AGENDA :
Quiz #2 Literary Terms and Vocabulary
Review Prezi
Topic Tracking
HMWK: Read "The Man I Killed" and "Ambush" for Monday
Friday, September 18, 2015
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Magic Realism and The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong
AGENDA:
Characteristics of Magical Realism
Hybridity—Magical realists incorporate many techniques that have been linked to post-colonialism, with hybridity being a primary feature. Specifically, magical realism is illustrated in the inharmonious arenas of such opposites as urban and rural, and Western and indigenous. The plots of magical realist works involve issues of borders, mixing, and change. Authors establish these plots to reveal a crucial purpose of magical realism: a more deep and true reality than conventional realist techniques would illustrate.
Irony Regarding Author’s Perspective—The writer must have ironic distance from the magical world view for the realism not to be compromised. Simultaneously, the writer must strongly respect the magic, or else the magic dissolves into simple folk belief or complete fantasy, split from the real instead of synchronized with it. The term "magic" relates to the fact that the point of view that the text depicts explicitly is not adopted according to the implied world view of the author. As Gonzales Echevarria expresses, the act of distancing oneself from the beliefs held by a certain social group makes it impossible to be thought of as a representative of that society.
Authorial Reticence—Authorial reticence refers to the lack of clear opinions about the accuracy of events and the credibility of the world views expressed by the characters in the text. This technique promotes acceptance in magical realism. In magical realism, the simple act of explaining the supernatural would eradicate its position of equality regarding a person’s conventional view of reality. Because it would then be less valid, the supernatural world would be discarded as false testimony.
The Supernatural and Natural—In magical realism, the supernatural is not displayed as questionable. While the reader realizes that the rational and irrational are opposite and conflicting polarities, they are not disconcerted because the supernatural is integrated within the norms of perception of the narrator and characters in the fictional world.
english.emory.edu/Bahri/MagicalRealism.html
DISCUSSION GROUPS:
HMWK: POST A COMMENT TO THE INTERPRETIVE QUESTIONS Level 2 and Allegorical/Symbolic Question Level 3
"The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong"
Level 2: Interpretive questions.
In "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," what transforms Mary Anne into a predatory killer? Does it matter that Mary Anne is a woman? How so? What does the story tell us about the nature of the Vietnam War?
2. The story Rat tells in "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" is highly fantastical. Does its lack of believability make it any less compelling? Do you believe it? Does it fit O'Brien's criteria for a true war story?
Level 3 Allegorical/Symbolic Questions What does this short story tell the reader about the nature of humanity? About war?
Basic Level I Reading Comprehension Questions
1. What was Rat’s reputation among the men of Alpha Company, when it came to telling stories?
2. What does Rat insist about his story in this chapter?
3. What was the military discipline like at the outpost?
4. Who were the Greenies and what were they like?
5. Who did Mark Fossie bring to the outpost?
6. What was their plan together, since elementary school?
7. What does Rat say are the similarities between Mary Ann and all of them?.
8. What did Mary Anne begin to do when casualties came in?
9. Where had Mary Anne been the first time she stayed out all night?
10. How did she change as a result of her conversation with Fossie the next morning?
11. How did she respond to Fossie’s arrangements to send her home?
12. When and under what circumstances did Rat see her next?
13. On pg. 106, what is Mitchell Sanders’ attitude about Rat’s way of telling a story?
14. What does Rat have to say about the soldiers attitude toward women?
15. What did the Rat, Fossie, and Eddie find when they entered the Greenies hootch?
16. What kind of jewelry was Mary Anne wearing?
17. What does Mary Anne tell Fossie about his presence in Vietnam?
18. What does Mary Anne say she wants to wants to do with Vietnam?
19. At the bottom of pg. 113, what does Rat say about "the girls back home"?
20. What is the metaphor that Rat uses to explain Mary Anne’s experience with war
Magic Realism and The Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong
Video: A Soldier's Sweetheart: http://vimeo.com/92513861
Magic Realism
A narrative technique that blurs the distinction between fantasy and reality. It is characterized by an equal acceptance of the ordinary and the extraordinary. Magic realism fuses (1) lyrical and, at times, fantastic writing with (2) an examination of the character of human existence and (3) an implicit criticism of society, particularly the elite."My most important problem was destroying
the lines of demarcation that separates what
seems real from what seems fantastic"
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Characteristics of Magical Realism
Hybridity—Magical realists incorporate many techniques that have been linked to post-colonialism, with hybridity being a primary feature. Specifically, magical realism is illustrated in the inharmonious arenas of such opposites as urban and rural, and Western and indigenous. The plots of magical realist works involve issues of borders, mixing, and change. Authors establish these plots to reveal a crucial purpose of magical realism: a more deep and true reality than conventional realist techniques would illustrate.
