I really like this novel. Everyone warned me that it would be nearly impossible to follow, but I didn’t find that to be the case at all. I read a lot of satirical books and this one was one of the easier ones.
One thing that I thought was odd and interesting was the author’s decision on who got quotation marks when they spoke. The four women didn’t get quotation marks in their stories, but the four Indians (who are presumably the same people) got quotation marks when they spoke in the story. This reminded me of The Things They Carried because O’Brien doesn’t use quotation marks at the beginning of the novel.
One thing that did confuse me was the narrator/character “I”. At first I assumed that “I” was a character because when he speaks the author writes “I says,” but then the author writes “I tell” (2) which is the wrong tense and/or verb conjugation for a third person character. But if the name “I” is used in the sense of personal narration then the author wouldn’t write “I says”, he would write “I say”. Overall, trying to figure out who exactly “I” is was the most confusing part of the book. I’m hoping we can talk about him in discussion.
There were three major cultural themes throughout the novel. The first was the cultural differences between Indians and white people. One thing I thought was ironic was that while the Canadian government was trying to stand up for Indian rights it couldn’t decide whether or not the Indians were actually Canadians. When demanding the Sun Dance costumes back the Canadian government says “people of Canada and our aboriginal brothers” (310) which does unify in that statement that the Indians are “brothers”, but it also inherently states that the Indians are not Canadian. Throughout the novel white people and Indians make sweeping and racist generalizations about the other ethnicity. The other cultural theme was the difference between Americans and Canadians. Latisha’s husband tries to tell her basically how Canadians are pushovers and Americans are strong, but Latisha doesn’t translate it as this and gets back at George by chanting to her baby that he’s Canadian. The difference between America and Canada is over-generalized when an American states “everyone knows the US is sleazy, but Canada is supposed to have some integrity” (312). The third cultural theme is the comparison of Indian ceremonies to Christianity. The most amusing part of this for me was the bible stories intertwined with the stories of Thought Woman, First Woman, Changing Woman, and Traveling Woman. When First Woman pairs up with Ahdamn (an ironic name in itself) I thought it was an interesting jibe at Christianity when the author states “I don’t know where he comes from. Things like that happen you know” (40). This statement could be making fun of the fact that in the bible people just kind of show up magically by the hand of God, or it could be combining Christian stories with Indian beliefs by stressing that Indians don’t really need to know where people come from, they’re just there. I wonder if the author is trying to say that Christians (or white people) jump to conclusions when they label people because when the rangers run into First Woman “Yes they says, it is the Lone Ranger” (75). This statement could be alluding to naming Jesus as miraculous, or it could be alluding to how white people just gave Indians white names when they first came to North America.
I’m hoping we can discuss the “I’m God…you remind me of a dog” (72) quote because I think it has a lot of meaning for such a tiny increment of the story.
I don’t’ really know why the cars float around in the lake. There could be some sort of symbolism of the four cars and the four women who float but I don’t’ really know, I hope we can cover that in discussion.
I was surprised that Latisha doesn’t throw George out of the house immediately after he beats her up. Is there any symbolism in Elizabeth’s determination and saying “‘Yes I can’” (276) over and over again? Why would Latisha name her son Christian?
I’m hoping that in the seminar we will discuss the similarities between Karen and Alberta. Both are interested in Indians who tried to act like white men (according to Norma). It is ironic that Karen presumes she is pregnant and then is sorry she isn’t even though she doesn’t really seem to want a child and that Alberta presumes she is not pregnant when she is, even though she only thinks about having a child.
I’m really excited for class discussion. I’ve spotted a lot of irony and satire, but I’m sure I’m missing quite a bit of it as well because I don’t know who Nathaniel Bumpo is among other things. When we discuss this I’m hoping I’ll be able to string all of the pieces together.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
The Things They Carried--Extended Analysis
The draft notice arrived on June 17, 1968. It was a humid afternoon, I remember, cloudy and very quite, and I’d just come in from a round of golf. My mother and father were having lunch out in the kitchen. I remember opening the letter, scanning the first few lines, feeling the blood go thick in my eyes. I remember a sound in my head. It wasn’t thinking, just a silent howl. A million things all at once—I was too good for this war.
…
War was for the supporters and those too stupid to grasp its full meaning. I could not mindlessly follow the orders of a drill sergeant; I could not come home in a flag covered coffin. My parents didn’t support the war. But, we did support America. I was torn in half. Part of my body seemed already there: firing on the enemy, holding my base, maybe even screaming in pain. But there was another part of me that longed to run to the north, it wouldn’t be far. A little drive and a swim and I would be there. In Canada.
Alive.
That thought was merely a dream though. I couldn’t leave my family to never return. I couldn’t be the one coward in hundreds of heroes.
A dense fog seemed to carry me through that summer. Then suddenly, as if in a dream, we were in the jungle taking fire. When men are in a platoon together, that is the closest they will ever be to another soul. Those boys, they saved my life and I saved theirs. For fun my friend, Rat, and I would play a deranged version of the game “chicken”. Rat Kiley would toss a smoke grenade at me and I would toss it back until one of us would miss or chicken out. The loser was called a yellow mother. It wasn’t clever, it wasn’t even incredibly fun, but it passed the time. And that was really the goal, pass the time, stay alive. After a while the game got too boring to play anymore. I headed over to play with Mitchell’s yo-yo but I never made it.
In retrospect, my death seems very non-climatic. Almost like killing off a secondary character in some cheap novel just to get the reader’s attention.
When they flew my body home I was surrounded by the corpses of others. Many others. The funeral was on a rainy day and my mother cried. She cried after too. In fact she never stopped crying. After a while she did run out of tears, but she was still crying. The smile that was there when my sister and brother needed it wasn’t there anymore. Soon people forgot that my mom ever did smile. My mother had never supported the war. She had never voted for any of those presidents. She had never agreed to lose her child.
