A Memory, A Story

“I’m young and happy. I’ll never die. I’m skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it as Tim trying to save Timmy’s life with a story” (233).

If I could slip into the folds of time and tell myself a story about myself, a story that could convince me to believe, a story that needed to be heard, it would be a story about the good ol’ days when I was a child free of the responsibilities that come with age. In fact, it wouldn’t even have to be a complete story told to meet Sanders’ standards or one. It would just be a vignette-ish mass of words that could make me feel warm and sentimental and temporarily bring the dead to life.

It would sound along the lines of this:

My mother first met Grandpa Milton when she wore her hair in oversized, overpermed fluffs and curls. He made sure that her papers were free of awkward English, and that, she claimed, was how she passed her classes with high praise. In a picture of them together, taken right after her college graduation, they’re under the shade of a flowering tree, he’s wearing a pair of aviators and she’s still in her cap and gown. He’s beaming with pride and they look just like father and daughter, save for the differences that were only skin deep.

She called him Poppy, like the seeds on bagels, but that wasn’t why she called him that. It was Poppy, like an affectionate British slang for “Pops.” And with no daughter of his own, there was nobody else to call him Poppy or Dad or Father.

“When you were born, he was there right away ready to hold you. Then, for you birthday, the fourth one…or maybe it was the fifth…you said you wanted to wear the blue dress, the one with the pink ribbon because you knew he was coming to visit your class. You were so excited and told all of your friends that your grandfather was coming. Don’t you remember?”

I don’t, but there’s a picture with creased corners dated '97 tucked away safely in a photo album that proves my mother right (like usual).

Grandpa Milton was family. He gave me lucky money in used red envelopes that were so old that they were creased and crusty at the seal. He bought countless cups of mango pudding even after my mother screeched, “Don’t buy it! Sabrina already ate this and that. Poppy, don’t! You can’t have it either. Remember your diabetes!”

He simply laughed his mellow old man laugh.

My mother regularly took me to visit his studio by the East River. Time seemed stationary in Grandpa Milton’s studio, and because he didn’t have air conditioning; so on humid summer days, time lagged even more slowly.

I sat on the ledge by his window and stretch as far out as I could without falling down eleven floors to my death. Using his rusted binoculars, I scanned the city scene below me and through a film of grease on the lens, I saw boats bobbing left and right, right and left, cruising down the river. I wasted many afternoons watching white sails; they taught me that nothing was constant, but anything could be beautiful.

Memories and responsibilities are heavy, and if we reflect too much upon the past, on regrets, on trying to reconstruct emotions, on what we ought to do, on who we ought to be, then life, in itself, is an awfully heavy burden. Yet, as heavy as memories and responsibilities are, what we choose to remember and what we choose to do create who we are as individuals. The irony, though, is that sometimes when life becomes dreary, we need rekindle a warm memory to lighten our stresses and worries, our fears and inconsistencies.

My warmest memories are of people who I can no longer make memories with. And when their sounds and smells become increasingly harder to recall, I write down my memories to capture grains of truthfully felt emotions with even the slightest of details. I find that words are harder to muster when the memory, the inspiration, is fading. The words become heavy. The letters become heavy. But if I were to be left with nothing—no memories and no accounts of memories—the emptiness would be the greatest weight of all.

Troy Davis

In light of the recent execution of death row inmate Troy Davis, the debate about the truth of eyewitness testimony flares up again. Recently, studies have been conducted to determine the accuracy of eyewitness accounts and their power in convicting those on trial. These researchers and clinical analysts are delving into the same topic that we discuss every day in class: is what an individual perceives the truth of the matter?

Studies are finding that in any eyewitness account the witness can only tell the truth as he perceives it. Often times any act, but more pertinent to these studies - any crime, occurs so quickly that the brain doesn’t have time to process the events which are occurring. As a result the witness is left with only a fragmented series of incidents which the brain then attempts to reconstruct. This reconstruction is what the eyewitness recounts to the authorities, and often times does not reflect the events as they actually happened. The eyewitness, however, believes that his account of the events is accurate.