Irony Regarding Author’s Perspective—The writer must have ironic distance from the magical world view for the realism not to be compromised. Simultaneously, the writer must strongly respect the magic, or else the magic dissolves into simple folk belief or complete fantasy, split from the real instead of synchronized with it. The term "magic" relates to the fact that the point of view that the text depicts explicitly is not adopted according to the implied world view of the author. As Gonzales Echevarria expresses, the act of distancing oneself from the beliefs held by a certain social group makes it impossible to be thought of as a representative of that society.
Authorial Reticence—Authorial reticence refers to the lack of clear opinions about the accuracy of events and the credibility of the world views expressed by the characters in the text. This technique promotes acceptance in magical realism. In magical realism, the simple act of explaining the supernatural would eradicate its position of equality regarding a person’s conventional view of reality. Because it would then be less valid, the supernatural world would be discarded as false testimony.
The Supernatural and Natural—In magical realism, the supernatural is not displayed as questionable. While the reader realizes that the rational and irrational are opposite and conflicting polarities, they are not disconcerted because the supernatural is integrated within the norms of perception of the narrator and characters in the fictional world.
english.emory.edu/Bahri/MagicalRealism.html
DISCUSSION GROUPS:
HMWK: POST A COMMENT TO THE INTERPRETIVE QUESTIONS Level 2 and Allegorical/Symbolic Question Level 3
"The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong"
Level 2: Interpretive questions.
In "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong," what transforms Mary Anne into a predatory killer? Does it matter that Mary Anne is a woman? How so? What does the story tell us about the nature of the Vietnam War?
2. The story Rat tells in "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" is highly fantastical. Does its lack of believability make it any less compelling? Do you believe it? Does it fit O'Brien's criteria for a true war story?
3. Find three symbols in this chapter and
explain them.
4.
Find three specific quotes and scenes
from the chapter that illustrate Mary Anne’s change. Also, explain Mary
Anne’s transformation. Does she go crazy? Or does she simply change?
5. Explain the whole “cave scene”. What is going on? What
has Mary Anne become? Make a list of all of
graphic imagery from that scene.
6.
Does it matter what happened, in the end, to Mary Anne? Would this be a better
story if we knew, precisely, what happened to her after she left camp? Or does
this vague ending add to the story? Either way, why?
Level 3 Allegorical/Symbolic Questions What does this short story tell the reader about the nature of humanity? About war?
Basic Level I Reading Comprehension Questions
1. What was Rat’s reputation among the men of Alpha Company, when it came to telling stories?
2. What does Rat insist about his story in this chapter?
3. What was the military discipline like at the outpost?
4. Who were the Greenies and what were they like?
5. Who did Mark Fossie bring to the outpost?
6. What was their plan together, since elementary school?
7. What does Rat say are the similarities between Mary Ann and all of them?.
8. What did Mary Anne begin to do when casualties came in?
9. Where had Mary Anne been the first time she stayed out all night?
10. How did she change as a result of her conversation with Fossie the next morning?
11. How did she respond to Fossie’s arrangements to send her home?
12. When and under what circumstances did Rat see her next?
13. On pg. 106, what is Mitchell Sanders’ attitude about Rat’s way of telling a story?
14. What does Rat have to say about the soldiers attitude toward women?
15. What did the Rat, Fossie, and Eddie find when they entered the Greenies hootch?
16. What kind of jewelry was Mary Anne wearing?
17. What does Mary Anne tell Fossie about his presence in Vietnam?
18. What does Mary Anne say she wants to wants to do with Vietnam?
19. At the bottom of pg. 113, what does Rat say about "the girls back home"?
20. What is the metaphor that Rat uses to explain Mary Anne’s experience with war
Epigraphs
Epigraph John Ransom
1. There is an epigraph at the beginning of the text. What is an
epigraph? How do writers use them? This epigraph is a citation from John
Ransom's Andersonville Diary. Who was he? What was Andersonville? Who
"wrote" or "edited" the Diary? Given what you discover about the
epigraph and what it introduces, what do you think it accomplishes?
John L. Ransom was born in
1843. He joined the Union Army
during the American
Civil War in November 1862 and served as Quartermaster of Company A, 9th
Michigan Volunteer Cavalry.