My father cried some, but mainly he sat quietly, his gaze would sometimes sit on an inanimate object while the minutes past and he would stop moving. My sister later told my brother that he almost stopped living in those periods. Sometimes she said she could see the past replaying in him mind, a past when I was there. Or maybe he was gazing into a happier dimension. I was alive in that dimension. I had come home an honored and unscathed veteran. Or maybe I never even left; not when he looked into that dimension. He buried himself in work. His little clinic in Maple Grove, Minnesota boomed with business. He died a very sad and very wealthy man.
***
The draft notice arrived on June 17, 1968. It was a humid afternoon, I remember, cloudy and very quite, and I’d just come in from a round of golf. My mother and father were having lunch out in the kitchen. I remember opening the letter, scanning the first few lines, feeling the blood go thick in my eyes. I remember a sound in my head. It wasn’t thinking, just a silent howl. A million things all at once—I was too good for this war.
…
War was for the supporters and those too stupid to grasp its full meaning. I could not mindlessly follow the orders of a drill sergeant; I could not come home in a flag covered coffin. My parents didn’t support the war. But, we did support America. I was torn in half. Part of my body seemed already there: firing on the enemy, holding my base, maybe even screaming in pain. But there was another part of me that longed to run to the north, it wouldn’t be far. A little drive and a swim and I would be there. In Canada.
Alive.
That thought was merely a dream though. I couldn’t leave my family to never return. I couldn’t be the one coward in hundreds of heroes.
…
It seemed like I was shipped out to Vietnam the same day. The summer flew by and swept me along with. I was a medic, which was kind of almost perfect. I was going to school to be a doctor when I got back home anyway, so this was great experience. I saw some terrible things. But I also saw great things. I saw my two hands pull out bullets. I saw my medical kit on the ground next to me. I saw my fingers stitching, cutting, and healing. But I also did terrible things. I killed unnecessarily. I got sad. I got distraught. I became someone who I was never supposed to be, and I tortured creatures.
After a while we were put on the Night Life. At first it was okay, but then the darkness started to creep in. It wasn’t as bad for the other guys because they hadn’t be forced to see it all. But I was the doctor, if someone got shot, I saw it. If someone blew up a little, I saw it. I had seen the look on many people’s faces right before death. And it came back in the darkness. It would creep in, it would show me all the things I tried to block in the sunlight. It would bring me back to that village with the baby water buffalo. And I saw it all from a third person view. Floating just behind myself, I saw all my actions. It made me sick. I wanted to tear off my skin. I wanted to crawl outside of myself. I wanted to be the same person I used to be. I wanted to be the person who had received straight A’s through high school. I wanted the kid back who didn’t regret any of their actions.
Two more days of that and it was too much. I doped myself up and shot myself in the foot. I didn’t care what the other guys said anymore. Nothing they were thinking could be as bad as what I thought of myself.
On the way home I tried to imagine explaining to my mother about the things I had done. But she would never understand that it wasn’t me. Or maybe she would understand, but I wouldn’t.
When I got home I saw the tears of joy on my parents’ faces. They both knew I had shot myself, but they didn’t care. Twenty years later I know I would have shot myself again. The only regret I have about that is not having done it sooner. Months sooner. I wasn’t me anymore. Yes, I felt guilty. Yes, now I acted normally. But that made it all the worst.
Ever since I came back I’ve never been to stay in one place. I kind of bounce around from job to job until I find the right fit.
Now I wake up in the night sweating. My wife knows that it’s only war dreams, but she thinks I’m fighting VC. What I really see in those dreams is myself. I’m lying on the ground with my kneecaps shot off, staring down the barrel of a gun at my own face.
***
The draft notice arrived on June 17, 1968. It was a humid afternoon, I remember, cloudy and very quite, and I’d just come in from a round of golf. My mother and father were having lunch out in the kitchen. I remember opening the letter, scanning the first few lines, feeling the blood go thick in my eyes. I remember a sound in my head. It wasn’t thinking, just a silent howl. A million things all at once—I was too good for this war.
War was for the supporters and those too stupid to grasp its full meaning. I could not mindlessly follow the orders of a drill sergeant; I could not come home in a flag covered coffin. My parents didn’t support the war. But, we did support America. I was torn in half. Part of my body seemed already there: firing on the enemy, holding my base, maybe even screaming in pain. But there was another part of me that longed to run to the north, it wouldn’t be far. A little drive and a swim and I would be there. In Canada.
Alive.
…
I had heard all of the arguments before: “fight for freedom”, “don’t embarrass your family”, “you can’t abandon the land of the free forever”. But the war wasn’t for freedom. It was for…hell who knows what it was for. And as for embarrassing my family, that was just silly. Neither of my parents agreed with the war. They were strictly against it. Embarrassing my family would have been dying in Vietnam for a causeless war. Embarrassing my family would have been coming home without a leg because I didn’t get out of the way while my comrades burned down a village.
My mother had lost a brother as a child. She barely remembers him and talking about it doesn’t bother her too much, but my grandmother died with him. My mother told me once that she could never bear to lose one of her children because she saw how stricken her mother had been. I was sure my family could cope with me living in the neighboring country that provided free health care as opposed to coping with my death.
I headed north the next month. My mother and father had come with me to say goodbye. They told me that they would visit as soon as they could. Around 3:00 a.m. I crossed the Rainy River and by 4:30 I was sitting in Canada trying to figure out how to build my new life.
It was hard at first reorganizing my life to fit a new culture. After Carter pardoned my crime I returned to my hometown. It felt different being back in my hometown, I had missed it for so long, but after about a year I returned to Canada to live there.
Sometimes I feel guilty for leaving my peers to go to war. But I know that I could not fight for a cause that I don’t agree with. I could not cope with what I would have become.