The brain cannot stand that the fragmented pieces of the story do not relate together. This is why it insists on reconstructing the events in a manner where they flow seamlessly. The human brain insists on having a set framework within which it can relate. The same thing happens when we are reading fiction novels. The brain finds it difficult to function on a level in which it cannot relate. Therefore it insists on interjecting its own perceptions to make the story fit into a more familiar framework and therefore, more believable or relatable. Therefore it is important for any story to contain a bit of truth. Without this the reader would not be able to relate to the story and would not become emotionally or mentally involved. Even in science-fiction novels, the relationships between characters or the struggles they endure are relatable to the reader. Without these grounding points, the reader would be unable to become involved in the fantasy world in which the characters live.

Like the narrator of a novel, we must be wary of how much trust we put into the eyewitness. The account was simply a reconstruction of the events from his perspective. This is no different than that of a narrator. In The Things They Carried the reader is introduced to an untrustworthy narrator, yet we still find ourselves being uncontrollably engaged in his story. In The Things They Carried Tim O’Brien the narrator tells us that all of his stories are untrue, and then begins to tell us one that is. He tells us how he didn’t actually kill a man but rather watched a man be killed. At the end of this story, however, he tells us that even this story is untrue. But even after we found out he lied for the first half of his book, we still wanted to believe the truth in his words. In the Troy Davis account, seven of nine eyewitnesses changed their testimonies after the trial. Although Troy Davis’s case went to multiple appeals courts, his verdict was upheld. This shows the tendency of people (or a jury) to believe something if it fits within a familiar framework or falls within their expectations. The jury believed these seven witnesses even though later they recanted their testimonies. This is the same as when the reader believes Tim O’Brien’s (the narrator’s) story even though he later admits that it was not true.

Bag of Weight

There is a weight that everyone carries whether they know of it or not. Sometimes it’s just the physical strain that ends up being the reminder. Sometimes it’s the thoughts that accompany it.

In my bag, I have a lot of things that pull against my shoulders. There is the weight of heartbreak somewhere within the pages. It is almost essential to have that within what is stored away. There is something about life that won’t let us get away without such a thing. There is pain from that, but then again, there is always pain amongst the weight. It is a burdening thing that stays with life through all the journeys.

There is weight from what joy there is in the world. It is not the grand type that comes at once in an event. There is only the small joy that tug at the corners of the mouth when there is a frown on one’s lips. It hides in a pocket within the bag, trying to hide its weight from the world. It can still be felt, but it is nothing that is worrying. The shoulders of the bag will still cut without it.

There’s a rock in the bag as well. It is a painful thing to carry because so much rides upon it. Responsibility does that to people. It hurts to carry the burden because it loves gravity, allowing itself to be pulled along with the movement. It is the greatest thing that one has to carry. To lighten the load would be impossible, as letting go of some only brings a different form of it back. It’s always taxing.

Then there’s love. Love is an unusual thing to carry around with everything in the bag. It is like the joy that tries to stay light. But that is just dressing up what it really is. People tend to forget what is what when they carry their bag. But love is always an interesting thing to carry. It floats and sinks the straps into your skin. It hurts but one cannot part with it easily. It can bring pain and make the weight feel like it’s gone. The double edge sword of what burdens us is always the most dangerous.

I carry lies with me as well. They are too much like the truth because I give them life. It is not in the way that I give them meaning, but the way that I let them mean something to me. A writer tells a story of truths and lies. Sometimes there is a practiced ease to it. Sometimes there’s a shake of death that haunts one in the middle of the night. There’s a sense that the weight can play on both sides, yet be equally as punishing. The line between definitions blur with such use. Even my own mind cannot tell the difference between the weight.

But have I lied to myself again?

(Author’s Note: This is a response to the first chapter of The Things They Carried. I wanted to list things that can be carried that are not physical objects that can be weighed but rather the emotional things that people feel “burdened” by. There is also the part that, towards the end, brings about the question of the control of the author over the reader as well as the author’s ability to tell the truth.)

The Contradicitons of War

I believe in class someone brought up that the chapter “How to Write a True War Story” could be seen as a metaphor for the Vietnam War or war in general. I want to build on that thought. We noted how O’Brien’s rules for how to write a true war story often contradicted each other. He says that war stories have no moral and then later references the moral of a true war story. He says they have no point and then talks about the point of a true war story. A war story is true if you cannot believe it but it is true if your stomach believes it. It is a very confusing chapter, but then again, war itself is confusing and full of contradictions.