In 1863 Ransom was captured
in Tennessee and taken to Andersonville,
Georgia. During his imprisonment he kept a diary of his experiences. On the 6th
July, 1864 he wrote: "Boiling hot, camp reeking with filth, and no
sanitary privileges; men dying off over 140 per day. Stockade enlarged, taking
in eight or ten more acres, giving us more room, and stumps to dig up for wood
to cook with. Jimmy Devers has been a prisoner over a year and, poor boy, will
probably die soon. Have more mementos than I can carry, from those who have
died, to be given to their friends at home. At least a dozen have given me
letters, pictures, etc., to take North."
The Confederate authorities
did not provide enough food for the prison and men began to die of starvation.
The water became polluted and disease was a constant problem. Of the 49,485
prisoners who entered the camp, nearly 13,000 died from disease and
malnutrition.
In August, 1865 President Andrew Johnson give his approval for Henry Wirz, the commandant of Andersonville, to be charged with "wanton cruelty". Wirz appeared before a military commission headed by Major General Lew Wallace on 21st August, 1865.
Wirz was found guilty on 6th November and sentenced to death. He was taken to Washington to be executed in the same yard where those involved in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln had died. Alexander Gardner, the famous photographer, was invited to record the event. The execution took place on the 10th November. The gallows were surrounded by Union Army soldiers who throughout the procedure chanted "Wirz, remember, Andersonville."
John L. Ransom's book, Andersonville Diary, was published in 1881. He died at the age 76 years on 23rd September 1919 in Los Angeles County.
In August, 1865 President Andrew Johnson give his approval for Henry Wirz, the commandant of Andersonville, to be charged with "wanton cruelty". Wirz appeared before a military commission headed by Major General Lew Wallace on 21st August, 1865.
Wirz was found guilty on 6th November and sentenced to death. He was taken to Washington to be executed in the same yard where those involved in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln had died. Alexander Gardner, the famous photographer, was invited to record the event. The execution took place on the 10th November. The gallows were surrounded by Union Army soldiers who throughout the procedure chanted "Wirz, remember, Andersonville."
John L. Ransom's book, Andersonville Diary, was published in 1881. He died at the age 76 years on 23rd September 1919 in Los Angeles County.
(1) John L. Ransom, Andersonville
Diary (July, 1864)
6th July: Boiling hot, camp reeking with filth, and no sanitary privileges; men dying off over 140 per day. Stockade enlarged, taking in eight or ten more acres, giving us more room, and stumps to dig up for wood to cook with. Jimmy Devers has been a prisoner over a year and, poor boy, will probably die soon. Have more mementos than I can carry, from those who have died, to be given to their friends at home. At least a dozen have given me letters, pictures, etc., to take North. Hope I shan't have to turn them over to someone else.
7th July: Having formed a habit of going to sleep as soon as the air got cooled off and before fairly dark. I wake up at 2 or 3 o'clock and stay awake. I then take in all the horrors of the situation. Thousands are groaning, moaning, and crying, with no bustle of the daytime to drown it.
9th July: One-half the men here would get well if they only had something in the vegetable line to eat. Scurvy is about the most loathsome disease, and when dropsy takes hold with the scurvy, it is terrible. I have both diseases but keep them in check, and it only grows worse slowly. My legs are swollen, but the cords are not contracted much, and I can still walk very well.
10th July: Have bought (from a new prisoner) a large blank book so as to continue my diary. Although it is a tedious and tiresome task, am determined to keep it up. Don't know of another man in prison who is doing likewise. Wish I had the gift of description that I might describe this place.
Nothing can be worse kind of water. Nothing can be worse or nastier than the stream drizzling its way through this camp. And for air to breathe, it is what arises from this foul place. On al four sides of us are high walls and tall tress, and there is apparently no wind or breeze to blow away the stench, and we are obliged to breathe and live in it. Dead bodies lay around all day in the broiling sun, by the dozen and even hundreds, and we must suffer and live in this atmosphere.
12th July: I keep thinking our situation can get no worse, but it does get worse every day, and not less than 160 die each twenty-four hours. Probably one-forth or one-third of these die inside the stockade, the balance in the hospital outside. All day and up to 4 o'clock p.m., the dead are being gathered up and carried to the south gate and placed in a row inside the dead line. As the bodies are stripped of their clothing, in most cases as soon as the breath leaves and in some cases before, the row of dead presents a sickening appearance.
