Have At You!

Yo,

Overall, I found The Things They Carried to be a mighty pleasurable book. I especially enjoyed the poetic ending of tying in the author's storytelling to a girl he loved. A nine-year-old girl whose bones he wanted to jump. Either way, they were in love, so it's okay. That's got to be pleasant for the wife.

I also really enjoyed the smooth, lucid writing which seemed to keep things flowing at a nice pace. If you'd like to read the antithesis, I suggest TSAR.

In both books, however, I feel they both had a motif about religion. In TTTC, religion was present in Kiowa, described as a hardcore, devout Baptist, in the lack of religion in some of the soldiers, the monks that took care of the platoon, and the perceived heathenism of the Vietcong and the wild Vietnamese countryside. I also feel that storytelling took on the role of religion for O'Brien. This book was a way for him to reflect on his life views, and because he says (or rather his daughter says) he's always writing war stories, he is continually reflecting on his life, life in general, and what to do about it. He just needs a storytelling afterlife and he'd be set!

Also the very setup of TTTC conveys the meaning of the lit. term unity perfectly. The series of reflective and anecdotal stories could stand alone, but they are meant to be parts of a whole to convey the truth in storytelling, that is, not the historical facts, but the truth in feeling the Vietnam war in your gut.

Christian out.

Rock On, Crouton!

"But this too is true: stories can save us. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now...." pg. 213

This book was published in 1990. He is now 63 and a writer.

"'How's the war today?' somebody would ask, and Ted Lavender would give a little smile to the sky and say, 'Mellow - a nice smooth war today.' And then in April he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe." pg. 218

Oh, how these authors love to come full circle with their story. Tim O'Brien did it with much more class and overall entertainability. I noted earlier in my blog how TSAR comes full circle with Jake and Brett in a cab and I said nothing much had really changed. Costello, being the teacher that he is, wanted me to probe a little deeper and prompted me with a "You didn't notice anything different?" Well, I went back and looked some more and I can honestly say I didn't notice a difference from that first cab ride to the final cab ride. That's not to say there isn't a difference, I'm just not inclined to find it.

Also, every time Ted Lavender spoke, I imagined the Volkswagen van in Cars.

Oh look! There's Ted Lavender now!

It's all right, my sweet chinchilla.

"To an extent, though, everybody was feeling it. The long night marches turned their minds upside down; all the rhythms were wrong. Always a lost sensation." pg. 210

This is another one of those times, by sheer word choice, that I was reminded of something I learned outside of this book. It was mostly the phrase "all the rhythms were wrong." Because the troops were marching at night, their circadian rhythm was outta whack. Circadian rhythm, according to Wikipedia (because who needs a trustworthy source?), is a roughly 24-hour cycle in the biochemical, physiological, or behavioural processes of living entities, including plants, animals, fungi and cyanobacteria. The term "circadian" comes from the Latin circa, "around", and diem or dies, "day", meaning literally "approximately one day". 


What is basically meant by that is that everybody actually has a natural rhythmic cycle during the day where the body does different things according to the time. For example, at night you get tired. This is all due to your circadian rhythm. When this rhythm is interrupted, though, it can cause quite a bit of dysfunctionality. Combined with the stress of war in an uncomfortable, unknown environment, you can kiss Rat Kiley goodbye. If you'd like.

It's your bodily functions in a nutshell!

Captain Ahab's Blubber Nuggets. Mmm. They're Chewy!

"I was shot twice." pg. 180

No you weren't. You're making this up.

"We sat for a while longer, then I started to get up, except I was still feeling the wobbles in my head. Jorgenson reached out and steadied me.
'We're even now?' he said.
'Pretty much.' pg. 207

Sound familiar, anybody? But of course! It's the more elaborate version of the "I Broke My Own Nose and Now We're Friends!" story. I was kind of bummed that Rat Kiley had a meltdown and had to leave, because he is way up there on my favorite characters in TTTC list...that is, if I had one. Initially, I was angry at Jorgenson, like Tim, for mistreating him. However, when Tim is told when he rejoins the regiment that Jorgenson knows he messed up, has improved, and then attempts to make an apology but Tim refuses and wants revenge is when I get annoyed at his douche-ness. I think as readers we hold the author to a higher standard, even when he becomes a character in a book, and especially after he gives sagely wisdom in his war stories. In this though, he becomes an antihero. Maybe he wanted to be the stereotypical bad guy obsessed with revenge for a while.