***
I decided to do this for an extended journal because I wanted to follow up on the class project we did. When I told Curt Lemon’s story I tried to at least partially simulate the reaction that my grandmother had to her son’s death. I have heard my mother talk several times about my grandmother’s reaction to John’s death. Ever since then, my mother has truly believed that there is no greater loss than the loss of your own child.
It took me a while to really try to get down Rat’s story properly the way I would have reacted to it. For Rat’s story and Curt’s story I tried to incorporate how I would react along with the character’s reactions.
For the third story I tried to just imagine would I do. My father was drafted for Vietnam but the draft rescinded because of his poor eyesight. I tried to incorporate his reaction to be drafted as well as how he would react if either of his sons were drafted. My mother told both of my brothers that if the Iraq war seemed to be turning towards a draft they were going to go to school in Canada before they were sent to war.
…
War was for the supporters and those too stupid to grasp its full meaning. I could not mindlessly follow the orders of a drill sergeant; I could not come home in a flag covered coffin. My parents didn’t support the war. But, we did support America. I was torn in half. Part of my body seemed already there: firing on the enemy, holding my base, maybe even screaming in pain. But there was another part of me that longed to run to the north, it wouldn’t be far. A little drive and a swim and I would be there. In Canada.
Alive.
That thought was merely a dream though. I couldn’t leave my family to never return. I couldn’t be the one coward in hundreds of heroes.
A dense fog seemed to carry me through that summer. Then suddenly, as if in a dream, we were in the jungle taking fire. When men are in a platoon together, that is the closest they will ever be to another soul. Those boys, they saved my life and I saved theirs. For fun my friend, Rat, and I would play a deranged version of the game “chicken”. Rat Kiley would toss a smoke grenade at me and I would toss it back until one of us would miss or chicken out. The loser was called a yellow mother. It wasn’t clever, it wasn’t even incredibly fun, but it passed the time. And that was really the goal, pass the time, stay alive. After a while the game got too boring to play anymore. I headed over to play with Mitchell’s yo-yo but I never made it.
In retrospect, my death seems very non-climatic. Almost like killing off a secondary character in some cheap novel just to get the reader’s attention.
When they flew my body home I was surrounded by the corpses of others. Many others. The funeral was on a rainy day and my mother cried. She cried after too. In fact she never stopped crying. After a while she did run out of tears, but she was still crying. The smile that was there when my sister and brother needed it wasn’t there anymore. Soon people forgot that my mom ever did smile. My mother had never supported the war. She had never voted for any of those presidents. She had never agreed to lose her child.
My father cried some, but mainly he sat quietly, his gaze would sometimes sit on an inanimate object while the minutes past and he would stop moving. My sister later told my brother that he almost stopped living in those periods. Sometimes she said she could see the past replaying in him mind, a past when I was there. Or maybe he was gazing into a happier dimension. I was alive in that dimension. I had come home an honored and unscathed veteran. Or maybe I never even left; not when he looked into that dimension. He buried himself in work. His little clinic in Maple Grove, Minnesota boomed with business. He died a very sad and very wealthy man.
***
The draft notice arrived on June 17, 1968. It was a humid afternoon, I remember, cloudy and very quite, and I’d just come in from a round of golf. My mother and father were having lunch out in the kitchen. I remember opening the letter, scanning the first few lines, feeling the blood go thick in my eyes. I remember a sound in my head. It wasn’t thinking, just a silent howl. A million things all at once—I was too good for this war.
…
War was for the supporters and those too stupid to grasp its full meaning. I could not mindlessly follow the orders of a drill sergeant; I could not come home in a flag covered coffin. My parents didn’t support the war. But, we did support America. I was torn in half. Part of my body seemed already there: firing on the enemy, holding my base, maybe even screaming in pain. But there was another part of me that longed to run to the north, it wouldn’t be far. A little drive and a swim and I would be there. In Canada.
Alive.
That thought was merely a dream though. I couldn’t leave my family to never return. I couldn’t be the one coward in hundreds of heroes.
…
It seemed like I was shipped out to Vietnam the same day. The summer flew by and swept me along with. I was a medic, which was kind of almost perfect. I was going to school to be a doctor when I got back home anyway, so this was great experience. I saw some terrible things. But I also saw great things. I saw my two hands pull out bullets. I saw my medical kit on the ground next to me. I saw my fingers stitching, cutting, and healing. But I also did terrible things. I killed unnecessarily. I got sad. I got distraught. I became someone who I was never supposed to be, and I tortured creatures.
After a while we were put on the Night Life. At first it was okay, but then the darkness started to creep in. It wasn’t as bad for the other guys because they hadn’t be forced to see it all. But I was the doctor, if someone got shot, I saw it. If someone blew up a little, I saw it. I had seen the look on many people’s faces right before death. And it came back in the darkness. It would creep in, it would show me all the things I tried to block in the sunlight. It would bring me back to that village with the baby water buffalo. And I saw it all from a third person view. Floating just behind myself, I saw all my actions. It made me sick. I wanted to tear off my skin. I wanted to crawl outside of myself. I wanted to be the same person I used to be. I wanted to be the person who had received straight A’s through high school. I wanted the kid back who didn’t regret any of their actions.
Two more days of that and it was too much. I doped myself up and shot myself in the foot. I didn’t care what the other guys said anymore. Nothing they were thinking could be as bad as what I thought of myself.
On the way home I tried to imagine explaining to my mother about the things I had done. But she would never understand that it wasn’t me. Or maybe she would understand, but I wouldn’t.
When I got home I saw the tears of joy on my parents’ faces. They both knew I had shot myself, but they didn’t care. Twenty years later I know I would have shot myself again. The only regret I have about that is not having done it sooner. Months sooner. I wasn’t me anymore. Yes, I felt guilty. Yes, now I acted normally. But that made it all the worst.