At 4 o'clock, a four or six mule wagon comes up to the gate, and twenty or thirty bodies are loaded onto the wagon and they are carried off to be put in trenches, one hundred in each trench, in the cemetery. It is the orders to attach the name, company, and regiment to each body, but it is not always done. My digging days are over. It is with difficulty now that I can walk, and only with the help of two canes.
6th July: Boiling hot, camp reeking with filth, and no sanitary privileges; men dying off over 140 per day. Stockade enlarged, taking in eight or ten more acres, giving us more room, and stumps to dig up for wood to cook with. Jimmy Devers has been a prisoner over a year and, poor boy, will probably die soon. Have more mementos than I can carry, from those who have died, to be given to their friends at home. At least a dozen have given me letters, pictures, etc., to take North. Hope I shan't have to turn them over to someone else.
7th July: Having formed a habit of going to sleep as soon as the air got cooled off and before fairly dark. I wake up at 2 or 3 o'clock and stay awake. I then take in all the horrors of the situation. Thousands are groaning, moaning, and crying, with no bustle of the daytime to drown it.
9th July: One-half the men here would get well if they only had something in the vegetable line to eat. Scurvy is about the most loathsome disease, and when dropsy takes hold with the scurvy, it is terrible. I have both diseases but keep them in check, and it only grows worse slowly. My legs are swollen, but the cords are not contracted much, and I can still walk very well.
10th July: Have bought (from a new prisoner) a large blank book so as to continue my diary. Although it is a tedious and tiresome task, am determined to keep it up. Don't know of another man in prison who is doing likewise. Wish I had the gift of description that I might describe this place.
Nothing can be worse kind of water. Nothing can be worse or nastier than the stream drizzling its way through this camp. And for air to breathe, it is what arises from this foul place. On al four sides of us are high walls and tall tress, and there is apparently no wind or breeze to blow away the stench, and we are obliged to breathe and live in it. Dead bodies lay around all day in the broiling sun, by the dozen and even hundreds, and we must suffer and live in this atmosphere.
12th July: I keep thinking our situation can get no worse, but it does get worse every day, and not less than 160 die each twenty-four hours. Probably one-forth or one-third of these die inside the stockade, the balance in the hospital outside. All day and up to 4 o'clock p.m., the dead are being gathered up and carried to the south gate and placed in a row inside the dead line. As the bodies are stripped of their clothing, in most cases as soon as the breath leaves and in some cases before, the row of dead presents a sickening appearance.
At 4 o'clock, a four or six mule wagon comes up to the gate, and twenty or thirty bodies are loaded onto the wagon and they are carried off to be put in trenches, one hundred in each trench, in the cemetery. It is the orders to attach the name, company, and regiment to each body, but it is not always done. My digging days are over. It is with difficulty now that I can walk, and only with the help of two canes.
(2) Some captured Union Army prisoners in Andersonville began stealing from fellow inmates. Henry Wirz gave instructions for the men to be arrested
and tried. John L. Ransom recorded in his diary how six of the men were
executed.
This morning, lumber was brought into the prison by the Rebels, and near the gate a gallows erected for the purpose of executing the six condemned Yankees. At about 10 o'clock they were brought inside by Captain Wirtz and some guards. Wirtz then said a few words about their having been tried by our own men and for us to do as we choose with them. I have learned by inquiry their names, which are as follows: John Sarsfield, 144th New York; William Collins, 88th Pennsylvania; Charles Curtiss, 5th Rhode Island Artillery; Pat Delaney, 83rd Pennsylvania; A. Munn, U.S. Navy and W.R. Rickson of the U.S. Navy.
All were given a chance to talk. Munn, a good-looking fellow in Marine dress, said he came into the prison four months before, perfectly honest and as innocent of crime as any fellow in it. Starvation, with evil companions, had made him what he was. He spoke of his mother and sisters in New York, that he cared nothing as far as he himself was concerned, but the news that would be carried home to his people made him want to curse God he had ever been born.
Delaney said he would rather be hung than live here as the most of them lived on the allowance of rations. If allowed to steal could get enough to eat, but as that was stopped had rather hang. He said his name was not Delaney and that no one knew who he really was, therefore his friends would never know his fate, his Andersonville history dying with him.
Curtiss said he didn't care a damn only hurry up and not be talking about it all day; making too much fuss over a very small matter. William Collins said he was innocent of murder and ought not be hung; he had stolen blankets and rations to preserve his own life, and begged the crowd not to see him hung as he had a wife and child at home.
