The Things They Carried Assignment

Stockings Pages 117 - 118

In Stockings, the story of Henry Dobbins and a pair of women’s stockings is described. Dobbins carries around a pair of stockings that his girlfriend back home had given him. The stockings are referred to as “soft and intimate, a place where he might someday take his girlfriend to live.”. Through this another level of the stockings is displayed. “Like many of us in Vietnam, Dobbins felt the pull of superstition, and he believed firmly and absolutely in the protective power of the stockings.” (page 118). After a series of many events in which Dobbins cheats death, “It turned us into a platoon of believers. You don’t dispute facts.” Ultimately, Dobbins’ girlfriend breaks up with him at the end of October. Believing that this would change things, the story concludes with Dobbins stating “No sweat,” he said. “The magic doesn’t go away.”

I believe that the ultimate message of this story was most pronounced in that final line. I don’t think it was the idea of a woman, but the presence of delicacy in such a time as war.