Ever since I came back I’ve never been to stay in one place. I kind of bounce around from job to job until I find the right fit.
Now I wake up in the night sweating. My wife knows that it’s only war dreams, but she thinks I’m fighting VC. What I really see in those dreams is myself. I’m lying on the ground with my kneecaps shot off, staring down the barrel of a gun at my own face.
***
The draft notice arrived on June 17, 1968. It was a humid afternoon, I remember, cloudy and very quite, and I’d just come in from a round of golf. My mother and father were having lunch out in the kitchen. I remember opening the letter, scanning the first few lines, feeling the blood go thick in my eyes. I remember a sound in my head. It wasn’t thinking, just a silent howl. A million things all at once—I was too good for this war.
War was for the supporters and those too stupid to grasp its full meaning. I could not mindlessly follow the orders of a drill sergeant; I could not come home in a flag covered coffin. My parents didn’t support the war. But, we did support America. I was torn in half. Part of my body seemed already there: firing on the enemy, holding my base, maybe even screaming in pain. But there was another part of me that longed to run to the north, it wouldn’t be far. A little drive and a swim and I would be there. In Canada.
Alive.
…
I had heard all of the arguments before: “fight for freedom”, “don’t embarrass your family”, “you can’t abandon the land of the free forever”. But the war wasn’t for freedom. It was for…hell who knows what it was for. And as for embarrassing my family, that was just silly. Neither of my parents agreed with the war. They were strictly against it. Embarrassing my family would have been dying in Vietnam for a causeless war. Embarrassing my family would have been coming home without a leg because I didn’t get out of the way while my comrades burned down a village.
My mother had lost a brother as a child. She barely remembers him and talking about it doesn’t bother her too much, but my grandmother died with him. My mother told me once that she could never bear to lose one of her children because she saw how stricken her mother had been. I was sure my family could cope with me living in the neighboring country that provided free health care as opposed to coping with my death.
I headed north the next month. My mother and father had come with me to say goodbye. They told me that they would visit as soon as they could. Around 3:00 a.m. I crossed the Rainy River and by 4:30 I was sitting in Canada trying to figure out how to build my new life.
It was hard at first reorganizing my life to fit a new culture. After Carter pardoned my crime I returned to my hometown. It felt different being back in my hometown, I had missed it for so long, but after about a year I returned to Canada to live there.
Sometimes I feel guilty for leaving my peers to go to war. But I know that I could not fight for a cause that I don’t agree with. I could not cope with what I would have become.
***
I decided to do this for an extended journal because I wanted to follow up on the class project we did. When I told Curt Lemon’s story I tried to at least partially simulate the reaction that my grandmother had to her son’s death. I have heard my mother talk several times about my grandmother’s reaction to John’s death. Ever since then, my mother has truly believed that there is no greater loss than the loss of your own child.
It took me a while to really try to get down Rat’s story properly the way I would have reacted to it. For Rat’s story and Curt’s story I tried to incorporate how I would react along with the character’s reactions.
For the third story I tried to just imagine would I do. My father was drafted for Vietnam but the draft rescinded because of his poor eyesight. I tried to incorporate his reaction to be drafted as well as how he would react if either of his sons were drafted. My mother told both of my brothers that if the Iraq war seemed to be turning towards a draft they were going to go to school in Canada before they were sent to war.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
The Things They Carried--Close Analysis
Growing Pains
“The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.”
Alfred North Whitehead
During the Vietnam War, our country sent thousands of its youngest, most able-bodied men to a foreign continent to kill unquestioningly. But they were not sent because of their youthful energy, or because they were most able to fight; the soldiers of Vietnam were so young because they were also impressionable and easily manipulated. The young men that emerged from the war did not know how to react to the things they saw, and as shown in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, they did some awful things as a result. Because the American soldiers in Vietnam didn’t know how to react to the atrocities of war, they decided to act immaturely and sometimes disgustingly, to deal with the pain.
Early on in the novel O’Brien states the average age of his platoon “was nineteen or twenty, and as a consequence things often took on a curiously playful atmosphere” (37). But youth is more than an age; it is a state of being. Over and over again O’Brien reiterates that a soldier is still “just a child” (105). But it is more complicated than simple childhood; the boys are to be caught in between adulthood and adolescence. Before Curt Lemon dies the soldiers may well have been ten-year-old boys playing in their backyard: Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley “giggling and calling each other yellow mother and playing a silly game they’d invented” while Mitchell Sanders plays with his yo-yo (69). After Curt Lemon dies the boys are forced to climb the jungle trees of Vietnam and peel out their friend’s body. Forcing children to do adult things causes them to skip the steps of growing up. Suddenly the ability to kill is present, but the knowledge of when to kill is not. It is this sudden leap that causes the soldiers to do some of the horrible things they do later in the book.
To deal with the war the soldiers often try to use “harsh vocabulary to contain the terrible softness” (20). The boys know they are only boys, they admit this often, but they still don’t want to show that they are boys. They act immature and even flippant about the death of close friends; they make phrases like “zapped while zipping” (17) to try to make the death less real. As shown by Norman Bowker’s story, such attempts to avert attention from the pain do not work. Norman doesn’t deal with the death of Kiowa, he only tells Azar to “‘pipe down’”, and the tragedy eats away at him until he can’t take it anymore and hangs himself long after the war is over. This again shows the impressionability of the soldiers and emphasizes that the atrocities that occur while their minds are still being molded affect them for the rest of their lives.