Collins, although he said he had never killed anyone, and I don't believe he ever did deliberately kill a man, such as stabbing or pounding a victim to death, yet he has walked up to a poor sick prisoner on a cold night and robbed him of blanket, or perhaps his rations, and if necessary using all the force necessary to do it. These things were the same as life to the sick man, for he would invariably die.
Sarsfield made quite a speech; he had studied for a lawyer; at the outbreak of the rebellion he had enlisted and served three years in the army, being wounded in battle. Promoted to first sergeant and also commissioned as a lieutenant. He began by stealing parts of rations, gradually becoming hardened as he became familiar with the crimes practised; evil associates had helped him to go downhill.
At about 11 o'clock, they were all blindfolded, hands and feet tied, told to get ready, nooses adjusted, and the plank knocked from under. Munn died easily, as also did Delaney; all the rest died hard, and particularly Sarsfield, who drew his knees nearly to his chin and then straightened them out with a jerk, the veins in his neck swelling out as if they would burst.
Collins' rope broke and he fell to the ground, with blood spurting from his ears, mouth and nose. As they was lifting him back to the swinging-off place, he revived and begged for his life, but no use, was soon dangling with the rest, and died hard.
This morning, lumber was brought into the prison by the Rebels, and near the gate a gallows erected for the purpose of executing the six condemned Yankees. At about 10 o'clock they were brought inside by Captain Wirtz and some guards. Wirtz then said a few words about their having been tried by our own men and for us to do as we choose with them. I have learned by inquiry their names, which are as follows: John Sarsfield, 144th New York; William Collins, 88th Pennsylvania; Charles Curtiss, 5th Rhode Island Artillery; Pat Delaney, 83rd Pennsylvania; A. Munn, U.S. Navy and W.R. Rickson of the U.S. Navy.
All were given a chance to talk. Munn, a good-looking fellow in Marine dress, said he came into the prison four months before, perfectly honest and as innocent of crime as any fellow in it. Starvation, with evil companions, had made him what he was. He spoke of his mother and sisters in New York, that he cared nothing as far as he himself was concerned, but the news that would be carried home to his people made him want to curse God he had ever been born.
Delaney said he would rather be hung than live here as the most of them lived on the allowance of rations. If allowed to steal could get enough to eat, but as that was stopped had rather hang. He said his name was not Delaney and that no one knew who he really was, therefore his friends would never know his fate, his Andersonville history dying with him.
Curtiss said he didn't care a damn only hurry up and not be talking about it all day; making too much fuss over a very small matter. William Collins said he was innocent of murder and ought not be hung; he had stolen blankets and rations to preserve his own life, and begged the crowd not to see him hung as he had a wife and child at home.
Collins, although he said he had never killed anyone, and I don't believe he ever did deliberately kill a man, such as stabbing or pounding a victim to death, yet he has walked up to a poor sick prisoner on a cold night and robbed him of blanket, or perhaps his rations, and if necessary using all the force necessary to do it. These things were the same as life to the sick man, for he would invariably die.
Sarsfield made quite a speech; he had studied for a lawyer; at the outbreak of the rebellion he had enlisted and served three years in the army, being wounded in battle. Promoted to first sergeant and also commissioned as a lieutenant. He began by stealing parts of rations, gradually becoming hardened as he became familiar with the crimes practised; evil associates had helped him to go downhill.
At about 11 o'clock, they were all blindfolded, hands and feet tied, told to get ready, nooses adjusted, and the plank knocked from under. Munn died easily, as also did Delaney; all the rest died hard, and particularly Sarsfield, who drew his knees nearly to his chin and then straightened them out with a jerk, the veins in his neck swelling out as if they would burst.
Collins' rope broke and he fell to the ground, with blood spurting from his ears, mouth and nose. As they was lifting him back to the swinging-off place, he revived and begged for his life, but no use, was soon dangling with the rest, and died hard.
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Postmodernism/Metafiction
AGENDA:
EQ:What is postmodernism?
