Unpacking Secrets: How Classic Storytelling Reveals Hidden Truths in Suburban Memoirs
I came up with the idea last spring, after more than a decade of teaching Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried to dual enrollment high school seniors. By then, I knew the narratives and structures so well, I could have listed its chapter titles solely from memory.
Students really connect to The Things They Carried. They believe it. They feel Lt. Jimmy Cross’s guilt at soldier Ted Lavender’s death, and their hearts break for Norman Bowker as he circles the lake, realizing that his world moved on and that he didn’t really survive the loss of Kiowa in that field.
