Tim O'Brien
American
Published 1990
Politics | Social/Cultural
| Art | Life
| Pictures | Links
| Glossary | Questions
| Group
Questions | Secondary
Sources
Day
1 | Day 2 | Day 3
Transcript
to
Two Days in October
When
reading a longer work such as a novel, it's best to keep track of the
page numbers of your annotations on a note card for ready reference.
I suggest keeping track of your annotations based on the questions on the Essay #2 Assignment page and on the topics below:
Truth v. fiction;
Courage;
Love;
Loss;
Politics;
Day dreams/hallucinations;
Repetition; Memory; Grief; Coping |
Audio and video we used in
class:
Readings
Introduction
Here we begin a look at a different genre -- the novel. And The
Things
They Carried is a great introduction to this genre
because it will seem very familiar after short stories. It's
constructed from interconnected stories that cumulatively pack
the
emotional punch and sustenance of a novel. We'll be looking at
the
title rather closely: one of the "things" we'll be working is to
figure
out just what this novel is "about" -- and it isn't just "about"
the
war.
The
Times
Political
Given the contentious nature of American involvement in the war,
it's
especially important to understand the political background
surrounding
the war chapters.
In the 50s, the lines between good and evil were clear:
America=democracy=good -- Russia/China= communism=evil. The
Cold War was at the sub-zero mark, with kids practicing the desk
protection system (ducking under their desks for protection when
they
saw the flash of an explosion), people building bomb shelters in
their
back yards, and by the early 60s, enemy nukes on our shores
(Cuba). This led to an undercurrent of malaise disturbing
the
seemingly placid facade of the 50s: fear is a powerful drug,
often
rendering things like reason and morality powerless -- and for
all the
country-clubs and drive-ins and days at the beach with Biff and
Barb,
we were very fearful in the fifties.
When Vietnam seemed headed towards communism in the 50s,
American political and military leaders grew worried that all of
Southeast Asia would gradually succumb to the lure of communism
(the
Domino Theory). This would mean that the subcontinent of
Asia
would be, in the "us v. them" vernacular of the time,
"lost." While the Geneva Accord (1956) stipulated that free
elections were to be held throughout Vietnam to determine its
fate, the
leader of South Vietnam, Diem, blocked the elections, with the
support
of the US (both Diem and the US knew that in free elections, the
Vietnamese people would vote for unification under a communist
rule). The North Vietnamese, tired of waiting for a
political
solution to the country's division, opted for a military one.
Two years earlier, in 1954 (after the French lost their
war [called the Indochina War] in a decisive defeat in Dien Bien
Phu),
the CIA had begun funding covert operations against North
Vietnam (see
Gulf of Tonkin above for how we became more directly
involved). Since the US had just defended (and tentatively
won) a war to defend an Asian country from the evil of communism
(South
Korea), we were primed to act again to support "national
security
interests." Of course, one nation's "national security" is
another's "war of independence," and we found out rather quickly
that
not everyone in Vietnam was ready to welcome the smiling face of
American democracy with open arms. Our response to this
equivocation by Vietnam was simple: as one US military official
said
regarding a Vietnamese hamlet that had been reduced to charred,
smoking
ruins by a napalm strike: "we had to destroy the village in
order to
save it."
The narrator's induction and service in the army occur
in 1968, a year which marks a turning point in American
politics. Four major events occurred that year: the Tet
Offensive; the assassination of Martin Luther King; the
assassination
of Robert Kennedy; and the Democratic Convention in
Chicago. The Tet Offensive, attacks by the North Vietnamese
throughout South Vietnam (including the American Embassy in
Saigon)
during the Vietnamese New Year (Tet) celebrations, weakened
support for
the war among citizens at home. Our officials had been framing
the war
as a "wrap up" operation with the enemy on the run. When
film
of the attacks, including summary executions (see below) and US
soldiers cowering behind walls within the embassy in Saigon, was
beamed
into living rooms in full color, many Americans finally began to
see
that there was a disjunct between what the military said about
the war,
and what was actually occurring on the ground. And this
interpretation is not just idle peacenik speculation: as
the
publication of the Pentagon Papers revealed in 1971 and as then
Secretary of War Robert McNamara has more recently revealed in a
self-serving mea culpa
memoir (In Retrospect, 1996), much of what the
government reported to the American people about the war were,
to be
blunt, lies.
South Vietnamese National Police Chief Brig Gen. Nguyen
Ngoc Loan executes a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon at the height
of Tet
(1968). This photo and the film of the execution considerably
weakened
American support for the war.