The term Postmodern literature is used to describe certain tendencies in post-World War II literature. It is both a continuation of the experimentation championed by writers of the modernist period (relying heavily, for example, on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators, etc.) and a reaction against Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature. Postmodern literature, like postmodernism as a whole, is hard to define and there is little agreement on the exact characteristics, scope, and importance of postmodern literature. However, unifying features often coincide with Jean-François Lyotard's concept of the "meta-narrative" and "little narrative," Jacques Derrida's concept of "play," and Jean Baudrillard's "simulacra." For example, instead of the modernist quest for meaning in a chaotic world, the postmodern author eschews, often playfully, the possibility of meaning, and the postmodern novel is often a parody of this quest. This distrust of totalizing mechanisms extends even to the author; thus postmodern writers often celebrate chance over craft and employ metafiction to undermine the author's "univocal" control (the control of only one voice). The distinction between high and low culture is also attacked with the employment of pastiche, the combination of multiple cultural elements including subjects and genres not previously deemed fit for literature. A list of postmodern authors often varies; the following are some names of authors often so classified, most of them belonging to the generation born in the interwar period: William Burroughs (1914-1997), Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984), Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007), John Barth (b. 1930), Donald Barthelme (1931-1989), E. L. Doctorow (b. 1931), Robert Coover (1932), Jerzy Kosinski (1933-1991) Don DeLillo (b. 1936), Thomas Pynchon (b. 1937), Ishmael Reed (1938), Kathy Acker (1947-1997), Paul Auster (b. 1947)[1], Orhan Pamuk (b. 1952).
Metafiction is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses
the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion. It is the
literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and
systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing
questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually
using irony and self-reflection. It can be compared to presentational
theatre, which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play;
metafiction does not let the reader forget he or she is reading a
fictional work.
Metafiction is primarily associated with Modernist and Postmodernist literature, but is found at least as early as the 9th-century One Thousand and One Nights and Chaucer's 14th-century Canterbury Tales. Cervantes' Don Quixote is a metafictional novel, as is James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824). In the 1950s several French novelists published works whose styles were collectively dubbed "nouveau roman". These "new novels" were characterized by their bending of genre and style and often included elements of metafiction. It became prominent in the 1960s, with authors and works such as John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse, Robert Coover's The Babysitter and The Magic Poker, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and William H. Gass's Willie Master's Lonesome Wife. William H. Gass coined the term “metafiction” in a 1970 essay entitled “Philosophy and the Form of Fiction”. Unlike the antinovel, or anti-fiction, metafiction is specifically fiction about fiction, i.e. fiction which self-consciously reflects upon itself
How to Tell a True War Story
AGENDA:
Continue discussion from yesterday
Videos
Platoon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPi8EQzJ2Bg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKpQB3bEPbI&list=TLpkj93aMlKiM
Tim O'Brien:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C48fWkljK28
http://prezi.com/i7pnwqaf45c2/the-things-they-carried-lesson-plan/
Read over the following summaries and analysis of "How to Tell a True War Story." Then discuss with your group the key questions posted in red. As a group find passages in the story that show the distinction between "happening truth" and "story truth". Post a group comment reflecting the key points of your discussion and passages you may want to refer to later in your paper. Why are ambiguity and paradox so important to the telling of these stories about the Vietnam War?
Memory and Reminiscence
Because ‘‘How to Tell a True War Story’’ is written by a Vietnam War veteran, and because Tim O’Brien has chosen to create a narrator with the same name as his own, most readers want to believe that the stories O’Brien tells are true and actually happened to him. There are several reasons for this. In the first place, O’Brien’s so-called memoir, If I Die In a Combat Zone, contains many stories that find their way into his later novels and short fiction. Thus, it is difficult for the reader to sort through what is memory and what is fiction.
There are those, however, who would suggest that this is one of O’Brien’s points in writing his stories. Although most readers would believe that their own memories are ‘‘true,’’ this particular story sets out to demonstrate the way that memories are at once true and made up.
Further, as O’Brien tells the reader in ‘‘How to Tell a True War Story,’’ ‘‘You’d feel cheated if it never happened.’’ This is certainly one response to O’Brien’s story. Readers want the stories to be true in the sense that they grow out of O’Brien’s memory. O’Brien, however, will not let the reader take this easy way out. Instead, he questions the entire notion of memoir, reminiscence, and the ability of memory to convey the truth.
Truth and Falsehood
Certainly, the most insistent theme in this story is that of truth and falsehood. O’Brien, however, would be unlikely to set up such a dichotomy. That is, according to ‘‘How to Tell a True War Story,’’ truth is not something that can find its opposition in untruth. Rather, according to O’Brien, because war is so ambiguous, truth takes on many guises. Even seemingly contradictory events can both be considered true. O’Brien uses the event of Curt Lemon’s death to make this point. O’Brien knows, for example, that Curt is killed by a rigged 105mm round. However, as the scene replays in his mind, O’Brien sees the event very differently. It seems to him that Curt is killed by the sunlight, and that it is the sunlight that lifts him high into the tree where O’Brien will later have to retrieve Curt’s body parts. Thus O’Brien distinguishes between the truth that happens and the truth that seems to happen.