At the end of “On the Rainy River,” O’Brien declares that he “was a coward. [He] went to the war” (p. 58). He goes to war to avoid the embarrassment of being called a coward, but fighting and killing in a war he does not agree with is an act of cowardice. He is a coward if he stays and a coward if he goes. This contradiction leads to another. Is it right to kill the enemy, or wrong to kill someone you do not even know? Is a soldier a hero or a villain? It is a matter of perception. To their respective countries, soldiers are heroes, fighting for freedom and their homeland. To the opposing side, soldiers are villains, killing friends and family members, destroying homes and livelihoods. We are taught that it is wrong to kill our fellow man, but right to kill for our country.

When a man goes to war, his morality and his identity are often split in two. The emotional crisis of this split is described in “The Man I Killed.” O’Brien kills the man because he had a weapon and that is what he was told was the right thing to do. Kiowa assures him, “No choice, Tim. What else could you do?...Right?” (p. 36). But he as he looked at the man and thought of who the dead man could have been, he felt in his gut that it was the wrong. Soldiers are taught to think of the enemies as less than human, but how can they when the enemies are clearly human?

Soldiers are lied to in order to be motivated; soldiers lie to other soldiers to comfort them; soldiers lie to themselves to deal with their burdens. So how can a true war story not include lies?

On the Rainy River

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried submerges the reader in the intense emotions of war. As a male college student roughly the same age as the characters in this novel, I identify and empathize deeply with these “boys.” Tim O’Brien’s “On the Rainy River” chapter torn at my heart strings the most out of all the stories we have read thus far; the emotions of fear, shame, and cowardliness that the character Tim O’Brien shared with his readers are the same emotions I believe that I would feel in that same situation. In fact, I may have been so inclined to try to literally “run away” from my problems as well.

This story is so believable.

I should have known better. O’Brien never ran away to the Canadian border. He never stayed at the Tip Top Lodge. As Tim O’Brien expressed during his “How to Tell a True War Story” chapter:

“In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. It’s a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness.”

Tim O’Brien talks specifically about credibility. By inserting himself into this fictional piece, Tim O’Brien gives his stories—especially “On the Rainy River”—an immense amount of credibility. However, this short story is about Tim O’Brien’s character and not the author himself. It’s easy to forget this because by using his own name, the line between the fictional Tim O’Brien and the author Tim O’Brien is blurred. It makes the story more believable.

With this entire entry mind and after reading O’Brien’s first line in this chapter, I felt violated when I read in the copyright page that “On the Rainy River” has been already previously published in Playboy. Tim O’Brien promised the reader, “This is one story I’ve never told before.” Yet, I had no reason to feel this betrayal. Although Tim O’Brien actually told this story before and the story itself did not even happened, it does not mean that this story is not true. Yes—I was a sucker for trying to believe and make truth of every word in this chapter. However, this story is true because it portrays the emotions that all of us would feel in the exact same position as Tim’s character. It may not be an accurate representation of the factual events of Tim O’Brien’s life, but a story certainly represents the true feelings of the many of our war heroes today.

Enemies and Friends

In class we never touched on the chapters Enemies and Friends, both of which I found very interesting. By definition, enemies and friends are oppositional; an enemy being an adversary or opponent, and a friend being a person attached to another by feelings of affection. However, in these chapters Jensen and Strunk are both. But perhaps their relationship is less paradoxical than it seems. The definitions of enemies and friends given above are definitions that apply to traditional society, but these definitions shift in times of war. As O’Brien says, “In any other circumstance, it might’ve ended there. But this was Vietnam” (p. 59). During war, the term enemy is typically a reference to the opposing side, so when describing a personal relationship, “enemy” seems to be a less severe term. As compared to the larger conflict and enemy in the Vietnam War, Jensen and Strunk’s conflict seems miniscule, and using “enemy” to define their relationship seems too harsh. Similarly, “friends” is a term whose definition shifts contextually. In traditional society, “friends” has a positive connotation. However, in times of war this connotation shifts to something more negative. Based on the pact that they signed, Jensen and Strunk’s friendship now serves as a reminder of the imminence of death. So the definitional shift of these two terms based on a war context connotationally brings the terms much closer together. Jensen and Strunk’s friendship is more negative, and their rivalry less severe than originally perceived, making the chapters Enemies and Friends somewhat less paradoxical.

