There are three important Tim O'Briens in the story: Tim the Soldier, Tim the Writer, and Timmy the Kid. They're all the same person, but it's important for you to keep the three separate, so we'l...

Everyman RatEverybody, and we mean everybody, knows a guy like Rat. First of all, Rat's real name is Bob, but everybody calls him Rat. He's the guy who loves to tell stories, but makes a lot of s...

Kiowa is pretty much the most decent character in the entire book. He's thoughtful, respects the Vietnamese, isn't a coward, and he even has a sense of humor. We quickly learn that he's O'Brien's...

You can't help but feel a little sorry for Jimmy Cross. He's the leader of the platoon, but he's the opposite of the tough, Schwarzenegger or Sam Worthington-type you'd expect of an officer in Vie...

Azar is the guy who kills puppies. Literally. When Ted Lavender adopts a puppy, Azar straps it to a mine, explodes it, and then completely fails to understand why everyone is mad at him. Yeah....

Mitchell Sanders is obsessed with the truth. He's the one who's always trying to figure out what the moral is, whether it's of a story or a corpse lying in the road. He doesn't need the moral to...

We know more about Bowker at peace than we do about him at war. At war, we know that he's gentle, but carries a thumb that Mitchell Sanders cut off a VC soldier and gave to him. The only other pe...

Mary Anne is that pretty, fresh-faced girl next door… who turns into a demon from a horror movie. We think she's ultimately more important as a symbol than as a character, but—what the heck—...