Television
To Wolff, the television from the rising action of the story serves to indicate a fault he sees in his own character. He says he will give the television to a local family in need, but then he just doesn't. In the prose, he struggles to understand why he would make promises with no intention of keeping them, so the television represents his desire to do the right thing in spite of his own desire to do the wrong thing. He is at war with himself.
The dog
Wolff is constantly made fun of for having personal attachments. No attachment in the novel is greater than his emotional attachment to his dog, and so the locals betray him and kill his dog and cook it for him. He realizes that it is his dog, but he eats it anyway. The dog symbolizes innocence lost, but in another way, it is close to a communion meal, because he is eating the body of the dog that he looks to for emotional support. It is an acceptance of fate in a way.
Pierce's death
Like he did with the dog, Wolff tries to find solace in a friend, but the friend is killed in combat. The friend represents a part of Wolff, since through their friendship, he learned to identify with Pierce's free spirit and his desire for fun. That isn't something that came easily to Wolff, but when Pierce was there for him, it was easier to identify with those parts of himself, so that when Pierce dies, he feels his thirst for fun die as well and slips back into existential apathy.
The reunion to the father
This is an archetypal motif that is well-pronounced in every culture of the world. The son goes abroad on a hero's quest that changes him, and then he is reunited to his father, either to a positive effect (reunion can bring honor and respect), or in this case, to a negative effect. The father represents a point of view that the son cannot abide. The son rejects his father's authority and steps into a new kind of adulthood where is not beholden to the father's opinion.
The tension of heroism
Wolff sees heroism differently than he did before. The symbolic role used to mean "going and fixing something." But now, he sees that he is a hero because he journeyed into the unknown and came back with a radically informed opinion of life and his self. The growth he accomplished will mean new wisdom for his community, albeit the difficult wisdom of suffering, betrayal, and loss, but in any case, he regards the survivors heroes of their fate. He doesn't agree with the US agenda in Vietnam, but then again, it isn't for that purpose that he served.