The perception of irony in these two chapters also shifts contextually. In Enemies, Jensen and Strunk have a physical fight despite them being on the same side of the Vietnam War. At a macro level, this internal fight may seem ironic, but when viewed at a more local, relational level, their fight seems understandable. At the end of Friends, Jensen is relieved to hear about Strunk’s death despite their previously established friendship. Again at the macro level, this seems ironic because we assume that one is supposed to grieve for a friend, not feel relief at their death. But in terms of Jensen and Strunk’s relationship, the relief that Jensen feels is understandable because he did not want to face the guilt of breaking the pact if Strunk had lived.

I think that O’Brien (the author) did these things on purpose in order to further emphasize the different world of war. By taking what we believe to be true in traditional society and distorting it, he is able to convey the completely different way of life during war, a way of life that would otherwise be much harder to understand. I also believe that the placement of these two chapters was very purposeful. Placed after the long, eloquent and anecdotal chapter On The Rainy River, these two concise and blunt chapters are a sudden shock, reminding us of the brutality of war.

The Things They Carried/Cat's Cradle

Our discussions in class have brought to my attention several similarities between The Things They Carried and Cat's Cradle. First is the possibility of both authors writing themselves into their respective texts. In TTTC, this is quite apparent as the author and the narrator share a name. Tim O'Brien the author was a Vietnam veteran, in his mid 40s when he was writing his book about the war, with a wife and two children, just like Tim O'Brien the character. In CC the parallels between author and narrator are more subtle, but still prevalent. Although the narrator begins by saying "call me Jonah," he then says that Jonah is not his real name, which means his name very well could be Kurt. When "Jonah" encounters a stone angel with his own last name carved into it, we do not learn what the name is, only that it is German, which leaves open the possibility that the name could be Vonnegut (he was of German descent). Vonnegut and "Jonah" both hail from Indiana, both were members of the Delta Upsilon fraternity at Cornell, both are writers, both are skeptical of religion. So, in both TTTC and CC, biographical facts of the authors line up with those of their narrators.

Another interesting similarity between the novels is that they both claim in some way not to have meaning. In fact, both books tell the reader directly that their contents are untrue. While I think that in both cases the reader is meant to understand that the books do in fact deliver a message, their claims not to are almost what drive the texts. In TTTC the characters discuss how the stories they tell have no morals or lessons to teach, that they are simply stories. O'Brien the narrator even says that there is no such thing as a true war story, and that after twenty years of telling stories he still cannot find their meaning. And of course in CC, we are immediately confronted with "nothing in this book is true," which leads us to question both the author's and the narrator's intention behind everything they include in the book. Also, Bokononism is a religion based on lies, further blurring the line between true and false, truth and lies within the context of the story.

I think both novels use these tricks to highlight some themes of the class: how do we define truth/reality? Why does the truth matter? How can we be manipulated to believe certain truths? I wonder if other texts we read will continue to follow these patterns.

We Keep Searching

Why do we continue to desire the factual truth when it can't be ascertained? Readers are relentless in their search for truths. I was reminded of this near the end of our class discussion today when the ending was “spoiled” for us. In the chapter entitled “Good Form”, we are initially led to be believe that Tim O'Brien, the real author, is going to set aside his jumble of truth and fiction to present the reader with the “real” facts. Not surprisingly, most of us, including me, fell for this ploy. This one paragraph where we, as readers, believe we will actually be given some reliable information seems to be such a believable relief that we latch on.

Of course, O'Brien gives us no such relief. We are still as unsure as we were on the first page. What I find interesting about this is that we so desperately want the absolute truth from O'Brien, even after he was spent almost 200 pages and the majority of the book telling us this is not possible or even true. A true war story is never true yet we can't just accept this and move on, probably because a true war story is flooded with contradictions. O'Brien reminds us of these contradictions at the end of “Good Form.”

““Daddy, tell the truth,” Kathleen can say, “did you ever kill anybody?” And I can say, honestly, “Of course not.” Or I can say, honestly, “Yes.””

These sentences really pack a lot of meaning. I think there placement just after the trickery I described above is O'Brien's way of making sure that the readers who were tricked at the beginning of the chapter understand that this book doesn't contain the sort of truth that is either yes or no. These truths are driven by emotion and storytelling. They allow the reader to feel grief, love, and pity.

And so if the question is whether O'Brien killed a man or not, the answer is yes or no depending if you want the emotional truth or the “happening” truth.