The most memorable example of an inability to deal with emotions is Rat Kiley’s massacre of the baby water buffalo. It is probable that Rat felt that he could not show his pain about the death of Curt Lemon through words because he thought that would be a juvenile reaction, so he tries to express himself in a manlier manner. When killing the baby water buffalo doesn’t help Rat to feel better, he reverts back to a near infantile state and starts to cry as he “[cradles] his rifle and [goes] off by himself” (79). But the scene is more than just Rat Kiley killing an animal; the baby water buffalo can easily be a symbol of the young men who have been sent into a war they don’t understand to take a beating they don’t deserve. The soldiers had been chased down by the government and tortured by their enemies. The soldiers never lash out at the government just like the baby water buffalo who is “all the while silent, or almost silent…nothing [moves] except the eyes which [are] enormous, the pupils shiny black and dumb” (79). This comparison of the helpless baby animal to the helpless young soldiers shows more clearly than anything else the inability to cope with what is happening around them.
Of all the things the soldiers in the novel carried, experience was not among them. Although they are still teenagers, many of the soldiers are forced to make life and death decisions. These decisions cause them to leap the chasm between childhood and adulthood without the bridge of adolescence to carry them across. Because the soldiers lack experience and knowledge in the face of the atrocities of war, they can’t express their emotions in any way that a truly adult person would.
“The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.”
Alfred North Whitehead
During the Vietnam War, our country sent thousands of its youngest, most able-bodied men to a foreign continent to kill unquestioningly. But they were not sent because of their youthful energy, or because they were most able to fight; the soldiers of Vietnam were so young because they were also impressionable and easily manipulated. The young men that emerged from the war did not know how to react to the things they saw, and as shown in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, they did some awful things as a result. Because the American soldiers in Vietnam didn’t know how to react to the atrocities of war, they decided to act immaturely and sometimes disgustingly, to deal with the pain.
Early on in the novel O’Brien states the average age of his platoon “was nineteen or twenty, and as a consequence things often took on a curiously playful atmosphere” (37). But youth is more than an age; it is a state of being. Over and over again O’Brien reiterates that a soldier is still “just a child” (105). But it is more complicated than simple childhood; the boys are to be caught in between adulthood and adolescence. Before Curt Lemon dies the soldiers may well have been ten-year-old boys playing in their backyard: Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley “giggling and calling each other yellow mother and playing a silly game they’d invented” while Mitchell Sanders plays with his yo-yo (69). After Curt Lemon dies the boys are forced to climb the jungle trees of Vietnam and peel out their friend’s body. Forcing children to do adult things causes them to skip the steps of growing up. Suddenly the ability to kill is present, but the knowledge of when to kill is not. It is this sudden leap that causes the soldiers to do some of the horrible things they do later in the book.
To deal with the war the soldiers often try to use “harsh vocabulary to contain the terrible softness” (20). The boys know they are only boys, they admit this often, but they still don’t want to show that they are boys. They act immature and even flippant about the death of close friends; they make phrases like “zapped while zipping” (17) to try to make the death less real. As shown by Norman Bowker’s story, such attempts to avert attention from the pain do not work. Norman doesn’t deal with the death of Kiowa, he only tells Azar to “‘pipe down’”, and the tragedy eats away at him until he can’t take it anymore and hangs himself long after the war is over. This again shows the impressionability of the soldiers and emphasizes that the atrocities that occur while their minds are still being molded affect them for the rest of their lives.
The most memorable example of an inability to deal with emotions is Rat Kiley’s massacre of the baby water buffalo. It is probable that Rat felt that he could not show his pain about the death of Curt Lemon through words because he thought that would be a juvenile reaction, so he tries to express himself in a manlier manner. When killing the baby water buffalo doesn’t help Rat to feel better, he reverts back to a near infantile state and starts to cry as he “[cradles] his rifle and [goes] off by himself” (79). But the scene is more than just Rat Kiley killing an animal; the baby water buffalo can easily be a symbol of the young men who have been sent into a war they don’t understand to take a beating they don’t deserve. The soldiers had been chased down by the government and tortured by their enemies. The soldiers never lash out at the government just like the baby water buffalo who is “all the while silent, or almost silent…nothing [moves] except the eyes which [are] enormous, the pupils shiny black and dumb” (79). This comparison of the helpless baby animal to the helpless young soldiers shows more clearly than anything else the inability to cope with what is happening around them.
Of all the things the soldiers in the novel carried, experience was not among them. Although they are still teenagers, many of the soldiers are forced to make life and death decisions. These decisions cause them to leap the chasm between childhood and adulthood without the bridge of adolescence to carry them across. Because the soldiers lack experience and knowledge in the face of the atrocities of war, they can’t express their emotions in any way that a truly adult person would.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
"The Things They Carried"--Reader Response
The beginning of the novel focuses on the things each soldier carried. What I found very interesting was that many stories were not about the plot but in essence turned out to be the moral. For example, Ted Lavender’s death was not told to give respects to Lavender’s character as a person, but in fact to explain the characters more fully, especially Jimmy Cross. We learn about his love for Martha. We learn about his loss of Martha. And finally we learn how he became a stronger general because of Lavender’s death: “he went back to his maps…he was now determined to perform his duties firmly and without negligence” (25).
Cross’s story with Martha stayed with me throughout the novel. I didn’t really understand why he loved her so. She seems like a very average person, and the fact that he wanted to tie her up “and put his hand on her knee and just [hold] it there all night long” was very unsettling to me (29). What impresses me about Jimmy Cross is that he “did not want the responsibility of leading these men,” but he led them anyway (167). After I read that he didn’t want to lead them, I wondered how he had risen to his rank unwillingly and I realized that he is one of the only characters in the novel who truly cares about his men. Cross takes the responsibility to explain Kiowa’s death to the Native American’s father “carefully, not covering up his own guilt” (169). This is what makes Jimmy Cross worthy to lead.
Why doesn’t O’Brien use quotation marks for 27 pages? “There’s a moral here, said Mitchell Sanders” (21). There are no quotation marks where there should be.
