Literary Terms for Next Tues. Quiz

hyperbole
irony
metaphor
metonymy
oxymoron
paradox
personification
simile
synedoche
understatement (litote)
asyndeton
polysyndeton
bildungsroman
Also know logos, pathos, ethos.  See links for more information:
sixminutes.dlugan.com/ethos-pathos-logos/

Slaughterhouse Five CDs

Discuss and present CD work throughout the week  Oct.27-Nov. 2

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/video/brief-urgent-message-theme-1164.html

HMWK:  AP Packet #2 multiple choice DUE FRIDAY

Slaughterhouse Five Quotes

 CD Project Due Date:   Extended to Monday, October 28


Looking for quotes for your liner notes?

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1683562-slaughterhouse-five-or-the-children-s-crusade

Some questions to consider:

1. We here at Shmoop think that, factually speaking, Billy's trips to Tralfamadore are at least questionable and possibly outright hallucinations. Does it make a difference to your understanding of the philosophy of Slaughterhouse-Five if you read Billy's experiences on Tralfamadore literally as alien abductions? If Slaughterhouse-Five is a straight-up science-fiction novel, do we get the same lessons on fate and free will?
2. All of the women characters in this book (except Mary O'Hare) are either portrayed as dumb (Lily Rumfoord, Maggie White, and Valencia Pilgrim) or obnoxious (Barbara Pilgrim and Nancy the reporter). Are ladies getting short shrift here? Do the guys come off any better? And what makes Mary O'Hare so special?
3. There's the time travel and then there's the alien abduction. Billy comes unstuck in time in 1944 and is then abducted by aliens in 1967, he says. Why are these two separate events? What does the time travel do for Billy's character that the abduction doesn't?
4. Slaughterhouse-Five blurs the line between truth and fiction with the biographical details in Vonnegut's own life that keep creeping into the fictional parts of the story. A lot of other real people's words also make it into the novel. For example, there are quotes from poet Theodore Roethke (1.20.1) and the Gideon Bible (1.21.1). Why does Vonnegut quote so much? How do these quotes challenge our definition of Slaughterhouse-Five as a novel? Which chapters seem to quote the most, and why?
5. Vonnegut refers to the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. While the content of the novel clearly focuses on World War II, how is Slaughterhouse-Five also a book about America in the 1960s?

Slideshow of Instructions

http://www.slideshare.net/Carin1976/slaughtcdpres


NY TIMES REVIEW:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/09/28/lifetimes/vonnegut-slaughterhouse.html

Slaughterhouse Five

AGENDA:

1. View video of Slaughterhouse Five

2. Work on CD go to liner notes

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson1164/linernotesresources.html

3. CD/DVD Cover maker

http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/cd-dvd/

Ch. 5 CD Project

The Trapeze Swinger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8aPyBr-_S0

Friday:  Vocabulary quiz and video

Slaughterhouse Five/Intertextuality and Postmodern fiction

Intertextuality is the shaping of a text meaning by another text. Intertextual figures include: allusion, quotation, calque, plagiarism, translation, pastiche and parody.^[1][2][3] An example of intertextuality is an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another.
The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined by poststructuralist Julia Kristeva in 1966. As philosopher William Irwin wrote, the term “has come to have almost as many meanings as users, from those faithful to Kristeva’s original vision to those who simply use it as a stylish way of talking about allusion and influence.”[

Slaughterhouse Five Vocabulary

Find and define the following words as you find them in the novel:

Chapter 1

titillated

unmitigated

pneumatic

magnanimity

Chapter 2

scathingly

cockles

infinitesimal

roweled

clemency

Chapters 3 & 4

patina

sinuous

atrocity

androgyne

hasps

refractive

acrimonious

vertigo

extrapolating

madrigal

Chapter 5

impresario

epitaph

avuncular

lugubrious

catatonic

rodomontades

baroque

opalescent

Chapter 6

palpated

travesty

abominable

amoretti

Chapters 7 & 8

solicitously

bucolic

adulation

repatriated

impudent

nacreous

harangued

Chapters 9 & 10

commiserating

importuned

suffragette

connoisseurs

tawdry

inert

beguiled

http://www.verbalworkout.com/b/b1241a1.htm

Slaughterhouse-Five Allusions; Cultural References

When authors refer to other great works, people, and events, it’s usually not accidental. Put on your super-sleuth hat and figure out why.