Moreover, O’Brien likes to play with words and to undermine the logical connection between words. In Western philosophy, it is considered impossible for a word to mean itself and its opposite at the same time. O’Brien demonstrates it may indeed be possible. For example, when he writes, ‘‘it is safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true,’’ he is creating a paradox. If nothing is ever absolutely true, then even that statement cannot be absolutely true. The paradox suggests that while it might be possible to approximate truth, it must be told, as Emily Dickinson once wrote, ‘‘aslant.’’
Perhaps the most disconcerting moment in this tale occurs when O’Brien tells the story of the woman who approaches him after he tells this tale. Most readers assume that O’Brien the author is speaking, and that perhaps he is telling a story of what happened to him after a reading of his fiction. When the woman says she likes the story about the water buffalo, O’Brien is annoyed. Although he does not tell her, he tells the reader that the entire episode did not happen, that it was all made up, and that even the characters are not real.
Readers may be shocked. How could O’Brien have fabricated all of this? Then the reader may realize that O’Brien is playing with the truth again, for if everything in the story is fabricated, then so is the woman who approached him. This play with truth and falsehood provides both delight and despair for the reader who will never be able to determine either truth or falsehood in O’Brien’s stories in the traditional sense. As Stephen Kaplan suggests in Understanding Tim O’Brien, ‘‘[O’Brien] completely destroys the fine line dividing fact from fiction and tries to show . . . that fiction (or the imagined world) can often be truer, especially in the case of Vietnam, than fact.’’
How to Tell a True War Story: Style
Point of View and Narration
One of the most interesting, and perhaps troubling, aspects of the construction of ‘‘How to Tell a True War Story’’ is O’Brien’s choice to create a fictional, first-person narrator who also carries the name ‘‘Tim O’Brien.’’ Although the narrator remains unnamed in this particular story, other stories in the collection clearly identify the narrator by the name Tim. Further, the other stories in the collection also identify the narrator as a forty-three-yearold writer who writes about the Vietnam War, ever more closely identifying the narrator with the author.
On the one hand, this connection is very compelling. Readers are drawn into the story believing that they are reading something that has some basis in the truth of the writer Tim O’Brien. Further, the authorial voice that links the story fragments together sounds like it ought to belong to the writer.
On the other hand, however, the device allows O’Brien to play with notions of truth and ambiguity. Does the narrator represent the author? Or do the narrator’s words tell the reader not to trust either the story or the teller? What can be said unequivocally about the Vietnam War? O’Brien’s use of the fictional narrator
suggests that there is nothing unequivocal about the war. Rather, it seems that O’Brien, through his narrator Tim, wants the reader to understand that during war, seeming-truth can be as true as happening-truth.
Ought the reader consider the narrator to be unreliable? After all, after pledging the truth of the story from the very first line, he undercuts that claim by telling the reader at the last possible moment that none of the events in the story happened. While this might seem to point to an unreliable narrator, a narrator who cannot find it in himself to tell the truth, it is more likely that O’Brien is making the point that the entire story is true, it just never happened. This distinction, while frustrating for some readers, is an important one not only for the understanding of ‘‘How to Tell a True War Story’’ but also for the reading of The Things They Carried. Structure
‘‘How to Tell a True War Story’’ is not structured in a traditional manner, with a sequential narrative that moves chronologically from start to finish. Rather, O’Brien has chosen to use a number of very short stories within the body of the full story to illustrate or provide examples of commentary provided by the narrator.
That is, the narrator will make some comment about the nature of a ‘‘true’’ war story, then will recount a brief story that illustrates the point. These stories within the larger story are not arranged chronologically.
Consequently, the reader learns gradually, and out of sequence, the events that led to the death of Curt Lemon as well as the events that take place after his death.
This structure serves two purposes. In the first place, the structure allows the story to move back and forth between concrete image and abstract reality. The narrator writes that ‘‘True war stories do not generalize.
They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis.’’ Thus, for the narrator to provide ‘‘true’’ war stories, he must provide the concrete illustration. While the stories within the larger story, then, may qualify as ‘‘true’’war stories, the larger story cannot, as it does indulge in abstraction and analysis.
The second purpose served by this back-and forth structure is that it mirrors and reflects the structure of the book The Things They Carried. Just as the story has concrete, image-filled stories within it, so too does the larger book contain chapters that are both concrete and image-filled. Likewise, there are chapters within the book that serve as commentary on the rest of the stories. As a result, ‘‘How to Tell a True War Story’’ provides for the reader a model of how the larger work functions.