That's right. Tim O'Brien is Jafar.

When is it NOT the most wonderful time of the year?

"Kathleen had just turned ten, and this trip was a kind of birthday present, showing her the world, offering a small piece of her father's history." pg. 174

Dear God, how much money do you have lying around as a writer that you can take your daughter to Vietnam for her birthday?

"'Well,' I finally managed. 'There it is.'" pg. 178

This could be an apostrophe...I think. The doubt comes because when he finally speaks he isn't addressing anybody. However, earlier O'Brien is thinking of some proper words to say for his buddy and he can only say "Well, there it is." I'm sure it's a difficult task because he made it sound like he and Kiowa were sthuper cuhluhose frayands, but it's not conducive for easy analyzation by a certain high schooler. I think I'll settle for an attempt at an apostrophe, but I won't say I'm satisfied. An apostrophe in this situation, though, would improve the tear-jerking factor.

Kiowa's the monkey and Tim's the Banana. His spoon is too big.

Underwater Basket-Weaving is so Vanilla

"For a long while Jimmy Cross lay floating. In the clouds to the east there was the sound of a helicopter, but he did not take notice. With his eyes still closed, bobbing in the field, he let himself slip away. He was back home in New Jersey. A golden afternoon on the golf course, the fairways lush and green, and he was teeing it up on the first hole. It was a world without responsibility...." pg. 170

Granted, just about every chapter in this book is an anecdote, but I thought this chapter was particularly anecdote-y. It especially meets the requirements of showing the character of an individual, in this case two. I feel it redeems Norman Bowker from the sort of defamation O'Brien gives him, which is partly his fault and partly "made up to show the truth." However, this chapter was written to give the actual details of what happened in the grimy field (I'm really starting to run out of euphemisms here). Okay, so Norman is redeemed, but what I didn't expect was the inner workings of Jimmy Cross, the platoon's leader, to reveal how very much he is unlike a leader. I would probably act the same way as him, but how do you get higher up in the army and be so non-committal? 'Tis baffling, indeed.

Esh ish sho goot!

"I had been forced to omit the shit field and the rain and the death of Kiowa, replacing this material with events that better fit the book's narrative. As a consequence I'd lost the natural counterpoint between the lake and the field." pg. 153

=/ Well, one good thing about "Notes" is that it's mighty analytical. But once again, O'Brien kind of takes the wind out of my sails by acknowledging the same thing I just said. It's really difficult to blog about this book chapter by chapter. Some chapters are just a page or two, leaving me wondering what to do with them. Others are long and convoluted, with O'Brien's commentary. It's one thing to reflect on something, but to reflect on reflections is kind of...nyyeah. That's probably why Abby got confused on my previous posts about the made up dead guy. I'll explain, I promise! Just give me a few. I suppose a good thing about TSAR is that each chapter, being more structured than TTTC, made it a clear-cut on how to blog about it. It even had twenty chapters.

Illustrative, eh?

Goose. Geese. Moose... Meese?

Oh. Ohoho. You thought? You thought I wasn't going to talk about the actual content of "Speaking of Courage"? My dear reader, how silly you are. Read on, read on, is all I have to say.

You will be pleased to know that the setting shifts from what has mostly taken place in Vietnam and O'Brien's consciousness to Iowa. Naturally there are flashbacks to Vietnam, but I enjoyed the change. I especially liked the poignancy and the close-to-homeness of this chapter.

What makes me feel special though, is that I do believe the author is implying a metaphor between the waste field and the lake in the town. The lake is stagnant, full of unwanted algae, empty of good fish, and overall sometimes not so pleasing to be around. Just as the lake is the "center" of the story in Iowa, so is the field of muck the center of the flashbacks to Vietnam.