Literary and Philosophical References

• "Eheu, fugaces laburuntur anni," Latin quote from Horace: "Alas, our fleeting years pass away" (1.9.1)
• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, Charles Mackay (1.12.1)
• Dresden, History, Stage and Gallery, Mary Endell (1.12.10)
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1.12.14)
• Words for the Wind, Theodore Roethke (1.20.1)
• Céline and His Vision, Erika Ostrovsky (1.20.1-3)
• Death on the Installment Plan, Louis Ferdinand Céline (1.20.3)
• The Gideon Bible (1.21.1-5)
• Martin Luther (2.12.1)
• The Execution of Private Slovik, William Bradford Huie (2.27.2)
• Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann (5.2.1)
• Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane (5.18.2)
• The Brother's Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky (5.21.1)
• The New Testament (5.30.5)
• Scheherazade, from One Thousand and One Arabian Nights (5.49.1)
• Kin Hubbard, playwright (5.56.2)
• The land of Oz from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (6.17.3)
• Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott (8.11.3)
• The Destruction of Dresden, David Irving (9.5.1)
• George Jean Nathan, critic (9.24.1)
• Norman Mailer, author and playwright (9.33.1)
• Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe (9.33.1)
• The Three Musketeers (2.24.3, 2.31.10, 2.32.2)

Historical References

• The firebombing of Dresden
• The atomic bombing of Hiroshima (1.6.3, 9.4.4, 9.4.8-13)
• Nazi concentration camps (1.6.3)
• The Children's Crusade (1.11.2, 5.27.9)
• George Washington (1.13.1)
• The Civil War (2.27.2)
• Earl Warren (3.5.2)
• Sir Isaac Newton and the Third Law of Motion (4.12.1)
• Battle of Dunkirk (5.27.1)
• Queen Elizabeth I of England (5.45.10)
• Christopher Columbus (5.45.10)
• Green Berets, Vietnam (3.14.1, 5.45.9, 5.46.1, 5.51.9, 9.8.2)
• President John F. Kennedy (5.49.2)
• Napoleonic times (1803-1815) (5.57.2)
• Hill 875 near Dakto, Vietnam (5.65.2)
• Ronald Reagan (9.1.3)
• Ira C. Eaker, Lieutenant General, U.S.A.F. (9.5.1)
• British Air Marshal Sir Robert Saundby (9.5.1)
• Charles Darwin, British naturalist (10.2.1)

Cultural and Pop Culture References

• "My name is Yon Yonson" children's song (1.2.4)
• Harrison Starr, director (1.2.7-12)
• Mutt and Jeff, comic strip (1.3.16)
• New York World's Fair (1.9.1, 1.13.1)
• John Wayne (1.10.18)
• Frank Sinatra (1.10.18)
• Walt Disney (1.13.1)
• "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," hymn (2.12.1)
• Johann Sebastian Bach (2.12.1)
• The Iron Maiden of Nuremberg (2.17.4)
• Louis Daguerre (2.23.2)
• André Le Fèvre (2.23.2-4)
• The "Mona Lisa," painted by Leonardo da Vinci (3.8.1)
• "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here," Pirates of Penzance, Gilbert and Sullivan (5.11.7)
• Cinderella (5.15.2, 5.53.4, 5.55.2, 6.11)
• "The Spirit of '76," American painting by Archibald MacNeal Willard (6.9.1)
• "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nelly," popular song (7.4.1)
• "That Old Gang of Mine," popular song (8.14.1)
• "'Leven Cent Cotton, Forty Cent Meat," popular song (8.19.2)

Steohen Crane: 
http://www.online-literature.com/crane/2540/ 

Theodore Roethke:
The Waking
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172106

Practice Regents Baseline Multiple Choice

Test--Practice regents Baseline Multiple Choice

HMWK:  Read Ch. 1, 2, 3, Slaughterhouse Five for Tuesday

Kurt Vonnegut/Major themes in Slaughterhouse Five

Agenda:

HMWK:   Read ch. 1, 2, and 3  for TUESDAY---Work on your paper!
 1. Explore background material on Kurt Vonnegut using NY Times Learning Network
2. Write one-pager

About Kurt Vonnegut
NPR interview with Terry Gross
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9567370 

Letter from prison
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/11/slaughterhouse-five.html

