Inciting Moment
The Inciting moment of the Things They Carried was when Tim O Brien, The Narrator fled to Minnesota with the intent of fleeing to Canada to escape the draft. He was 19 and did not like the war and Vietnam and did not want to go over there and fight. He was very unsure about going to Canada and he stayed with an owner of a lodge for a little less than a week in Minnesota to collect his thoughts. He had the opportunity to flee but chose not to because he was to embarrassed to do it.
Rising Action
The rising action is his experience in Vietnam and seeing the effects of war on the men he was with. In the rising action he goes into detail of the burdens that they carry into war such as physical weights like ammunition, helmets, and other gear. He also goes into more involved explanation about the mental burdens that they carry and how both aspects coexist. Example: One of the men Ted Lavender Carries extra ammo because he is afraid of running out in a heated firefight, or Jimmy Cross the platoon leader who carries a picture of a women he loves even though she does not love him back. Each man carries, and copes with these burdens. Their emotions also affect their actions like when one of their men is killed outside a village they burn the village down as revenge after even though they know it is wrong they do it in order to cope. In the rising action several abstract ideas are described such as that a true story does not have to be factually correct, it must however convey they point and emotion of the actual event.
Climax
The Climax occurs with the death of one of the more prominent characters Kiowa. Kiowa is a young Native American and very calm in his actions. As part of his culture he can better control his emotions then the other men of the platoon. He dies when being ambushed in the rain, he sinks into mud and they are unable to pull him up before he suffocates. His death has a deep impact for the platoon as he was often a balancing affect when the morales of the men declined. His relgious, and temperate personality, controlled the men and kept them mentally stable in a sense, with his death it seemed that the only remiang values in the men had withered away.
Falling Action
The falling action is when he takes his daughter, twenty years after the war to Vietnam. She is bored when they go to the location of Kiowa's death because she cannot understand the war and how it affected her father. He takes the mocaisins that used to belong to Kiowa and wades into the water and puts them in the spot where he beleives Kiowa died. After this he speaks to the reader once again on how a true story is not completely factual, a true story conveys the emotion of the actual event.