Feeling the Way They Felt

"He [Rat] wanted to heat up the truth, to make it burn so hot that you would feel exactly what he felt (84)."

Is a story, or a memory, a lie because it is embellished? Because it is enhanced with detail, with passion? Does a story even need to happen the way it is told for someone to fully understand and comprehend that moment in time? I believe that a story doesn't always need to be made of 100 percent truth, and that it can be blasted with an almost false detail in order truthful.

Why do we tell stories? We tell stories in order to re-enact a moment in our life that we feel was extraordinary, even sometimes in the smallest way. We want to make the listener feel how we felt when we were there. We want them to feel happy, sad, excited, annoyed, anxious; we want them to feel the emotions we felt. Whether your describing a funny thing that happened today, a sports event in your life, or the oddest thing that happened to you the other day, you will find that you tend to, without even thinking about it, embellish the story and add details in to make it more full of a story. And when you feel as if the listener isn't understanding, isn't feeling the same emotions as you felt at that time, is it not so that you start to embellish your stories just a little more. This is because stories are not about the words or the actions, but about the emotions of the moment and the feelings that are created.

This is why I believe that, although The Things They Carried is a piece of fiction, it is more non-fiction then lies. Tim O'Brien isn't trying to show you what happened to these men. He isn't trying to tell you what they carried, how they felt when comrades died, how they reacted to women they love and even how the forest looked around them. He is trying to make you feel the emotions that these soldiers carried (The Things They Carried?) during Vietnam. He wants you to feel how it feels to know the one you love doesn't love you back, to feel the pain of loosing a brother, to feel the confusion of the land, to feel the emotions of the soldiers. This is what makes O’Brien’s book more of a memoir then his actually memoir. It’s the emotions.

"All truth passes through three stages.

First, it is ridiculed,

Second, it is violently opposed,

Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

-Arthur Schopenhaur

The Things We Did Carried

Tim O'Brien's novel is a work of art, in my opinion. It is easy to get lost in the message but then again the message is being delivered through a fake story. Everything is told vividly, you can picture the buffalo, but someone had to pay. That poor animal was just at the right place to demonstrate the power of the lies. Then again would that be far from of what we are capable?

I have read stories of what US troops did, especially during the start of the war before engagement restrictions were implemented. They did some horrific things, but would going to the extreme of what war does to a man change the message of the book?

My uncle served in the military force when my native country was at war with itself. Only my dad told me that my uncle was a changed man from the war. Perhaps it was the fact that he knew he was killing his countrymen. Whatever it was he was carrying from the war, he drank it down like most veterans.

The things that we all carried must play a role in the person we are. The soldiers of Alpha Company all carried things that gave them comfort, helped them think they could make it another day. The things we carry help us make it through the day, but what are those things that you carry?

Physical vs. Emotional

Although I had already read The Things They Carried, the first chapter blew me away yet again. Reading the list of what the men carry gave me a new perspective on how to view what everyone carries with each step they take. It is not only the clothes on our body and the books in our backpack, but the gravity on our shoulders and the entirety of our life as well-literally and figuratively. We carry our body, our internal knowledge and our past. In my opinion, most of what people carry is internal rather than external. This is portrayed by how the men walk. O’Brien writes, “In its intransitive form, to hump meant to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive,” (3). What is truly weighing the men down is their fear of war, fear of being a coward, responsibility of the lives of men in their platoon and the fear of dying. The emotional baggage is weighing them down more than the physical.

What struck me most in the portion where O’Brien discusses the weapons that the men carry was the last sentence: “They carried all they could bear, and then some, including a silent awe for the terrible power of the things they carried,” (7). What is frightening about a weapon is not its name, or size, or color or weight, but rather the damage that it can cause. Similarly, it is not the pictures of Martha that present an issue, but Cross’ love for her that he expresses by carrying the photos and distracts him at a pivotal moment. The implications of the facts, I think, is what O’Brien tries to highlight in these passages and in the book overall. What the men carry is important because of what those objects represent to their owner and to each other. Likewise, the stories that O’Brien tells are important for what they show about humanity and war, not the actuality of the events. In class we discussed “emotional truth” and “actual truth.” The beauty of the novel is that O’Brien captivates the reader and makes him believe the actual truth, but the point in doing so is to capture the emotional truth. Regardless of what truly happened to O’Brien, the emotions that he displays through his work are real.