1.  As a class, read and discuss the first fourteen paragraphs of the article “Kurt Vonnegut, Counterculture’s Novelist” (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/featured_articles/20070413friday.html, focusing on the following questions:
a. Who is Kurt Vonnegut?
b. Why is he considered to be a literary idol?
c. Would you enjoy reading Mr. Vonnegut’s work? Why or why not?
d. What might you expect to learn by reading a novel written by Mr. Vonnegut?
e. Why do you think Mr. Vonnegut set his novels in alternate universes? What purpose did using these fictitious settings serve?
f. What was the defining moment in Mr. Vonnegut’s life?
g. How did this defining moment influence Mr. Vonnegut’s work?
h. Given the article’s description of Mr. Vonnegut’s views on war, how do you think he would perceive the war with Iraq or the war on terror? Why?
i. How do you feel about an author using the same character in different novels? Why?
j. What are some of the less enthusiastic views about Mr. Vonnegut’s body of literary work? Why?

3. Write a one-pager response to how the events of Mr. Vonnegut’s life shaped his beliefs and work. These one-pagers will be displayed and discussed at the end of class. The following items must be included in the one-pager (written on the board prior to class):
“Your one-pager must include:
-a visual representation of something in the text
-a quotation from the article related to the visual representation
-two questions you’d like to ask someone mentioned in the article — whether the reporter, the subject, someone quoted, etc.”

Major Themes

Time and memory
The science fiction elements of the novel include time travel. Billy leaps in time, experience his life's events out of order and repeatedly. He learns on the alien world of Trafalmadore that all time happens simultaneously; thus, no one really dies. But this permanence has its dark side: brutal acts also live on forever. Memory is one of the novel's important themes; because of their memories, Vonnegut and Billy cannot move past the Dresden massacre. Billy leaps back in time to Dresden again and again, but at critical points we see Dresden simply because Billy relives it in his memory.  
Narrative versus non-narrative and anti-narrative
This is a broad theme that encompasses many important ideas. Vonnegut is interested in protecting his novel from becoming a conventional war narrative, the kind of conventional narrative that makes war look like something exciting or fun. Throughout the book, we see narratives of this kind in history texts and the minds of characters. But this novel is more interested in non-narrative, like the nonsense question asked by birds at the novel's end, or anti-narrative, like the out-of-order leaping through the many parts of Billy's life. Vonnegut does not write about heroes. Billy Pilgrim is more like a victim.  
The relationship between people and the forces that act on them
This theme is closely connected to the idea of narrative. Vonnegut's characters have almost no agency. They are driven by forces that are simply too huge for any one man to make much of a difference. Vonnegut drives home this point by introducing us to the Trafalmadorians and their concept of time, in which all events are fated and impossible to change.

Acceptance One of the book's most famous lines is "So it goes," repeated whenever a character dies. Billy Pilgrim is deeply passive, accepting everything that befalls him. It makes him able to forgive anyone for anything, and he never seems to become angry. But this acceptance has it problems. When Billy drives through a black ghetto and ignores the suffering he sees there, we see the problem with complete acceptance. Vonnegut values the forgiveness and peace that come with acceptance, but his novel could not be an "anti-war book" if it called on readers to completely accept their world. Human dignity
In Vonnegut's view, war is not heroic or glamorous. It is messy, often disgusting, and it robs men of their dignity. The problem of dignity comes up again and again in the novel, as we see how easily human dignity can be denied by others. But Vonnegut also questions some conceptions of dignity; he sees that they have a place in creating conventional war narratives that make war look heroic.

 About Slaughterhouse Five

Published in 1969, Slaughterhouse Five is a novel written in troubled times about troubled times. As the novel was being finished in 1968, America saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. In the South, Blacks and their supporters were struggling to overturn centuries of racial inequality under the law. At times, the struggle became violent. American values were being convulsed by the coming-of-age of the baby boomers. Never before had young people felt so certain in their rebellion against their parents and their parents' values.