(AP Photo/Eddie Adams)
Click to enlarge
The assassination of Martin Luther King touched off
rioting in most major US cities, and (sadly -- why is it that
someone
has to be martyred to move people?) probably ensured the success
(such
as it was/is) of the civil rights movement. The rioting led
to
an increased police/military presence -- a student of mine
recalled
going to work every morning in Northern Jersey with armored
personnel
carriers rumbling in the streets -- which fed the general
feeling of
unease started by the Tet Offensive.
Still, there was the hope of "doveish" political
leaders, like Bobby Kennedy, who had changed from a "hawkish"
view of
the war in his brother's administration, to a more
reconciliatory
approach towards the conflict. Sirhan Bishara Sirhan ended
this faint ray of hope with a handgun in a Los Angeles hotel.
The photo
on the right shows Kennedy being comforted by a busboy.
The brutal police suppression of demonstrations outside
the Democratic Convention in Chicago -- broadcast to the nation
at
large -- showed a nation at war with itself, and the violence
unwittingly became associated with the Democratic nominee,
Hubert
Humphrey, insuring Nixon's election as president.
The cumulative effect of these events meant that O'Brien
and, of course, the nation faced a society in flux, a time when
accepted political values and beliefs were being challenged; we
had
moved from the paternalism of Eisenhower to the "what you can do
for
your country" of Kennedy, but had yet to agree on what to "do."
The aftermath of the war, which help shape the
narrator's thoughts, included a curtailment of the enlightened
ideals
of President's Johnson's "Great Society" (circa 1964-68) --
freedom
from poverty, illiteracy, etc. -- which were compromised by the
costs
of the war effort. Money that could/should have been used to
counter
social ills was spent financing the war (final cost, 1 trillion
dollars). And of course, the political backlash against
military actions and fear of causalities has changed America's
foreign
and military policy. We're more wary of incursions into
other
territories for fear of body bags (notice how quickly we exited
Somalia
after "Black Hawk Down"), and rely now on "Smart Bombs" and
other
ordnance instead of soldiers on the ground. Unfortunately, one
of the
main "lessons" our government has learned from the war is to
control
information and to spread misinformation (no more reporters
tagging
along in helicopters to send compromising footage back home to
the
folks in Peoria).
And
then, of course, there's the rhyming of history: here we are, four
decades (and counting) after the end of the Vietnam war, and we're
still trying to bring democracy to other foreign lands at the point of
a gun.
Social/Cultural
The events in the novel occur against a background of
liberation:
Women's Rights, Civil Rights, youth rights . . . in other words,
a time
of change. The various constituencies agitating for change were
responding to the 50s (cf. Modernist's response to the
repression of
the 19th century), a time of drive-ins, stay-at-home moms, and a
conservative government embodied by Dwight Eisenhower. In
the
50s, if you were different, you were a beatnik and your opinions
were
marginalized. If you protested too strongly, you could find
yourself
labeled a communist (remember, the temperature of the Cold
War was around zero at
this time), and find yourself out of a job (McCarthyism). This
was
a time when God, Guns and Guts ruled the land: the words "under
God" were inserted in the Pledge of Allegiance in the 50s, and
Westerns
(white man with a revolver and courage saves the world) were all
the
rage. But the war years of the novel takes place in the
interim period, when America was making the change from Leave it
to
Beaver to Laugh-In (which was, if you aren't familiar with it, a
politicized Saturday Night Live).
Yet while many agitated for change, there were some --
who Nixon mistakenly labeled "the silent majority" -- who wanted
things
to remain the same. Think of it as Levitt
town v. Haight Asbury -- hard hats v. egg heads (note that the
segregationist George Wallace was a candidate for president in
1968). And that last contrast gets at an essential part of
the
debate of the war -- and of American culture in general:
anti-intellectualism. Consider the loci of the protests:
college campuses. For those in favor of the war, the
problem
with the protesters was that they thought too much. Joseph E.
Sintoni,
a soldier who later died in the war, wrote to his fiancee' "The
press,
the television screen, the magazines are filled with the images
of
young men burning their draft cards to demonstrate their
courage. Their
rejection is of the ancient law that a male fights to protect
his own
people and his own land" (252). He adds "We must do the job God
set
down for us. It's up to every American to fight for the
freedom we hold so dear. We must instruct the young in the
ways of these great United States"(252). Joseph represents the
Levitt
town approach to war -- God, Guns and Guts. The ideals of
the
Haight can be found in Mark Rudd's open letter to his college
president, Grayson Kirk, of Columbia University: "We do have a
vision
of the way things could be: how the tremendous resources of our
economy
could be used to eliminate want, how people in other countries
could be
free from your domination, how a university could produce
knowledge for
progress, not waste, consumption, and destruction . . . . how
men could
be free to keep what they produce, to enjoy peaceful lives, to
create"
(248). These two competing visions were at the root of
American views of the war and its causes -- and the catalyst for
much
of the internal strife.