Led Astray

I read The Things They Carried my junior year of high school. A few days ago, when I was reintroduced to the book again in this class, I learned that I was led astray by my teacher junior year. Not once did we mention that The Things They Carried was a work of fiction. Instead, my teacher presented the book to us in such a realistic way that our discussions ended up being about posttraumatic stress disorder and the effects of war. She made our purpose in reading the book to be a lesson in the realities of war.

Rereading it, in this class, under a totally new light, I cant help but feel kind of cheated. I thought that the war stories were at least based off of O’Brien’s personal experience (I guess that’s still up for debate considering our class discussion today). But even still, I took the stories as they were presented to me, as truths. Part of me took the book so seriously because its about war. Society teaches you to treat veterans and their stories with the utmost respect, and rightfully so. They were brave, they fought for our freedom, they made the ultimate sacrifice. So who am I to say that their stories never happened, I have never been to war. And if what we have established so far in class (that when we “remember” things get skewed out of proportion) I don’t even have the slightest clue as to what its actually like. What I’m trying to say in all this is that being “lied to” is never a good feeling, but when it comes to “lying” about war stories, it hurts that much more.

Even if I learn nothing from now until the end of this class, it was still worth taking. I am no longer the blind-trusting reader that I was in the past. Truth, Lies and Lit has taught me to question the “truthfulness” of authors and pay closer attention to details that I would normally read right over.

Re-imagining

Continuously reconstructing memories through story is continuously re-imagining the ways they affect our lives and worlds. Maybe if we do it enough times we'll start to understand at least some of the past, and at least some of where we go from here. It doesn't have to make sense. We just need to understand, as O'Brien says, with our gut. Communication goes beyond logic and facts.

This is a poem/short fiction I wrote in response to Tim O'Brien's theme about remembering, rehappening, and evoking different responses every time -- maybe even constructing different truths every time.

Reimagining:

She was gone and I didn’t even know her name, and I still don’t. I found out in an e-mail one day when I was taking shelter from too much homework, and I looked at the message and for a moment I was wistful.

Don’t tell me it’s not my story. I remember.

I remember her friend standing beside me on a sunny afternoon, and she was smiling and I was smiling. The wind stirred the grass and we talked about school, and suddenly she was telling me,

“She and I had a joke about hot wings.”

No, wait. I remember. I remember.

Back on that day— the day with too much homework and the bright bar of the message in my inbox, I did know her name — I don’t now, but I did then — her name was in the message, a girl gone a few weeks before summer.

I remember typing that name into a search box and finding a small, short poem about friendship she’d written some day before I knew.

I remember.

I remember typing that name into a search box and finding a small, short poem about the future.

Wait, wait. Listen.

I remember her friend standing beside me and maybe she was smiling but it didn’t reach her eyes, and what she was really telling me was “I miss her” and I couldn’t think of what to tell her back… but

I remember tears and hugging someone clumsily and for a moment the world standing still.

It’s my story, too.

I reimagine.

The Things They Carried

The title of this novel, along with the title of the first chapter, creates an uneasy sense of understanding for the reader. The things that the soldiers in this novel carry are described by O'Brian as physical objects such as weapons, clothing, and drugs. Behind the scenes however are the things the men truly carry; the mental strain, the feelings of loneliness, and numerous other hardships that come along with a time at war.
The best example is that of First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross; he had to deal with the hardship of being away from his forbidden love Martha. Martha is beauty, she is innocence, in a way Martha is America. All the men carry feelings similar to those of Lieutenant Cross and within that fact lies the first misleading detail from narrator O'Brian. These men sacrifice their lives for the good of what they are fighting for and what they are fighting for is what they will willing die for. Whether that is their family, their love, or their own lives it is all the underlying details of the truth that they fight for their country and they carry with them the thought of their homeland where ever they march.
O'Brian successfully tells us a physical story that is easy to understand and comprehend but at the same time hides details beneath the surface the signal the true meaning of hardship for the men of the Alpha company. So even before you open the first page you are already thrown into a world of illusions just from reading the title. This gives the reader and unsettling feeling from the get-go which could only lead to an entire novel of facts that one will second guess at every turn. I cannot help but get the feeling that throughout this novel I will be reading two stories, one that is written down in words and another that is inbetween the lines written by narrator O'Brian.