Soy Muy Que Fabulosa

"The lake lay flat and silvery against the sun. Along the road the houses were all low-slung and split-level and modern, with big porches and picture windows facing the water. The lawns were spacious. On the lake side of the road, where real estate was most valuable, the houses were handsome and set out into the lake, and boats moored and covered with canvas, and neat gardens, and sometimes even gardeners, and stone patios with barbecue spits and grills, and wooden shingles saying who lived where." pg. 131

My first thought after reading the entire description of the town in "Speaking of Courage" was "O'Brien is so much better at imagery than Hemingway." And I think Hemingway hangs his hat on being descriptive and such. It really is easier though to blog about a book I didn't enjoy than a book I did. I could go on for quite some time about how TSAR should have never have been written to at the very least spare a few seniors some trouble over the summer. It is much more difficult to praise, I've found. There are only so many ways to say "I really liked this" or "I thought he did this well" without sounding redundant. Or at least to me they sound redundant. Either way, there's a connection between the two books we read. Give me points.

It wouldn't be my blog without Abby Koop commenting on it.

"Even now I haven't finished sorting it out. Sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don't. In the ordinary hours of life I try not to dwell on it, but now and then, when I'm reading a newspaper or just sitting alone in a room, I'll look up and see the young man step out of the morning fog. I'll watch him walk around me, his shoulders slightly stooped, his head cocked to the side, and he'll pass withing a few yards of me and suddenly smile at some secret thought and then continue up the trail to where it bends back into the fog." pg. 128.

I think it was a combination of the previous quote and this one from "Ambush" that kind of made me have a little freak-out moment. I guess Vietnam just does that to people. 0.o  At first it struck me as, "aww, it's so poetic." He's such a troubled man being haunted by the ghosts of his past. Then not too long after that I had my little episode.

But really, it wouldn't be my blog if I didn't have a comment from Abby (and sometimes the occasional admirer) plus a "check" from Costello on just about every entry. Let it be known though, Abby, because I know you'll be the first to read this, I quite enjoy your comments so keep 'em coming.

Hey check us out! I'm pretty sure I've officially mortified Abby into a state of shock.

Oh, Stop It! I'm Bad!

"He had been born, maybe, in 1946, in the village of My Khe near the central coastline of the Quang Ngai Province, where his parents farmed, and where his family had lived for several centuries, and where, during the time of the French, his father and two uncles and many neighbors had joined in the struggle for independence. He was not a Communist.... He hoped in his heart that he would never be tested. He hoped the Americans would go away. Soon, he hoped. He kept hoping and hoping, always, even when he was asleep." pg. 119

What you've just experienced dear reader is a flashback! Yay! It's in the what I feel will be a controversial chapter of "The Man I Killed." More on the controversy later. For now, the flashback serves a major purpose of really humanizing the man he killed. With vivid imagery and deep emotions, the man is no longer an enemy VC, but someone in which to sympathize, even to connect. This only brings out more raw feelings about war and truth and that stuff. The controversy for me started though with the point of view of the flashback. Not that it was incorrect, because how could the dead guy make an appointment to tell O'Brien about his life before the war, but rather, what bothered me was how much authority with which it was told. How could O'Brien possibly know this about a man he just killed, brutally by the description, only to retell it in his successful book like they were the best of friends? Forgetting the "A work of fiction" on the title page, I, feeling far superior, decided everything he just told me was false and had no merit. Then, for fun, I flipped through the book a little just to apply my knew superior knowledge to further tales. The first page I found was the opening page of "Good Form." Read it and then maybe you'll know how I felt.

Fiddlesticks. And Yo-yo Ma.

Also in "Stockings," superstition in Vietnam was made a way of life.

"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." pg. 112

This made me reflect on how people, whether it be God or an item like pantyhose, turn to a higher power, in fact need a higher power, in times of great trouble. In Vietnam, not known for it's Christian roots, it's no surprise that the soldiers turned to superstitious things like lucky stockings. Also, reading this into the early morning hours is not suggested because the whole chapter I was reminded of the Scooby-Doo movie where he and the gang solve a mystery at a haunted theme-park where, get this, the monsters were real! I think voodoo and stuff were in it, which mirrors some of the superstitious things of Vietnam.