The checkers O’Brien describes provided a lot of insight into how frustrating the war must have been. O’Brien clearly shows what he wanted in contrast with what the war in Vietnam actually was; “there was a winner and a loser. There were rules” in checkers, but not in his war (32). When I read about O’Brien almost running away I could relate with him the most. The author takes my exact sentiments of war when he states, “there should be a law…if you support a war…that’s fine, but you have to be willing to put your own precious fluids on the line” (42). This is an almost an exact quote that my mother gave when it seemed there might be a draft for the war in Iraq the year my brother turned eighteen.
O’Brien seems to stress the totally opposite aspects of war. At one point he will state “war is hell…and love. War is nasty; war is fun….War makes you a man; war makes you dead” (80). I had a lot of trouble comprehending this fully. I understand that the trips and adventures could be fun, but when the soldiers “can’t wait to get back into action” I don’t understand it (35). The soldiers have to kill people, and it changes them. The soldiers have to watch their best friends blow up, the soldiers have to peel people out of trees. This upsets them so much that they torture animals and even then “there wasn’t a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo” (79). O’Brien even shows this with his story of Mary Anne Bell. Mary Anne comes to Vietnam innocent and unknowing and turns into a person who wears “a necklace of human tongues” (110). This worst part about Mary Anne though was that she then tries to convince her ex-lover that “‘it’s not bad’” that she’s become something new, something without feeling (111). I felt like O’Brien sends very mixed messages throughout the novel, sometimes “even though you’re pinned down by a war you never felt more at peace” (36). And sometimes “you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (69). All over the novel O’Brien continually compares the war to opposites: “‘it’s like trying to tell someone what chocolate tastes like’…‘or shit’” (113). I understand the message the author is trying to convey by doing this, but I can’t relate to it at all.
One of the main themes of the novel is story telling. And, in essence, the definition of truth. Throughout the novel O’Brien stresses that stories enhance truth to make it more real for the listener.
Blame is also an interesting theme from the novel. O’Brien seems to blame his town for him going to war. For putting pressure on him to do many things he didn’t think were right, “I held them responsible. By God yes I did” (45). The author understands that blame can go to anyone: “the munitions makers or Karl Marx or a trick of fate or an old man in Omaha that forgot to vote” (177). But in the end, it comes own to personal guilt as well.
Henry Dobbins became my favorite character when he carried Azar over to a well and told him to “‘dance right’” (136).
Norman Bowker’s story was very sad to me. Why did tasting the lake water make him feel better?
It was very powerful how O’Brien made up details that he could relate to for the boy who died. I was glad to finally see a character see a Vietnamese person as actually human instead of just a “dink”. What made it more powerful too, was that the author does not actually describe how he felt at the moment, he merely describes it all so that we may feel the disgust, partially by repetition, and partially by strong writing. What scared me is that he “did not see him as the enemy; [he] did not ponder morality or politics or military duty” (132). I consider such contemplations necessary for almost any decision, and it scares me when people don’t think about such things when a person life is on the line.
When telling the story of Mary Anne, O’Brien stresses the impressionability of the couple: Mary Anne and Mark Fossie. Is the reason we draft young people to wars because they’re impressionable? The best fighters can’t be under the age of twenty and yet “the average age of the platoon…was nineteen or twenty” (37).
Cross’s story with Martha stayed with me throughout the novel. I didn’t really understand why he loved her so. She seems like a very average person, and the fact that he wanted to tie her up “and put his hand on her knee and just [hold] it there all night long” was very unsettling to me (29). What impresses me about Jimmy Cross is that he “did not want the responsibility of leading these men,” but he led them anyway (167). After I read that he didn’t want to lead them, I wondered how he had risen to his rank unwillingly and I realized that he is one of the only characters in the novel who truly cares about his men. Cross takes the responsibility to explain Kiowa’s death to the Native American’s father “carefully, not covering up his own guilt” (169). This is what makes Jimmy Cross worthy to lead.
Why doesn’t O’Brien use quotation marks for 27 pages? “There’s a moral here, said Mitchell Sanders” (21). There are no quotation marks where there should be.
The checkers O’Brien describes provided a lot of insight into how frustrating the war must have been. O’Brien clearly shows what he wanted in contrast with what the war in Vietnam actually was; “there was a winner and a loser. There were rules” in checkers, but not in his war (32). When I read about O’Brien almost running away I could relate with him the most. The author takes my exact sentiments of war when he states, “there should be a law…if you support a war…that’s fine, but you have to be willing to put your own precious fluids on the line” (42). This is an almost an exact quote that my mother gave when it seemed there might be a draft for the war in Iraq the year my brother turned eighteen.
O’Brien seems to stress the totally opposite aspects of war. At one point he will state “war is hell…and love. War is nasty; war is fun….War makes you a man; war makes you dead” (80). I had a lot of trouble comprehending this fully. I understand that the trips and adventures could be fun, but when the soldiers “can’t wait to get back into action” I don’t understand it (35). The soldiers have to kill people, and it changes them. The soldiers have to watch their best friends blow up, the soldiers have to peel people out of trees. This upsets them so much that they torture animals and even then “there wasn’t a great deal of pity for the baby water buffalo” (79). O’Brien even shows this with his story of Mary Anne Bell. Mary Anne comes to Vietnam innocent and unknowing and turns into a person who wears “a necklace of human tongues” (110). This worst part about Mary Anne though was that she then tries to convince her ex-lover that “‘it’s not bad’” that she’s become something new, something without feeling (111). I felt like O’Brien sends very mixed messages throughout the novel, sometimes “even though you’re pinned down by a war you never felt more at peace” (36). And sometimes “you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (69). All over the novel O’Brien continually compares the war to opposites: “‘it’s like trying to tell someone what chocolate tastes like’…‘or shit’” (113). I understand the message the author is trying to convey by doing this, but I can’t relate to it at all.
One of the main themes of the novel is story telling. And, in essence, the definition of truth. Throughout the novel O’Brien stresses that stories enhance truth to make it more real for the listener.