Of course, I'm painting a rather rigid
dichotomy. Many Americans rejected Sintoni's jingoism just
as
they objected to Rudd's idealism. And there were many who,
I'm
sure, really could care less as long as the Dodgers still played
and
the Milwaukee's' Best still flowed. Sad, isn't it, how some
things never change.
For a "you are there" perspective, read Don Duncan's "The
Whole
Thing Was a Lie!," a serviceman and participant's take
on the Vietnam war. This is an edited version: see me for the
entire
essay.
It's important to note that, contrary to the stereotype
of Vietnam veterans as seething cauldrons of repressed anger
ready to
explode at a moment's notice, most veterans readjusted to
civilian life
as well as veterans of previous wars. Yet serving in Vietnam was
a
different experience from previous war. For one thing,
soldiers were not assigned for the duration of the conflict:
soldiers
only had to serve 365 days of combat duty, and then were rotated
out of
country (as opposed to "in-country"). This abbreviated service
meant
that soldiers did not have the opportunity to form the lasting
attachments to others in their units that would help provide
emotional
support -- and a sense of continuity. Additionally, the
alien
country and culture lead to a disorienting feeling, as did the
nature
of guerrilla warfare (where your enemy could be the smiling
woman
selling you mangoes). And of course, some soldiers faced a
hostile reception upon returning home. These all
contributed
to the post traumatic stress syndrome suffered by some
veterans. This wasn't a new disease -- it's simply a label
for
an affliction that has affected soldiers for centuries upon
their
return to civilian life.
The
Arts
Two broad movements form the aesthetic background to this novel:
the
surrealism of the 60s, and the post-modernism of contemporary
literature. Surrealism adds a hallucinatory quality to a work of
fiction, the prose equivalent of the swirling washes of color
and
stream of consciousness imagery of the psychedelic posters (and
those
mind-bending Grateful Dead and Allman Brother's album covers)
from the
60s and 70s. Yet the surrealism on display in the novel
isn't
merely a period piece; it's our old friend the unconscious, the
Id,
showing up again to topple the existing order. It's a
method
of conveying the often tortured and tortuous mental landscape of
a mind
in conflict with itself.
The Post-modern aspect of the novel appears in its
self-referential quality -- more particularly labeled
metafiction,
which means fiction about the nature of fiction itself. While
this has
a long history (Tom Jones by Henry Fielding is an 18th century
example), the emphasis on form in Modern literature led to an
exposure
of the same (i.e. illustrating the artifice of fiction) in much
of
contemporary literature. Literary movements usually move in
reactionary
cycles: authors grow frustrated with established conventions and
have
to reinvent the art of literature to fit the new age. Thus, in
Things
They Carry, you'll find a writer who ironically discusses the
act of
writing itself: he both tells a great story -- and tells us he's
telling a great story. And watch for references to the
"author" himself -- and be aware that post-modern writers love
to play
around with the idea of the narrator/author.
Shakespeare's "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day"
is relevant here and will be discussed in class
XVIII (765 in Textbook)
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
The
Life
Tim O'Brien grew up in small-town Minnesota (where he
experienced
first-hand the clash of small-town morals with the outside
world). He credits his mother, a first grade teacher, with
investing in him the importance of paying attention to details
when
writing. Attending a state college in Minnesota, he majored
in
Political Science and was elected the student body
president. Upon graduation, he was drafted in August of
1968,
and served seven months as a radio operator in Chu
Lai. Wounded twice, he spent the last five months of his
Vietnam tour as a clerk, away from combat duty. After his
tour
of duty, he attended graduate school at Harvard, and completed
(but did
not defend) his dissertation, and began writing for the
Washington Post in 1972 (Kaplan 1-9). His first book, If I Die in a Combat
Zone, a memoir of his service in Vietnam, established him as a
writer
of talent, and his novel Going After Cacciato (which is also set
in
Vietnam), after winning the National Book Award in 1979, vaulted
him
into the upper ranks of American authors.