The United States was involved in a costly and unpopular war in Vietnam. 1968 saw the psychologically devastating Tet Offensive, in which the Viet Cong launched a massive offensive against American and South Vietnamese positions all throughout South Vietnam. Although the Viet Cong took heavy casualties, the offensive was the true turning point of the war. To the South Vietnamese people, the offensive proved that the Americans could not protect them. To the American people, the offensive showed that the war in Vietnam would be far more costly than the politicians in Washington had promised. The country that had defeated the Axis powers just over two decades ago was now involved in a morally dubious and costly war in a Third World country.
In the U.S. opposition to the war grew, but in Vietnam the killing continued. The Americans would eventually suffer fifty thousand dead, but the Vietnamese would pay a much heavier price. Millions of Vietnamese died, many of them from heavy bombing. The U.S. dropped more explosive power onto Vietnam than all of the world's powers had dropped in all of World War II put together, including the two atomic bombs and the bombing of Dresden and Tokyo. Vonnegut's novel about the bombing of Dresden was written while American policy makers and pilots were implementing one of the most brutal bombing campaigns in history.
Although Vonnegut despairs of being able to stop war (he likens being anti-war to being anti-glacier, meaning that wars, like glaciers, will always be a fact of life), Slaughterhouse Five is an earnest anti-war novel. Vonnegut's own war experiences turned him into a pacifist. Like his protagonist, Vonnegut was present at Dresden as a POW when American bombers wiped the city off the face of the earth. The bombing, which took place on February 13, 1945, was the most terrible massacre in European history. Over 130,000 people died, putting the death toll above the 84,000 people who died in the Tokyo bombing and the 71,000 people who died in Hiroshima. In Europe's long and often bloody history, never have so many people been killed so quickly. The novel is disjointed and unconventional. Its structure reflects this important idea: there is nothing you can say to adequately explain a massacre. Part of Vonnegut's project was to write an antidote to the war narratives that made war look like an adventure worth having.

Vietnam War Poetry/

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/22

http://www.wdehrhart.com/ 

Quiz/ Finish Discussion from Last class

Lives of the Dead

AGENDA:

 1. Remember QUIZ  tomorrow on Vocabulary words from Things They Carried.  PLEASE, PLEASE STUDY!

2. What is the significance of the opening epigraph of the book mean?  Look up Andersonville

3. On index card, indicate your PAPER SUBJECT,  YOUR WORKING THESIS (It may change as you write your paper) and 2 sections of the book that you will use to support your thesis

 4.   Group DISCUSSIONS


Chapter 22: “The Lives of the Dead”
1.    How does the opening paragraph frame the story we are about to read?
 2.    Why is O'Brien unable to joke around with the other soldiers? Why does the old man remind him of Linda?
 3.    What is the function of the Linda plot in “The Lives of the Dead”? Consider in particular what it teaches him about death, memory, storytelling.
4.    What is the “moral” of the dead KIAs? Consider Mitchell Sanders' view.
5.    In many ways, this book is as much about stories, or the necessity of stories, as it is about the Vietnam War.  According to O’Brien, what do stories accomplish? Why does he continue to tell stories about the Vietnam War, about Linda?
6.    Reread the final two pages of this book. Consider what the young Tim O’Brien learns about storytelling from his experience with Linda. How does this knowledge prepare him not only for the war, but also to become a writer? Within the parameters of this story, how would you characterize Tim O’Brien’s understanding of the purpose of fiction? How does fiction relate to life, that is, life in the journalistic or historic sense?

Overall:

1. Assume for a moment, that the writer, Tim O’Brien, created a fictional main character, also called Tim O’Brien, to inhabit this novel. Why would the real Tim O’Brien do that? What would that accomplish in this novel? How would that strengthen a book about “truth”?

2. Finally, if O’Brien is trying to relate some essential details about emotional life – again as opposed to historic life – is he successful in doing that? Is he justified in tinkering with the facts to get at, what he would term, some larger, story-truth?

3. On the copyright page of the novel appears the following: “This is a work of fiction. Except for a few details regarding the author's own life, all the incidents, names, and characters are imaginary.” How does this statement affect your reading of the novel?

Booker's Basic Plots

Booker's Seven Basic Plots

The Basic Meta-plot
Most of the meta-plots are variations on the following pattern:

1. Anticipation Stage
   The call to adventure, and the promise of what is to come.
2. Dream Stage
   The heroine or hero experiences some initial success - everything seems to be going well, sometimes with a dreamlike sense of invincibility.
3. Frustration Stage
   First confrontation with the real enemy. Things begin to go wrong.
4. Nightmare Stage
   At the point of maximum dramatic tension, disaster has erupted and it seems all hope is lost.
5. Resolution
   The hero or heroine is eventually victorious, and may also be united or reunited with their ‘other half’ (a romantic partner).