Embarrassment

People constantly and purposefully avoid embarrassment throughout their daily lives. They check themselves in mirrors to avoid hair or wardrobe mishaps. They chew on gum and mints relentlessly to avoid bad breath. They endeavor on the regimes of unhealthy fad diets, in order to avoid looking out of shape for swimsuit season. Now, while these embarrassment-avoidant activities are not harmful, the harm that is done from the more important choices people make to avoid embarrassment makes me wonder whether taking such measures to avoid embarrassment is really worth it.

It frustrates me that Tim O’Brien, the author and narrator of The Things They Carried, claims he originally decided to fight in Vietnam because he was too embarrassed to not go to war. He worried that people would be talking about him constantly, as though that would be the one characteristic that would define him for the rest of his life. O’Brien’s narration about why he decided to go to war irritated me because he ultimately resulted in compromising his beliefs in order to avoid embarrassment. Additionally, at one point in the story, O’Brien states that the worst fear for a soldier is the fear of blushing. I am puzzled as to why it is so important to avoid showing other soldiers that embarrassment.

Personally, I would equate pride to be the opposite emotion to embarrassment. Ironically, if I faced O'Brian's choice, and I determined to not follow my draft because I was, on principle, against the war, I would be proud to be standing up for what I believe in.

Cowardice is a reoccurring theme throughout this story, and I think O’Brien wrongly connects embarrassment with cowardice. Being scared, and therefore acting cowardly, is an integral part of human nature. We, as humans, are programmed with the need for self-preservation, so it is natural for us to cry at the sight of death and fear our own death as well. Therefore, being scared is not a reason to be embarrassed. Embarrassment appears to be just a social construct that has been formed out of traditional expectations from society for individuals. We do certain things to avoid embarrassment, so that we escape the negative judgment from society. The harmful element of this process comes into play when we find ourselves doing things we would not have done otherwise, in order to escape embarrassment, similar to O’Brien opting to fight in the Vietnam war. When we start acting in different ways, we alter the expression of our true selves, our beliefs and our principles.

Don’t let the fear of embarrassment keep you from standing up for what you believe in.

CNN vs BBC

After reading the article connecting Shakespeare to bin Laden, it brought me back to the day he died. I thought it was interesting that parties were thrown, mass gatherings around the White House occurred (I have friends in school in D.C. who posted pictures of the gatherings), and in general people were celebrating the loss of another human life. Obviously, the man in question was undeniably evil and cause pain and suffering to so many people, but our response to that day was just as awful and caused so many more deaths. I could not see it in myself to celebrate the death of another human despite everything I knew about this man. I did not pity him either – I was just neutral. His death did not change anything; the war is still going on and nothing changed on that particular day. News reports said it brought justice, but bin Laden was only one person involved and where was the justice for all the people killed overseas?

I learned about what happened because of various Facebook statuses, so wanting more accurate information I turned to CNN. I couldn’t find the exact article from that night, but the first line was something along the lines of, “America’s biggest enemy has been killed when Navy SEALs stormed into bin Laden’s secret hideout. And finally justice is brought to the American people…etc., etc., with a pile of adjectives that showed the journalist’s bias.” It was written like an action story and seemed so utterly unrealistic that I took a step back and decided to view an international news source that wasn’t stationed in America. So, BBC was my answer. This news was the headline on the website as well so I clicked the article and the first sentence went something like this, “The leader of al Quida, Osama bin Laden, has been killed during a raid on his supposed hideout by American Navy SEALs.” Then, as expected from a news article, it listed details and said they would update as soon as more was clear. The juxtaposition between the two articles was surprising and it really went to show how biased a work can be and how the author can easily manipulate the reader to feel a certain way. The CNN article tried to bring out a sense of patriotism and made the event into a spectacle instead of giving the public straight, unbiased facts. I thought this fit in well with this class and what the author’s intentions are. Sometimes, the intentions are not as clear or obvious unless you have something that you can directly use in contrast.

The Meaning of What?

Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle ranks as one of my most initially unsatisfying reads of all time. I purposely underlined “initially” because the more I thought and reflected about the book, the more it made sense; I appreciated the novel. How one chooses to read this book reflects on its value to that individual.