He has a very generous spirit as a writer, regularly
appearing at workshops (my office mate worked with him years ago
and
found him refreshingly unpretentious and "down to earth") and
giving
copious interviews on his craft. On his penchant for writing
about
Vietnam, he noted "[my] concerns as a human being and . . . as
an
artist have at some point intersected in Vietnam -- not just in
the
physical place, but in the spiritual and moral terrain of
Vietnam" (qt.
in Kaplan 4-5). And as this novel makes clear, this is a
terrain well worth exploring.
"I'll
Take You There"
Unless marked otherwise, the images below are
from wikimedia
|
Click to enlarge
My Lai Massacre
* For a compelling overview of My Lai, see the
page below (note -- it's on a rather repellent site, but
the material
on the page I've linked is quite good).
http://www.rotten.com/library/history/war-crimes/my-lai-massacre/
Another good My Lai site
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_massacre
Long and detailed article on the massacre
http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/lai/index_1.html
For a contemporary version of My Lai, see the
following
http://www.rotten.com/library/crime/prison/abu-ghraib/
|
click to enlarge
Visual of a soldier's life: lots of "humping."
Walking along a dike separating rice patties
(click to enlarge)
|
|
Effects of napalm. See article
on
this famous picture
|
Baby water buffalo
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4LJig4kYi8s/TSmtXNyXFCI/
AAAAAAAABJU/6lNV6S5pMsc/s1600/DSC02961.JPG
|
Links
For additional photos, try this link from the New York Times.
Additional pictures can
be found here.
Connections between Vietnam and Iraq? See Ron
Kovic's
essay published on Truthdig. Note: it's a partisan
view.
The New York Times is
running a series of essays on the year 1967 of the Vietnam war. It's a
great source for personal reflections and more interpretative
essays. For backgrounds on the war -- back to pre WWII -- see "The 30 Years War in Vietnam."
Vietnam
Glossary
In this novel you'll find several military acronyms, topical
references, etc., that may need a bit of explaining. Hence,
a
glossary.
Let's clarify three things, right off the bat.
Vietnam: Area/country in
southeast Asia with an independent language, culture, and
government. Partitioned into North and South Vietnam in
1954
in response to the western fear of communism, the two countries
were
rejoined in 1976 after the fall of the South Vietnamese
government. During the war years, the country was bisected
by
the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone).
North Vietnam: The
communist controlled area of Vietnam -- they wanted to unite the
country under one rule. South Vietnam's and, because of the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), our enemy.
South Vietnam: The
non-communist, nominally democratic (but really autocratic) area
of
Vietnam. Our ally due to SEATO which stated that any member
which comes under attack will enjoin all members in its
defense. South Vietnam and America were members: North
Vietnam
was not.
|
Interactive Vietnam map
click to view
|
|
Period Maps (circa. 1968) click to view
1968 (period map)
http://www.vietvet.org/visit/maps/1968map.htm
|
AK-47: Standard issue rifle
used by North Vietnamese. Cheap, reliable,
deadly. Now a designer weapon for drug dealers.
America: love it or leave it: phrase
adopted by the great unthinking class as a response to protests
against
the war. It stifles dissent by suggesting that "you're
either
with merica', or you're with the terrorists." Oops, wrong
war
-- but same idea.
ARVN Army of the Republic of
Vietnam. Considered poor fighters by US service men.
Bao Dai: The "playboy
emperor." Last emperor of Vietnam, courted and assisted by
both communist and American regimes because "the people"
accepted him
as a sovereign ruler. An opportunist, and for that reason,
a
survivor.
Bouncing Betty: a type of land mine.
After a soldier, civilian, or water buffalo would step upon it,
a
little rocket/bomb would shoot up that exploded at about waist
height. Usually deployed by the North Vietnamese.
Claymore: rectangular mine set off
by remote control. It would send a shower of lead in a
triangular
killing field. Usually deployed by Americans. See
picture below
Diem, Ngo Dinh: Autocratic
ruler of South Vietnam from 1955-63. Corrupt, a Roman
Catholic
in a Buddhist country, he was propped up by American officials
because
of his hard line stance against communism. Assassinated by
his
own military in a 1963 coup.
domino theory: argument used by
American political leaders to support a war against
communism. They believed that if one country fell to
communism, then others around it would fall as well (like a line
of
dominoes). What they never seemed to address was why
communism
would prove so attractive. I mean, it's not a virus or
anything, it's merely a political system.
Gook: US military slang for a
Vietnamese person.
