Week 8- Closed Topic

Tim O’Brien states in his book The Things They Carried “Above all, a true war story is never about war” (85). We hear of the gruesome effects of war, but never about the brutality of the war itself. Tim O’Brien however introduces the reader into a world of war, full of fighting and brutal battles yet not one of these battles is fought against the enemy, but in fact against themselves personally. We learn of the trials and tribulations the soldiers had to go through and the personal battles that occur to these soldiers due to the effects of the war. Yet, I do agree that the brutality of the war has a large affect on the soldiers emotional lives, I feel there is another word that sums up Vietnam literature: Love. The Things They Carried is about a troop full of young men who are in love, in love with religion, girls, writing, safety but most of all each other. It has come to my surprise that a soldier in Vietnam literature who is full of blood and danger is on the inside full of love. War stories and in specific Vietnam literature never describes the gun battles or the horrific killings that occur, but the personal pain the soldiers have to go through in order to survive. We read of Jimmy in The Things They Carried, about a young man who continuously daydreamed about his love and often forgot about the war and his troops. We learned of Dave Jensen who was unable to kill his friend Lee Strunk while he was in a dying state because of his love for Strunk. We learned of Kiowa and his love for religion and kindness. In my eyes, the underlying component of Vietnam literature is love. Love for girlfriends, religion, belongings, each other and the will to get home. Kurt Vonnegut describes the concept of war beautifully “There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre”. I could not agree with him anymore, an author is able to glorify and make war interesting but to describe war as intelligent is impossible. How would you describe killing innocent people as intelligent? How would you describe sending soldiers into battle as intelligent? Many leaders and in fact soldiers will contradict this point and in fact say that war is intelligent, it is intelligent as it controls corrupt government, takes out communist leaders and gives there country stature and power. War is a continuous battle with no ending. A country may be victorious but the pain and nightmares that the soldiers posses will last forever.

Week 8 open topic

I honestly don't know what to think about this story anymore. After reading "How to Tell a True War Story", I was analyzing every story after it thinking about what parts of the story were true and which parts weren't. I got to the chapter called "Good Form", and O'Brien comes out and says that he pretty much made up every story. He says, "It's time to be blunt. I'm forty-three years old, true, and I'm a writer now, and a long time ago I walked through Quang Nga Province as a foot soldier. Almost everything else is invented" (179). He goes on to say that he wants us to feel what he was feeling and he wants us to "know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth" (179). I started to believe that everything in this book was the truth; after all, it was about his life, so I thought. After reading this story, though, I had to rethink these stories. I had to remind myself that this is an Intro to FICTION class, not non-fiction. Though I want to believe that these stories are real, I have to remember that this is not an autobiography. O'Brien did a good job at making me feel like he felt in his stories. I felt as if I was right there next to him in this war. That was his biggest mission of this book, and for me he succeeded. O'Brien states, "What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again" (180). In recreating these stories, O'Brien was able to relive Vietnam the way that he never really did. He never saw that dead man that he says he killed. He's "left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief" (180) after the war. In his stories, he can make himself brave and a good soldier as opposed to the man who was afraid to look, like he really was. In no way am I saying that O'Brien was a coward, he was just a young twenty something year old who didn't want to look at the dead. While everyone else shook hand with the dead, O'Brien didn't. "I didn't go near the body. I didn't even look at it except by accident. For the rest of the day there was that sickness inside me, but it wasn't the old man's corpse so much, it was that awesome act of greeting the dead" (226). O'Brien was uncomfortable with being friendly to the dead; he was new to the war and he had no sense of humor for these kinds of things. O'Brien did learn how to use words to make things not so bad, though. "It's easier to cope with a kicked bucket than a corpse; if it isn't human it doesn't matter much if it's dead. And so a VC nurse, fried by napalm, was a crispy critter. A Vietnamese baby, which lay nearby, was a roasted peanut. 'Just a crunchie munchie,' Rat Kiley said" (238-239). O'Brien made up stories to keep the dead alive. "The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spritis in the head. There is an allusion of aliveness" (230). I still don't know how much of this book is true. I would like to think that there is some sort of truth in it all, but I guess the only one who will ever know is O'Brien, and of course his fellow soldiers. As for me, I feel like an idiot after reading these stories thinking they were all true.

