Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Memory
After dissecting Cat's Cradle in class, initially with a close reading of the pretext and the first few pages, I decided to try a similar method when starting The Things They Carried. In the pretext of Cat's Cradle, we were able to determine early on that we should be wary of what we read in the book. In the pretext it said, "Nothing in this book is true," but we did not know according to who or what exactly the "book" constituted. The pretext none-the-less made us approach the text with hesitation. The pretext of The Things They Carried says, "Those who have had any such experience as the author will see its truthfulness at once, and to all other readers it is commended as a statement of actual things by one who experienced them to the fullest." Because the quote comes from John Ransom's Andersonville Diary, a true story account of a Civil War prison camp, I thought Ransom seemed trustworthy. Here, it seems that our questions on the trustworthiness of the text will not come from the narrator as much as it will come from the narrator's memory. We are being told from the point of view of John Ransom, that anyone who has experienced war (like he has) will find truth in the book, and if you have not experienced war, you can trust that the events really happened. But to what extent? Only time will tell.
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I really enjoy the idea you purpose between truth and trust. It does seem that we tend to believe what people tell us. We are even more inclined to believe in it, if we perceive it as the actual truth. It is a really intriguing idea, that as readers who are we suppose to trust? By drawing very accurate parallels between the pretext in Cat's Cradle and The Thing They Carried, you were able to reveal a clear idea between perception and deception.
ReplyDeleteI like how you saw the similarities between Cat's Cradle and The Things They Carried. The pretext of books can definitely tell us a lot about how the books is going to tell its story and how we should read it. Since most of The Things They Carried are O'Brien's recounts of his time at war or recounts of stories he was told be his troops, we have to be wary of how much is true. Also, a lot of his companions have habits of embellishing their tales. For example, Rat Kiley repeatedly has to tell everyone that his story about Mary Anne actually happened because he so frequently only sprinkles in the truth. I think it's interesting that we are being retold stories of stories that we are told may or may not be true.
ReplyDeleteHey Lily!
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting how you compared the "truthfulness" of these two vastly different books, by the pretext. I have not thought about it before, but really, especially in these two books, the pretexts are quite telling. I am not saying that we could get away with not reading the books...but if a student were feeling risky, he could simply read the pretext. From this, he will gather that Vonnegut is a chronic liar, and O'Brien is hard to understand unless if you have been in a similar situation. Because he starts with this pretext, O'Brien takes liberties. He is basically saying, "you're going to have to trust me", because we could not even imagine the events that happen in war. However, once we start to trust the author, we fall victim to his trap. "Busy, busy, busy".