There are some parallels with Campbell’s Heroic Monomyth, but his pattern is more applicable to mythology than to stories in general.
Overcoming the Monster (and the Thrilling Escape from Death)
Examples: Perseus, Theseus, Beowulf, Dracula, War of the Worlds, Nicholas Nickleby, The Guns of Navarone, Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven, James Bond, Star Wars: A New Hope.
Meta-plot structure:

1. Anticipation Stage (The Call)
2. Dream Stage (Initial Success)                   
3. Frustration Stage (Confrontation)
4. Nightmare Stage (Final Ordeal)
5. Miraculous Escape (Death of the Monster)

Rags to Riches
Examples: Cinderella, Aladdin, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, David Copperfield 
Dark Version: Le Rouge et Le Noir (1831), What Makes Sammy Run? (1940)
Meta-plot structure:

1. Initial Wretchedness at Home (The Call)
2. Out into the World (Initial Success)
3. The Central Crisis
4. Independence (Final Ordeal)
5. Final Union, Completion and Fulfilment

The Quest
Examples: The Odyssey, Pilgrim’s Progress, King Solomon’s Mines, Watership Down
Meta-plot structure:

1. The Call (Oppressed in the City of Destruction)
2. The Journey (Ordeals of the Hero/Heroine & Companions)
   May include some or all of the following:
   a. Monsters
   b. Temptations
   c. The Deadly Opposites
   d. The Journey to the Underworld
3. Arrival and Frustration
4. The Final Ordeals
5. The Goal (Kingdom, Other Half or Elixir won)

Voyage & Return
Examples: Alice in Wonderland, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Orpheus, The Time Machine, Peter Rabbit, Brideshead Revisited, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Gone with the Wind, The Third Man (1948)
Meta-plot structure:

1. Anticipation Stage (‘Fall’ into the Other World)
2. Initial Fascination (Dream Stage)
3. Frustration Stage
4. Nightmare Stage
5. Thrilling Escape and Return

Comedy
Comedy is dealt with by a less rigid structure. In essence, the comedy meta-plot is about building an absurdly complex set of problems which then miraculously resolve at the climax. There is much discussion of how the comedy plot has developed over time:
    Stage one: Aristophanes
    Stage two: ‘The New Comedy’ (comedy becomes a love story)
    Stage three: Shakespeare (plot fully developed)
    Comedy as real life: Jane Austen
    The plot disguised: Middlemarch, War and Peace
    The plot burlesqued: Gilbert & Sullivan, Oscar Wilde
Meta-plot structure:

1. Under the Shadow
   A little world in which people are under the shadow of confusion, uncertainty and frustration and are shut up from one another.
2. Tightening the Knot
   The confusion gets worse until the pressure of darkness is at its most acute and everyone is in a nightmarish tangle.
3. Resolution
   With the coming to light of things not previously recognised, perceptions are dramatically changed. Shadows are dispelled, the situation is miraculously transformed and the little world is brought together in a state of joyful union.

Tragedy
Examples: Macbeth, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Carmen, Bonnie & Clyde, Jules et Jim, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Julius Caesar
Meta-plot structure:

1. Anticipation Stage (Greed or Selfishness)
2. Dream Stage
3. Frustration Stage
4. Nightmare Stage
5. Destruction or Death Wish Stage

Rebirth
Examples: Sleeping Beauty, The Frog Prince, Beauty and the Beast, The Snow Queen, A Christmas Carol, The Secret Garden, Peer Gynt
Meta-plot structure:

1. Under the Shadow
   A young hero or heroine falls under the shadow of a dark power
2. The Threat Recedes
   Everything seems to go well for a while - the threat appears to have receded.
3. The Threat Returns
   Eventually the threat approaches again in full force, until the hero or heroine is seen imprisoned in a state of living death.
4. The Dark Power Triumphant
   The state of living death continues for a long time when it seems the dark power has completely triumphed.
5. Miraculous Redemption
   If the imprisoned person is a heroine, redeemed by the hero; if a hero, by a young woman or child.

Dark Versions
All of the above plots have dark versions, in which the ‘complete happy ending’ is never achieved because of some problem. The only exception is Tragedy, which is already the ‘dark’ version.