Week 8 Topic (Open)

Wow. That was my response to the “Hearts and Minds” Documentary we watched in class. I always knew that war was gruesome, it was about killing and bombing…but I never really thought about the true reality of war. The more we read, see, and learn about war in class, the more I start absolutely hating it. I’m sorry if I offend anybody, but anybody who is pro-war…is a really sick person. As I mentioned in a previous blog, what is the difference between a criminal killing someone, and a soldier killing someone in war? Each have their own reasons for doing it, it still doesn’t make it right or good.
This documentary was one of the most shocking films, if not the most shocking, that I have every seen. It is unbelievable what goes on in war. There is one scene from the documentary that I can’t seem to get out of my head. It wasn’t any of the horrible scenes where Vietnamese were being beaten, killed, or burnt, but instead it was one specific part where the camera is filming soldiers shooting at everything in their way. The perspective of the camera makes the viewer feel like if one where right there…at least that was how it made me feel. Like if it was only a video game. I couldn’t seem to understand, and I don’t think I ever will, how soldiers can just shoot everything in their way, no mercy.
I can’t even imagine how someone who was in war can live afterwards with all of those war memories inside. I don’t really know where I was going here with this… but after seeing what the Vietnam War was like in the documentary, if Tim O’Brien is anti-war, it must have been really tough writing his book The Things They Carried, and having to re-live everything all over again. Maybe he didn’t write this book divided in stories on purpose, maybe that is the only way he could have write it. Maybe he just couldn’t bear remembering everything all at once and could only think of short moments at once.

Week 8 Assigned Topic

In the article we read, the author states, "These first-person narratives usually tell anti-heroic stories which assert the moral ambiguity of...involvement...and deflate notions of patriotism or glory sometimes associated with war". I think this best tells the definition of a true war story. A true war story isn't going to talk about the patriotism and glory of the war; it's going to talk about the day-to-day activities of the soldiers and most of the time how unsure they are about the war and the things happening in the war. This goes along with Tim O'Brien's definition when he says, "A true war story is never about war. It's about sunlight. It's about the special way that dawn spreads out on a river...It's about love and memory. It's about sorrow. It's about sisters who never write back and people who never listen" (85). Though war stories talk about war, it is not really about war. There are other aspects to the story other than the war itself. O'Brien also says that "a true war 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" (68). A true war story isn't going to make war acceptable or make it unacceptable; a true war story is only going to tell the facts (from the narrator's perspective) without trying to sway the reader one way or the other. "If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie" (68-69). A true war story has no real point except to understand the narrator's feelings and perspectives of the war.

In the story "Ambush", O'Brien is talking about the man that he threw a grenade at which blew him up. Throughout the whole story, there is no moral to the story; O'Brien doesn't tell the reader whether it was justified or not to kill this man, only that he did, and he can't do anything about it. He tends to think about this boy a lot, but knows that there is nothing he can do about the past. At that time, something about him made O'Brien decide to throw the grenade. No where in the story does O'Brien justify his killing. This story was just another story that came into O'Brien's head. There was no moral and it wasn't about the actual war; it was about this kid and the whole situation of his death.