Blame is also an interesting theme from the novel. O’Brien seems to blame his town for him going to war. For putting pressure on him to do many things he didn’t think were right, “I held them responsible. By God yes I did” (45). The author understands that blame can go to anyone: “the munitions makers or Karl Marx or a trick of fate or an old man in Omaha that forgot to vote” (177). But in the end, it comes own to personal guilt as well.
Henry Dobbins became my favorite character when he carried Azar over to a well and told him to “‘dance right’” (136).
Norman Bowker’s story was very sad to me. Why did tasting the lake water make him feel better?
It was very powerful how O’Brien made up details that he could relate to for the boy who died. I was glad to finally see a character see a Vietnamese person as actually human instead of just a “dink”. What made it more powerful too, was that the author does not actually describe how he felt at the moment, he merely describes it all so that we may feel the disgust, partially by repetition, and partially by strong writing. What scared me is that he “did not see him as the enemy; [he] did not ponder morality or politics or military duty” (132). I consider such contemplations necessary for almost any decision, and it scares me when people don’t think about such things when a person life is on the line.
When telling the story of Mary Anne, O’Brien stresses the impressionability of the couple: Mary Anne and Mark Fossie. Is the reason we draft young people to wars because they’re impressionable? The best fighters can’t be under the age of twenty and yet “the average age of the platoon…was nineteen or twenty” (37).
"The Yellow Wallpaper"--Just a Question
While I was reading the story I continually noticed that the narrator was very careful to always talk about how much John loves her. As seen in many of the quotes of the previous post. I was going to ask about it in discussion but we ran out of time. Does the narrator constantly talk about John's love so the reader doesn't lay the blame on him, or does she do so to try to convince herself that she is living a normal life with the American dream and only her mind is holding her back? If John had truly loved her, would he have been more apt to listen to her? I wonder if perhaps the narrator only pretended that John treated her so only because she wanted to seem like a lovable person. The slept in separate beds, yet somehow he was there when she woke up at night.
"It is so hard to talk to John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so" (23). Why would it be hard to talk to someone because they are wise? Such quotes lead me to believe that the narrator is only pretending that her marriage is better than it is. But why would she hold up the facade well into her insanity?
Any feedback her would be helpful.
"It is so hard to talk to John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so" (23). Why would it be hard to talk to someone because they are wise? Such quotes lead me to believe that the narrator is only pretending that her marriage is better than it is. But why would she hold up the facade well into her insanity?
Any feedback her would be helpful.
"The Yellow Wallpaper"--Close Analysis: John (edited)
The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” goes insane in spite of the fact that she has a caring husband to take care of her. Throughout the novel John tries everything in his power to make his ill wife better; “he is very careful and loving, and hardly lets [the narrator] stir without special direction” (12). Although not lettering her stir actually worsened her mental state, John was acting under the direction of some of the finest doctors of the time. He cannot be blamed for his wife’s mental illness solely because he couldn’t cure it. Before much deterioration of her mental state the narrator notes that “John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess that it always makes me feel bad” (10). This statement proves that John did have some idea what was making his wife feel so terrible, and thus it provides proof that John must have been more intuitive to his wife’s needs than expected. Some argue that John is patronizing and unloving to his wife, but as her mental state deteriorates he has no choice but to simplify his statements so that she may understand. Even on the verge of her insanity the narrator notes that John is “so wise, and…he loves me so” (23). Later in the book the narrator attempts to convince the reader that John is attempting to steal her secrets and states that she fears him, but her only support for this is that she has “caught him several times looking at the paper” (27)! John’s failed attempts to heal his wife don’t make him less of a husband. He was obviously deeply unsettled by his wife’s deterioration and did everything in his power to slow her sickness.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
"The Yellow Wallpaper"--Close Analysis: John
The narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper has gone insane in spite of the fact that she has a kind and loving husband to take care of her. Throughout the novel John tries everything in his power to solve his wife’s mental problems. Before much deterioration of her mental state she noted that “John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess that it always makes me feel bad” (10). This is still while the narrator is relatively lucid and is thus one of the statements the reader can trust the most. Although John was not entirely aware of what troubled his wife, he tried everything in his power as a doctor to make her well: “[John] is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction” (12). Such a husband who dotes upon his wife and deals with all of her odd behaviors cannot be blamed if she acts oddly. Some might say that he was unloving and patronizing to his wife but in her deteriorating mental state there was nothing else he could do. It is impossible to lay blame on the poor man’s shoulders with the basis for such blame being the narration of his wife. Even of the verge of her insanity she notes that “he is so wise, and…he loves me so” (23). Later in the book the narrator says that John is holding her back and attempting to steal her secrets, but this is after she has a very weak mental state and she has not support for this except that she has “caught him several times looking at the paper!” (27).
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
"The Yellow Wallpaper"--Reader Response
Overall The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an interesting insight into the mind of a mentally unstable woman presumably of the past. I found it difficult to pinpoint a setting for the novel but from my best estimation is happened in the sixties. I am assuming this because the book was copyrighted in 1973 and John, the narrator's husband, treats his wife in a very old fashioned manner.
The narrator is obviously in an unhappy marriage. John is described as kindly, but he is extraordinarily patronizing to his unhealthy wife. Such a husband who won't let his wife write obviously has some control issues which are not explicitly stated in the book. I felt as if the narrator was often trying to convince herself that John was a great husband when he actually wasn't. For example, the narrator writes "I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal--having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition" (10). This shows that John is restraining his wife in a manner which she is not happy with and in silly ways which do not help her. But the quote also shows some details which puzzled me. Why does she say she "did" write? Obviously she still writes and she has remarked this earlier by saying the paper will hold her secrets because it is dead.