New Plots
Two additional plots are presented which are outside of the basic seven listed above. Note that the existence of general patterns of plot is not intended to mean that no other plots are possible.
Rebellion Against ‘The One’
A solitary hero/heroine finds themselves being drawn into a state of resentful, mystified opposition to some immense power, which exercises total sway over the world of the hero. Initially they feel they are right and the mysterious power is at fault, but suddenly the hero/heroine is confronted by the power in its awesome omnipotence. The rebellious hero/heroine is crushed and forced to recognise that their view had been based only on a very limited subjective perception of reality. They accept the power’s rightful claim to rule.
Example: The Book of Job
Dark version: Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four
The Mystery
Begins by posing a riddle, usually through the revelation that some baffling crime has been committed. Central figure unravels the riddle.
Examples: Bel and the Dragon, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie

Archetypes
In addition to patterns of plots, there is a pattern of characters provided according to Jungian principles. These archetypal characters are as follows:
Negative (centred on Jungian Ego i.e. "evil"):
    Dark Father, Tyrant or Dark Magician
    Dark Mother, Dark Queen or Hag
    Dark Rival or Dark Alter-Ego
    Dark Other Half or Temptress
Positive (centred on Jungian Self i.e. "good"):
    Light Father, Good King or Wise Old Man
    Light Mother, Good Queen or Wise Old Woman
    Light Alter-Ego or Friend and Companion
    Light Other Half (light anima/animus)
Note: Booker uses ‘witch’ where I use ‘hag’, for reasons that will be apparent to most readers.
Three other archetypes are referenced:       
    The Child
    The Animal Helper
    The Trickster


Additional Concepts
The Complete Happy Ending
In the regular versions of the meta-plots, if all that is ego-centred becomes centred instead on the Self (i.e. if all characters are redeemed), the result is a 'complete happy ending'. In the dark versions of the story, the ending is generally tragic and disasterous - both are considered to be following the same meta-plot. It is also possible for stories to contain elements of both approaches.
The Unrealised Value
The chief dark figure signals to us the shadowy, negative version of precisely what the hero or heroine will eventually have to make fully positive in themselves if they are to emerge victorious and attain 'the complete happy ending'. Therefore, the villain metaphorically represents what the hero or heroine will conquor both within themselves, and in the world of the story.
Above and Below the Line
In general, (and especially in comedy) there is a dividing line in effect. Above the line is the established social order, and below the line are the servants,  ‘inferior’ or shadow elements. The problem originates ‘above the line’ (e.g. with tyranny) but the road to liberation always lies ‘below the line’ in the ‘inferior’ level.
Below the line can also be represented as a ‘shadow realm’, containing the potential for wholeness. In the conclusion of the story, elements may ‘emerge from the shadows’ to provide resolution.
The Seven Basic Plots is published by Continuum, ISBN-0-8264-5209-4.

Booker's Seven Fiction Plots

The Things They Carried 

as Booker's Seven Basic Plots

Christopher Booker is a scholar who wrote that every story falls into one of seven basic plot structures: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Shmoop explores which of these structures fits this story like Cinderella’s slipper.

Plot Type : Voyage and Return

Anticipation Stage and 'Fall' into the Other World

In "On the Rainy River," Tim is drafted to go to Vietnam.

Before he's drafted, Tim has a totally abstract view of politics. He knows that he doesn't like the war, but for political reasons, not because he's afraid he might have to go. And then, suddenly, he's drafted and it gets personal. He gets a summer job at a meatpacking plant, and all the blood and slaughter just make him more afraid and sickened by what he's going to have to go do. He thinks about running away to Canada, but chickens out, afraid of the social stigma – just an anticipatory taste of the issues with reputation and weakness he's going to have once he's gets to the war.

Initial fascination or Dream Stage

In "How to Tell a True War Story" and "Spin," Tim talks about the more compelling parts of the war.

Even when things seem like they're really not all that bad – the weather is nice, and even though they're carrying a lot, they're really just marching together – someone will step on a mine, or get shot, and Tim is abruptly reminded that they're indeed still at war. Even the funny, light-hearted things have an element of the weird about them, like Kiowa doing a rain dance in a Vietnamese village or a tranqued-out Lavender talking about how mellow the war is.

Frustration Stage

In "The Man I Killed," Tim stares at the body of a dead man.

We've seen some gruesome things, but this is the first time we've dealt with the guilt over killing. For some reason, this lends the story an extra darkness that we've not yet seen. Sure, "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" was super creepy, and "How to Tell a True War Story" was very sad and also gross, but in neither of them did the main characters take another human life. In "The Man I Killed," we have that shadow appear for the first time.