In the next chapter, "Church," I was actually quite surprised at some of the soldier's behavior. As I said, Vietnam ain't so Christian, so when Kiowa, described as a devout Baptist respects the monks' "church," I was pleasantly amused. With all the disrespect toward the Vietnamese, I was sure some violence would follow, however I feel Mr. American sums it up nicely with

"'You're right,' he said. 'All you can do is be nice. Treat them decent, you know?'" pg. 117

Here's the trailer for that movie. Let me tell you, it screams Nam.

Gandalf, Merlin, Oz....psh! It's all about Harry Potter.

"In many ways [Henry Dobbins] was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor. Like his country, too, Dobbins was drawn toward sentimentality." pg. 111

Hey folks we got ourselves a simile! But, why, why would he use a simile?! Nobody knows but the author, but I'll tell you anyway. First, I feel similes are one of the most simple kinds comparisons. Cats are like dogs. The Theory of Relativity is like toenails. I am as witty as the sunshine. Henry Dobbins is like America. Kids stuff, eh? O'Brien feels some of America's more noted qualities (big and strong, simple, slow, sentimental) are embodied simply and directly in this man and by using a simplistic literary device, the images and connections are thus enhanced.

Losing the Vietnam War is as American as apple pie!

I'm not your robot. I'm just me.

So now after the DEEP chapter about truth and fact and fiction and truth, comes probably my favorite chapter thus far. Since O'Brien has divulged some information about what truth is in a war story, I kind of take that as a little challenge from the author to find the "truth" in this chapter.

Naturally one wonders how any of a story about a girl-next-door flying to Vietnam, becoming a stone hard killer, and prancing off at the end with a necklace of human tongues could possibly occur. O'Brien, though, mentions that in war, the crazy things are more likely to have happened. But that's not what he wants us to be concerned about. O'Brien wants to convey truth, and I believe I found it in this quote from the chapter.

"...They won't understand zip. It's like trying to tell somebody what chocolate tastes like."
"...There it is, you got to taste it, and that's the thing with Mary Anne. She was there. she was up to her eyeballs in it. After the war, man, I promise you, you won't find nobody like her." pg. 108

So, the "truth" is in there somewhere, and I feel O'Brien dedicated the chapter to convey exactly how people change during a war. Sure, we get illustrations of people in his platoon and others mentally (and sometimes physically, but we're not talking about that kind of change) snapping, but to use an innocent-seeming girl from way back home as the main character, then distorting something that we feel wouldn't or shouldn't be disturbed (in this case a young woman's "innocence") into something almost grotesque, or at the very least unusual, drives the author's point home with steroids and a cork bat that war can reach into images of our everyday life and even twist those which we hold sacred.

I dunno, but that's just me.

You are not permitted to touch!

This chapter ("How to Tell a True War Story") was so chocked full of dandy information, I just had to split it into two posts!

Naturally, in a revealing chapter such as this, the author, similar to Mary Poppins, tends to use some literary devices to help the "medicine go down."

"War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead." pg.76

Here is a delightful blend of anaphora and paradox.

"The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can't help but gape at the awful majesty of combat." pg. 77

Paradox. With a shot of oxymoron (awful majesty).

"To generalize about war is like generalizing about peace." pg. 77

And a simile to round things off (however, his sentence isn't balanced). All of these devices appear in a relatively small distance from each other, practically rapid-fire. Taken individually, they are all ways to express the contradictory and inexplicableness (say that ten times fast) of war. However, taken as a whole, each enhances the ambiguity of the "truth" of war.

Dumbledore has a boss Zefron poster in his office.

"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done, If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit if rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue." pg. 65

Then by O'Brien's own standards, he's got quite a few "true" war stories on his hands. This chapter seems to define the reason for this book. As one opens the front cover and turns to the title page, one will find "A work of fiction" just above Tim O'Brien's name. That's not to say nothing in there is true, because he had to have gotten his material from his experience in Vietnam, yet it gives off a sort of "Why am I reading this if all this has is made-up war stories?" Well, O'Brien isn't concerned with the believability of the story, more so the truth. For O'Brien, though, truth in stories is felt inside the person, not in if it actually occurred. Who cares if it happened? It's the truth.

"[Sanders] wanted me to feel the truth, to believe by the raw force of feeling." pg.70

Dix dollars déclare Matthew Blandford vais essayer de traduire cette.