Another question occurred to me when I read "John is a physician, and perhaps...that is one reason I do not get well faster" (9-10). While reading I wondered if this meant that she did not get well because her husband's constant flow of remedies did not work, or perhaps she did not get well because he gave her attention when she was ill that she would not have otherwise received. Alternatively, it has also occurred to me that she could be mentally ill just to spite the man she has built up resentment for. "He knows there is no reason to suffer and that satisfies him...It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way" (14)! She never explains what duty she cannot fulfill, but as I read on I find that it is a sense of purposefulness. A mother and wife who seems to only receive disdain and second-hand care from her husband and can't even bear to be with her child obviously has some issues that are not explained easily on paper.
The famous wallpaper after which the book is titled makes its first appears on early on. It is not mentioned thereafter for some time, but as the novel progresses the wallpaper is mentioned more and more frequently. Later the narrator declares she sees a woman in the paper and later reveals that the woman is behind bars at night. Even later the narrator also declares "The fact is I'm getting a little afraid of John" (26). She then goes on to talk about Jennie being queer as well. A feeling of paranoia crept over me as I read deeper into these pages. The woman behind the bars in the wall paper is most certainly the narrator herself. The narrator also feels that the pattern in the paper could be broken to release the woman, but the most perplexing part of this to me was that she wouldn't allow anyone else to help her: "But I knew she [Jennie] was studying that pattern, and I am determined -- that nobody shall find it but myself" (27)! I wonder if the narrator feels that only she can save herself from her own insanity, or that she just doesn't want to save herself.
"I think that woman gets out in the daytime! And I'll tell you why--privately--I've seen her" (30)! This part confused me. The storyteller had mentioned before that she goes outside during the day, but if the woman behind the bars can be out "creeping" during the day, why is she imprisoned at night?
"I have found out another funny thing, but I shan't tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much" (page 31). I found this quote very intriguing because the beginning of the novel the wife was able to tell her secrets to the paper on which she writes, but that paper has turned into a living being that she can no longer trust. This not only enhances the feeling of paranoia but also distances the reader from the narrator and gives the foreboding feeling that inexplicable things are about to happen.
At the end of the story the narrator has combined herself with the woman in the paper and states "'I've got it out at last'...'in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper so you can't put me back'" (36). The insanity has reached it peak and the poor woman feels as though she has pushed off her shackles but still can't tear herself away from the wall. I translated this to partially mean that she had found safety and support behind the bars in the paper she had imagined. Presumably safety from the man she neither trusted nor loved. She says the woman is only in bars at night and that seems to be the only time John is around. During the day she is free to creep around but is never truly happy because of her daunting marriage. I'm curious where the discussion of this book will go.
The narrator is obviously in an unhappy marriage. John is described as kindly, but he is extraordinarily patronizing to his unhealthy wife. Such a husband who won't let his wife write obviously has some control issues which are not explicitly stated in the book. I felt as if the narrator was often trying to convince herself that John was a great husband when he actually wasn't. For example, the narrator writes "I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal--having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition" (10). This shows that John is restraining his wife in a manner which she is not happy with and in silly ways which do not help her. But the quote also shows some details which puzzled me. Why does she say she "did" write? Obviously she still writes and she has remarked this earlier by saying the paper will hold her secrets because it is dead.
Another question occurred to me when I read "John is a physician, and perhaps...that is one reason I do not get well faster" (9-10). While reading I wondered if this meant that she did not get well because her husband's constant flow of remedies did not work, or perhaps she did not get well because he gave her attention when she was ill that she would not have otherwise received. Alternatively, it has also occurred to me that she could be mentally ill just to spite the man she has built up resentment for. "He knows there is no reason to suffer and that satisfies him...It does weigh on me so not to do my duty in any way" (14)! She never explains what duty she cannot fulfill, but as I read on I find that it is a sense of purposefulness. A mother and wife who seems to only receive disdain and second-hand care from her husband and can't even bear to be with her child obviously has some issues that are not explained easily on paper.
The famous wallpaper after which the book is titled makes its first appears on early on. It is not mentioned thereafter for some time, but as the novel progresses the wallpaper is mentioned more and more frequently. Later the narrator declares she sees a woman in the paper and later reveals that the woman is behind bars at night. Even later the narrator also declares "The fact is I'm getting a little afraid of John" (26). She then goes on to talk about Jennie being queer as well. A feeling of paranoia crept over me as I read deeper into these pages. The woman behind the bars in the wall paper is most certainly the narrator herself. The narrator also feels that the pattern in the paper could be broken to release the woman, but the most perplexing part of this to me was that she wouldn't allow anyone else to help her: "But I knew she [Jennie] was studying that pattern, and I am determined -- that nobody shall find it but myself" (27)! I wonder if the narrator feels that only she can save herself from her own insanity, or that she just doesn't want to save herself.
"I think that woman gets out in the daytime! And I'll tell you why--privately--I've seen her" (30)! This part confused me. The storyteller had mentioned before that she goes outside during the day, but if the woman behind the bars can be out "creeping" during the day, why is she imprisoned at night?
"I have found out another funny thing, but I shan't tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much" (page 31). I found this quote very intriguing because the beginning of the novel the wife was able to tell her secrets to the paper on which she writes, but that paper has turned into a living being that she can no longer trust. This not only enhances the feeling of paranoia but also distances the reader from the narrator and gives the foreboding feeling that inexplicable things are about to happen.
At the end of the story the narrator has combined herself with the woman in the paper and states "'I've got it out at last'...'in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper so you can't put me back'" (36). The insanity has reached it peak and the poor woman feels as though she has pushed off her shackles but still can't tear herself away from the wall. I translated this to partially mean that she had found safety and support behind the bars in the paper she had imagined. Presumably safety from the man she neither trusted nor loved. She says the woman is only in bars at night and that seems to be the only time John is around. During the day she is free to creep around but is never truly happy because of her daunting marriage. I'm curious where the discussion of this book will go.
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