q 17In "Speaking of Courage", on which holiday does Norman Bowker drive around his hometown with no one to talk to?
Fourth of July
Fourth of July fireworks end his day, and he decides the show is pretty good. Earlier he fumbles a burger order at the A&W, baffled by its new intercom.
Q 18In "Night Life", how does worn-down medic Rat Kiley get himself flown out of the war to Japan?
He shoots his own foot
He shoots his own foot after weeks of night marches leave him picturing his friends as corpses, and Jimmy Cross reports it as an accident.
Q 19In The Things They Carried, what do villagers use the muddy field where Kiowa dies under mortar fire for?
A latrine
A latrine for the whole village, the field floods when the Song Tra Bong overflows, and Kiowa sinks into the muck. Locals had warned the platoon not to camp there.
Q 20In "Field Trip", which ten-year-old relative travels with Tim O'Brien back to the field where Kiowa died?
His daughter
His daughter Kathleen finds the place smelly and dull, and cannot see why he is unable to forget something that happened twenty years earlier.
She walks into the mountains and never comes back. No body is found, and the soldiers who knew her believe she is still out there in the dark.
Q 24In "Style", what is a girl doing outside her burned house while the platoon carries out her dead family?
Dancing
Dancing is her answer to the wreckage, hands pressed over her ears. When a soldier later mocks her moves, Henry Dobbins dangles him over a well.
Q 25In "Spin", which orderly board game do Norman Bowker and Henry Dobbins play every evening as the platoon watches?
Checkers
Checkers was restful to watch, O'Brien says, because it had two clear armies and fixed rules, everything the war around them lacked.
Q 26In The Things They Carried, which sport is Martha playing in a photograph that Lt. Jimmy Cross carries?
Volleyball
Volleyball is the action shot he keeps close in the war. Years later Martha hands him a fresh copy of the same picture at a college reunion.
Q 27In The Things They Carried, which book does Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carry on the march and use as a pillow?
A New Testament
A New Testament rides in his pack, and the night a comrade dies he lies with it under his head, enjoying the smell of the glue and paper and the feeling of being alive.
Q 28In The Things They Carried, what keepsake does Norman Bowker carry, a gift from Mitchell Sanders?
A human thumb
A human thumb, cut from a dead teenage soldier, comes with a lesson: Sanders announces there is a moral to it, then admits there is none.
Q 29In "Spin", what does Mitchell Sanders seal in a USO envelope and mail to his draft board back home?
His body lice
His body lice, picked off one by one as he sat under a tree, went to the Ohio office that had sent him to the war.
Q 30In The Things They Carried, which slang verb do Jimmy Cross's foot soldiers use for marching with their loads?
Humping
Humping meant marching under a load, and O'Brien stretches the idea: his men also carry what he calls the emotional baggage of men who might die.