"The stump of his right leg was twitching. There were slivers of bone, and the blood came in quick spurts like water from a pump." pg. 62.

EwwewwewwewwEWWW! Now that that's out of my system, I can honestly say I found the next two chapters muy interesante. What jumped out at me first was the juxtaposition of the titles, "Enemies" and "Friends." Then, hey wouldn't you know, the two guys that grew to be enemies are now friends. War, I feel, can be titanically traumatic, even out of combat as these chapters prove. Though these two men hated each other and even sent one into a kind of hysteria, this trauma and dealing with it together as a team greatly bonds people beyond the protective emotional walls that one erects around oneself.

I'm also constantly wondering if what I'm reading comes from an actual experience of the author, or if it's one of his made-up-so-you-can-feel-what-war-is-like stories. I'm thinking this one was the latter, but I've been wrong befo...wait, that's absurd, I'm never wrong.

Heehee, you see what I did there?

Ay yay yay yay. I am the Frito Bandito!

So the last chapter ends with O'Brien going on about what exactly stories are for. I found it very poetic. His next chapter begins

"This is one story I've never told before." pg. 37

and I was like "Hey! Noice transition mate!" I even wrote it in my book, that's how good it was.

So I'd really like to quote the entire freak-out-on-a-boat thing but that's an entire paragraph that takes up two pages, so none of that, just know what I'm talking about. Instead, we'll settle for this.

"All those eyes on me - the town, the whole universe - and I couldn't risk the embarrassment." pg. 57

This whole chapter, I believe though, illustrates O'Brien's stream of consciousness. With special emphasis on the hallucination in between Canada and the US the stream of consciousness lets the reader into the character's head, which is especially crucial when having an emotional meltdown. The stream of consciousness style helps illuminate why O'Brien acts the way he does, and even let's the reader empathize without even having to experience such an event. I particularly enjoyed this chapter with a juicy confession. Also, the phrase "juicy confession" or "juicy gossip" makes me really thirsty for lemonade in particular.

Thirsty now?

Oh, Canada!

"I remember Norman Bowker and Henry Dobbins playing checkers every evening before dark. It was a ritual for them. They would dig a foxhole and get the board out and play long, silent games as the sky went from pink to purple. The rest of us would sometimes stop by to watch. There was something restful about it, something orderly and reassuring. There were red checkers and black checkers. The playing field was laid out in a strict grid, no tunnels or mountains or jungles. You knew where you stood. You knew the score. The pieces were out on the board, the enemy was visible, you could watch the tactics unfolding into larger strategies. There was a winner and a loser. There were rules." pg. 31

Hey, lookey here kids, it's some juxtaposition! Naturally, in the second chapter, the author would want to make some kind of comparison with which to equate war, something not widely experienced by the random person on the street. But, oh golly gee willickers, by comparing war to checkers he shows us what war is not. Checkers is first something just about everyone can relate to, so it's easy to know where O'Brien is coming from when he describes the game. Yet when implies how checkers is unlike the Vietnam war, it leaves the imagination to put the reader in his shoes rather than limiting himself to a finite analogy.

"The average age in our platoon, I'd guess, was nineteen or twenty..." pg. 35

Up until this point I had assumed most of the guys were around their mid-twenties. It's only more concerning now that I'll be reading about people around my age. I don't appreciate this sentiment.   -.- <--- emoticon!

I lost an electron! Are you sure? I'm positive.

The Things They Carried


Well, right off the bat I'd like to state that this first chapter is more engaging and entertaining than all of The Sun Also Rises (TSAR) combined or in any particular part.

First what struck me is the seeming never-ending list of items this regiment carries. At first I sympathized, saying well, sure that's not so fun, but it's not awful. Pound after pound, though, the items kept piling up. Some were objects that everyone had (C-rations, a weapon) and some where specific to a job or a personal item (a medical kit, a picture), yet all were accounted for in weight. This whole chapter, contrary to TSAR, seemed very fluid. Hemingway, it seems to me, is a details kind of guy. There's nothing wrong with that, but the way O'Brien delivers his prose makes it come off as a much more emotional experience, though granted a war story would probably be more emotionally charged than a gang of malcontents eating their brains out. Isn't that a delicious picture?