The story that results from this metafictional (metafiction is fiction that deals with the writing of fiction or its conventions) structure may seem fragmentary because of the many snippets of the story that find their way into the narrative. However, the metafictional commentary provided by the narrator binds the stories together just as the chapters of the book are bound together by the many linkages O’Brien provides.
Tim O’Brien’s Criteria:
o A true war story is never moral.
o 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.
o If a story seems moral, do not believe it.
o Does not uplift
o No virtue
o Allegiance to obscenity and evil
o Difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen
o Cannot be believed… must be at least skeptical.
o Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t
o You can’t even tell it—it’s beyond telling.
o It never seems to end.
o If there’s a moral, it’s a tiny thread that makes the cloth, you can’t tease it out or find meaning without unraveling deeper meaning.
o You might have no more to say than maybe “oh.”
o Makes the stomach believe
o Does not generalize, abstract, analyze
o Nothing is ever absolutely true.
o Often there is not a point that hits you right away…
o Never about war.
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Love, Spin, On the Rainy River
AGENDA:
Platoon:
TOPIC TRACKING ACTIVITY:
CONVERSATIONAL ROUND TABLE
BRAVERY, TRUTH, THE EFFECTS OF WAR
Discussion "On the rainy river"
http://www.curriculumcompanion.org/public/lite/mcdougalLittell/ml10/pdf/ml10_u4p2_rainy.pdf
Adrienne Rich, "Diving Into the Wreck"
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15228
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rich/wreck.htm
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
The id, the ego, the super ego: Freud's theory
http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/personalityelem.htm
A thought about symbolism: Elroy's role (from Shmoop)
On the Rainy River
So, O'Brien didn't really work in a meatpacking plant the summer before he went to Vietnam, and he didn't go up to the Canadian border to try to get away from the war and then chicken out and return home. It's a symbol for his mental state at the time. He can't get the nightmarish idea of slaughter out of his head – it's all he can think about – and so he thinks about running away. He's on the edge. Eventually, though, he backs off the edge. He doesn't go to Canada.Elroy Berdahl is an important symbol in all of this, as O'Brien explicitly states:
He was the true audience. He was a witness, like God, or like the gods, who look on in absolute silence as we live our lives, as we make our choices or fail to make them. (On the Rainy River.74)
If Berdahl is God (or your deity of choice – atheists, feel free to use the universe as a stand-in), then God is ambivalent here. He doesn't push Tim to make one choice or another, and he doesn't judge Tim either way. He's simply there, watching, and his presence is felt.
In small groups, please discuss "On a Rainy River":
(1) How do the opening sentences prepare you for the story: "This is one story I've never told before. Not to anyone"? What effect do they have on you, as a reader?
(2) Why does O'Brien relate his experience as a pig declotter? How does this information contribute to the story? Why go into such specific detail?
(3) What is Elroy Berdahl's role in this story? Would this be a better or worse story if young Tim O'Brien simply headed off to Canada by himself, without meeting another person?
(4) At the story's close, O'Brien almost jumps ship to Canada, but doesn't: "I did try. It just wasn't possible" (61). What has O'Brien learned about himself, and how does he return home as a changed person?
(5) Why, ultimately, does he go to war? Are there other reasons for going he doesn't list?
More questions for discussion:
Why is the first story told in the third person? What effect does it have on you as a reader to then switch to the first person in “Love”? O’Brien also uses the second person in this collection. For example, in “On the Rainy River,” the narrator, trying to decide whether to accept the draft or become a draft dodger, asks: “What would you do?” (page 56). Why does the author use these different perspectives?
Who is Elroy Bendahl, and why is he “the hero of [the narrator’s] life” (page 48)?
At the end of "On the Rainy River," the narrator makes a kind of confession: "The day was cloudy. I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie, and then to Vietnam, where I was a soldier, and then home again. I survived, but it's not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war" (61). What does this mean?
HMWK: Here is the website for The Big Read with lots of interesting information and a 28 minute radio interview with Tim O'Brien:
www.neabigread.org/books/thethingstheycarried/radioshow.phpRead the transcript and/or listen to the audio.
Read "Friends" and "Enemies" and "How to Tell a True War Story" for Tuesday
Link for "How to Tell a True War Story":
http://prezi.com/i7pnwqaf45c2/the-things-they-carried-lesson-plan/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)