If one were to read Cat’s Cradle at face value, they might experience a similar reaction to my first, quick read of the novel. It’s stupid. It has no purpose. I feel like I wasted my time reading this book. Pretty harsh words, but I thought the characters were unbelievable, events were unrealistic, and novel had no overall purpose or meaning.

What if one was to go beyond the surface? I took a deeper plunge into the novel, sparked by our Tuesday discussion. The result? I think the book is actually really clever! When Janelle paused during class on Tuesday to ask the glossy-eyed me if I was still with the class, I snapped out of my daze and apologized. However, the reason I “zoned out” in the first place was the novel had me thinking about the purpose of life—Is life meaningless (like my initial thoughts of the book)?

Cat’s Cradle focuses around Jonah’s novel: The Day the World Ended. Jonah seeks out the children of the Felix Hoenikker, the “father” of the atom bomb, to see what important people were doing during the Hiroshima bomb. Through his research, Jonah discovers Felix’s madness—the man does not care about any of the consequences of his scientific achievements. Ultimately, It was Felix’s invention of ice-nine (and not the atom bomb) that caused what I consider the end of the world.

It was mainly this idea of science without careful consideration that triggered my own reflections about life itself. This novel ends almost abruptly, with ice-nine covering the earth. It made me think how about how life is fragile; almost anything can end life at any moment. We are all just a car accident or walk in the street away from the end. Morbid, I know. Although some may view the end of this book as hopeful, I find utterly depressing. Only a few characters we know are left on earth; there is no hope for repopulation and life is truly trivial. There is literally nothing for the characters to do, except survive for the sake of living. Yet, are our lives any better? Humans create this fabricated meaning; we go to school, we get jobs, we have families… but what’s the point? It is just something for us to do.

I hate to think in this way because these reflections are really depressing. However, Vonnegut writes this existentialist tale to toy with our human emotions. Vonnegut challenges us to think deeper and to really question the idea of “meaning.” Although I initially believed this book had no substance, I truly see it as a work of art.

"Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit." – Marcel Proust

I think that this quote fits Cat’s Cradle perfectly. Lies are essential to the people of San Lorenzo, and they are their only pleasures. Without the lies of Bokononism, San Lorenzans would be forced to confront their realities. Although the followers of Bokonon know that the whole religion is a lie, they would rather have a lie to believe in than to only live with the truth. However this doesn’t only apply to the people of San Lorenzo, we all escape from our daily lives in some way.

We all know that most forms of entertainment are essentially lies; Harry Potter isn’t real (I know I wish he were too) and Spongebob doesn’t exist either. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pretend like they do. As Marcel Proust said, lies are in essence dictated by the pursuit of pleasure. I know I would prefer to escape into a good fantasy novel or participate in a fantasy world through a video game than I would like to escape into the world of my chemistry book. Sure I think the sciences are interesting and extremely valuable to understand (I’m planning on majoring in science), but reading a textbook full of “truths” is just not as pleasurable as escaping into a good lie.

It is interesting however that “truth” does help to make the lies more immersive. Like the lying exercise we did in the beginning of the semester where most lies we told had some truth in them, the “truths” in science help to make some of the lies that we escape into more convincing. The first video games were nothing like the ones we have today and either were the first movies. It was much harder to escape into the fantasy world of Pong than it is to journey into the games of today. The same goes for movies; it’s a lot easier to imagine being in the realm of movies today than it was when the original Nosferatu was first released. Things just seem a lot more realistic, and that generally makes them more immersive (again truths making the lies more fulfilling).

Just yesterday when I knew I should be studying for my upcoming biology and chemistry tests, I instead decided to escape into the Medieval Era through a video game. Although I definitely know that I am not actually on horseback leading an army of spearmen and archers, for the period of time that I am playing the game, it almost feels like it. I am not riding a real horse, wielding a real sword, or commanding a real army, but I am doing all of that in the virtual world. The virtual world is a “lie” but it sucks me in and entertains me and anyone else who enjoys playing videogames, reading, or watching movies. I agree with Marcel Proust's statement that, "Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit."

<-Nosferatu

(unrelated to Nosferatu )
This song reminds me of escaping from the "truths." Nightwish is my favorite band and I know that the keyboardist/song writer is an escapist. He loves Disney for that reason and many of his songs deal with the realm of fantasy. This song, "Away", to me represents traveling to a dreamworld, far from the confines of reality; listening to it takes me into that world.