Week 8 Assigned Topic

According to O’Brien, a true war story: is never moral, is always uncomfortable, can never be believed, but makes the stomach believe (68-78). Above all, a true war story is never about war (85). All the stories told by O’Brien are glimpses into the daily life of a soldier in Vietnam while in-country and upon returning home, yet none are about actual battles within the war. The combination of the monotonous and the unexpected occurrences of Vietnam are responsible for the emotional scar these men bare to this day, therefore, when they tell their stories, they strive towards the goal of creating that experience on paper. The purpose of Vietnam literature is to elicit the same emotions and experiences the soldiers had in the mind of the reader. In order to be true to the sentiments of the soldiers, the story of Vietnam must be told in just the manner described by O’Brien. What became the mundane in the context of the war, such as ambushes in the jungle that resulted in gruesome deaths, must presented in such a commonplace manner in order to “make the stomach [of the reader] believe” that such horrific images are possible. To see a man disintegrate into tiny pieces with the help of a grenade is an unsettling spectacle no matter the circumstances, but these men were forced to experience this sight on a regular basis. Many have utilized the art of story-telling to cope with these images in attempts to find some meaning within the Vietnam War. O’Brien became famous for writing his fictitious novels a few years after the end of the war. One of the most vibrant images O’Brien creates is the “star-shaped hole” in ‘The Man I Killed’ (124). We are later told that the story is fictitious, but O’Brien continues to return to this image through several other stories. The guilt he feels as he stands in disbelief of his attack on this civilian soldier is representative of most Vietnam literature. I imagine it is a storey as uncomfortable to tell as it is to hear. The death of this soldier carries no particular meaning or moral; it is simply an example of the killing habit formed by the war. It is difficult to believe, yet through O’Brien’s detailed description of the deformed body, your stomach senses that this was entirely possible in the context of the war.

Week 8 Open Topic

Tim O’Brien spends a great deal of time rehashing the details of Kiowa’s death in the latrine. This was an event impacted many of the soldiers’ lives including Norman Bowker and Mitchell Sanders. Kiowa is depicted as a great man, a devout Christian, and loyal comrade, yet he did not die bravely in battle, but was swallowed by the soil of Vietnam in his sleep. This is another example of the new found treacheries of the Vietnam War, dangerous situations never before seen in previous wars. The countryside is so unknown, that the US troops seem to fighting the land and terrain as much as they are fighting the enemy. I can only imagine how difficult it must be on the soldiers physically and emotionally to never get a break from the war; the constant awareness of their surroundings would be exhausting. The days must have run together and seemed to never end. In “Field Trip”, O’Brien, during his return trip to Vietnam with his daughter, says, “Twenty years. A lot like yesterday, a lot like never. In a way, maybe, I’d gone under with Kiowa, and now after two decades I’d finally worked my way out” (187). Perhaps, O’Brien feels as if his soul died of mental exhaustion the night that Kiowa drowned in the sewage. The mind can only withstand so much distress, when it will finally shut off, shield itself from the unhealthy situation. Finally, upon a second visit to the site where his soul was lost, he is able to gain perspective on his involvement in the war. O’Brien does not honor us with a detailed description of his perspective, but I am inclined to believe that his swim in the muck is symbolic of a baptism. With his rebirth, he is now able to see the field for what it is, a small latrine used by the native Vietnamese, instead of the over-powering terrain that swallowed his friend and sense of self twenty years ago.

Week 7 Topic (Open)

One of the many stories from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried that really made me think, was “How to tell a true war story”. This story is exactly about how it is named, it is about telling a true war story. He basically describes what a true war story is, he says how it is now moral, nor does it have an ending, or that a true war story has to make your stomach believe. But actually it wasn’t the whole story that made me wonder, it was just the one quote that says “And in the end, of course, a true war story is never about war” (85). How can a WAR story, not be about war at all? Its ironic…but true. All of these stories are never about war, they are all about feelings, moments, and anecdotes that someone lived in war. they are not about the good guys and the bad guys, and the reasons about war, or about the political leaders. They all are about what a soldier went through during war; they all tell a soldier's everyday life in war. I had never though about it at all, but it is true. You can see it in the entire book, in all of Tim O’Brien’s stories, they are all small recollections of moments that Tim lived, and they are not about war at all.