Nightmare Stage

This starts at "Speaking of Courage" and lasts pretty much all the way to the end of the book.

You don't get much more nightmarish than an exploding, boiling field of poop that drowns your best friend. That particular nightmares stretches out over four stories – "Speaking of Courage," "Notes," "In the Field," and "Field Trip." But the nightmare doesn't end there. In "The Ghost Soldier," Tim gets obsessed with vengeance and ends up having a bizarre and unpleasant hallucination in which he turns into the war itself. And in "Night Life," Rat goes slightly insane, laughing and calling the war "Just one big banquet. Meat, man. You and me. Everybody. Meat for the bugs" (Night Life.22). Ay caramba.

Thrilling Escape and Return

This kind of works with Tim in "Notes" and "The Lives of the Dead." It's subverted with Norman Bowker in "Speaking of Courage" and "Notes."

This is the stage that doesn't quite fit. The intensity of the nightmare that the soldiers deal with in the nightmare stage is such that they don't ever really come back from it. For Norman Bowker, his voyage ended with the nightmare stage. He even says, in "Notes," that "That night when Kiowa got wasted, I sort of sank down into the sewage with him… Feels like I'm still in deep shit" (Notes.3). Tim, on the other hand, does get to escape a bit through his stories. He pours the nightmares onto the page, he brings his dead comrades back to life with words, and the act of doing this is his thrilling escape, his return. But he needs to keep doing it, because the escape only lasts while the story is alive. It's not a permanent escape or return; he's perpetually escaping, even twenty years later.

The Vietnam in Me

The Vietnam In Me: Multiple Truths in the Life of Tim O’Brien

 “The Vietnam in Me.” New York Times Magazine, October 2, 1994.

Comment:
Tim O’Brien has explained multiple times throughout the novel that everything he writes is absolute fiction, even though it may be inspired by actual events, but maintains a special term which is classified story truth (in the sense that it’s true that it is a story and may have happened). He also uses the term happening-truth, which is what is actually occurring in reality. These two clash with the release of the short story “Field Trip” and the article “The Vietnam In Me”, both about his return to Vietnam.
The first, “Field Trip”, is a prime example of story truth, where O’Brien speaks about how he and his daughter return to Vietnam and he goes to the field where Norman Bowker let go of Kiowa and O’Brien wades in and buries Kiowa’s moccasins at the spot where he went under. He then has a heart-to-heart conversation with his daughter on the nature of the Vietnam War and gives a great deal of polished-over romanticism on loss and grief and duty (almost as if you combined Nathaniel Hawthorne, Keanu Reeves, and Tom Clancy for a made-for-TV movie).
Meanwhile, “The Vietnam In Me” is the realistic, factual account of O’Brien’s return to Vietnam, with a female friend (not his daughter), and his return to his own personal killing fields (apologies for the incorrect placement of that term, seeing as killing fields were in Cambodia and not Vietnam). In this account, it’s as though O’Brien allowed Larry Clark to follow him around with a camera and detail everything on his journey through ‘Nam. From visiting the minefields that took the lives of his friends with former VC and NVA officers, to the village of My Lai where American militarism truly failed in 1968, and even to stuffy, hot Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) hotels where he battles his own personal demons on the “terrible things” he did during the war, though not giving any evidence as to what those things were. The article even takes a turn for the even darker with his constant contemplation of suicide after his female friend leaves him. While this article is much more gritty than the short story, one thing remains the same: his feelings. Throughout both pieces, he cannot escape this insufferable sadness and guilt over the unknown.
“The Vietnam In Me” is more true because O’Brien says that truth is in the gut and this is where O’Brien’s gut is. Based off his writing style alone, one can just literally feel the emotions sweep off the page and hit him or her right in the chest while with “Field Trip”, it’s as if one can almost see the time it took in calculating the perfect emotions and perfect snippets of dialogue for each character from the uncertaintity as to what to say at Kiowa’s death spot to him telling his daughter that the Vietnamese was not angry at him because “all that’s over now”. Almost cliche even though it works wonderfully with the rest of the book. One shouldn’t get upset about the fact that one story is based on fact and the other is based in fiction; it is one’s personal choice to like or dislike whatever they read. And the question of getting upset brings up another question of whether it would be better to stick to the truth or to emotional fiction, and once again, it is whatever one wants. Personally, I would like truth with emotions clearly portrayed so not only do I know what actually happened, but I also know what the people were feeling at the time.