"The Things That Carried Him" and "Death of a Racehorse"

Chris Jones takes a different approach to create the structure of “The Things That Carried Him.” He separates the narrative into three parts. The first focuses on Sergeant Montgomery’s funeral. The second includes the events where Montgomery’s body is prepared for the funeral and flown back to Indiana, and the third part readers find out how Sergeant Montgomery was killed. Jones builds his story backwards; the first character we get to know is Don Collins who is digging Sergeant Montgomery’s grave. Not long after that, we learn more about Montgomery’s family and get a closer look at the precise funeral practices at a soldier’s funeral. Jones builds Montgomery as a character through his family and close friends. Instead of beginning the story with Montgomery’s death, he starts in reverse using heavy detail to build up something that would otherwise not be so interesting (like the funeral practices, the people who fly the planes of the fallen soldiers). Although, I think this structure and those details make the story so moving. Jones really captured Sergeant Montgomery’s last trip home down to every morsel of detail.

W.C Heinz’s “Death of a Racehorse” begins with the race, although from the title we understand that some horse is going to die. His piece is built using a structure that is quite the opposite of Jones’. Heinz builds the story to the action. There’s a strong tension that arises when we know this horse is doomed because of his broken leg, but we are not exactly sure when it will happen (they’re waiting for the go ahead from the trainer, Hirsch). Although the piece was pretty short, I kept wondering about when the horse would be killed. And then, it happens and that’s it. Heinz ends the story with the rain falling over the horse as all the people watching the race scurry to avoid the storm. It ends on a somber note where the horse is alone after it has been killed. These two pieces share similarities in scene structure and how the pieces end. Jones also ends his piece describing how Montgomery’s body being flown home and I got the same alone feeling as I felt reading about the horse. The pieces also use mostly scene and description to convey the stories.