Gulf of Tonkin: located in North
Vietnam (see map above). Important because US military and
intelligence reported that a Navy destroyer, the USS Maddox, was
attacked by North Vietnamese gunboats in 1964, which lead to a
resolution to increase military presence and its role in South
Vietnam. It is now generally accepted that the attack did
not
take place and some feel that the military and intelligence
agencies
perpetuated a hoax to prompt deeper US involvement in the
war.
Hawks and doves: shorthand to
describe support for (hawks) or opposition to (doves) the
war. Prominent hawks from the era include John F. Kennedy
(though he was there before the term really was bandied about),
Barry
Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Henry Kissinger.
The main dove mentioned in the novel is Senator and Democratic
Presidential Nominee Eugene McCarthy.
Ho Chi Minh: The political and
spiritual (in an agnostic sense) leader of North
Vietnam. In
the 1950s, after reading the Declaration of Independence, he
approached
American officials in France (where he was educated) and asked
them for
his help in overthrowing the French colonial powers. We refused
due to
treaty alliances and because of cheap rubber (Vietnam's primary
export)
and Minh then turned to Russia and China for support.
R&R: Rest and
relaxation. A vacation from the battlefield typically
involving a trip (or trips) to a brothel, drinking, and, if such
was
your preference, drugs. Sleep and good food as well. In
other
words, creature comforts for 19 year old males.
klicks: slang for kilometers
Eugene McCarthy: presidential
candidate in 1968 elections who was against the war. To
support him meant you too were against the war.
M-16: Standard issue rifle used by
the US and South Vietnamese. It was expensive,
semi-reliable,
and deadly. Because of its toy-like look, it has not become
a
designer weapon for drug dealers.
Three for one: 1) M-16 rifle; 2) Flack Jacket;
3) "hootch" or grass house, typical of Vietnamese civilian
villages.
Very flammable -- which helped make napalm (see below) such a
useful
(?) military tool.
from http://s88.photobucket.com/albums/k188
mortar: tube like cannon,
easily hidden, transported, and operated. A favorite of the Viet
Cong.
napalm: bombs filled with jelled
gasoline which ignites on contact with the air. Usually
dropped from jets which resulted in a streak of fire (momentum
of bomb
would spread flame).
tracer rounds: bullets treated with
a chemical to make them flammable on contact. If fired at
night would leave a streak of light -- handy for aiming, though
it also
made a great target.
Sterno: metal cans of jelled
petroleum. Pop the top, instant stove.
Tran Hung Dao: Vietnamese general
who repelled Mongol invasions in the 13C. (roughly
equivalent
to George Washington in America -- i.e. military founding
father).
Tot Dong: field where the Vietnamese
defeated the Chinese in 1426, leading to their independence
(think
Bunker Hill).
VC: short for Viet Cong, the
communist guerrilla fighters who lived in South Vietnam.
Walked point: walking at the head of
line of soldiers in a patrol. Dangerous because you would
be
the first person to encounter a landmine, sniper, or ambush.
Willie Peter: Short for White
Phosphorous, a incendiary explosive material.
Focus
for each day
Day 1
Focus:
Reading
novels in general -- focusing in and looking at the whole;
historical/cultural background;
characters in the story; truth and reality
|
"To
read a novel
is a difficult and complex art [ . . . . ] You
must be capable not
only of great fineness of perception, but of great
boldness of
imagination if you are going to make use of all that
the novelist -- the
great artist -- gives you" (Woolf).
|
|
"One
explanation
for O'Brien's habit of varying and echoing and
repeating
phrases
and thoughts and scenes and stories in his writings is
that this
stylistic
device mirrors his notion of fiction as a means for
conveying the
fluidity of
all experience. According
to O'Brien's
approach to fiction, one can use the same phrase or
tell the same story
again
and again, and yet each time one does so, the phrase
or the story
somehow takes
on a new character. Fiction
and
language
for him do not mirror life: they transform life"
(Kaplan 18).
|
Kaplan,
Steven.
Understanding
Tim O'Brien. Columbia, South Carolina: U of South
Carolina, 1995. Print.
Woolf, Virginia. "How Should One Read a Book?" The
Second Common Reader. 1935. Gutenberg.org.
Web. 3 August 2015.
Using Note Cards
Focusing
in
and looking at the whole
By
this
I mean learning to move between individual stories and chapters,
and then applying them to a larger reading of the novel as a
whole. See
the chapters "Stockings" then "Church" for this kind of
connection.
You'll
need to develop a "reading," "interpretation," or "approach" to
the
novel to understand. Note: there are many different readings,
interpretations, or approaches.
How a summary misses the point:
How to tell a True War Story
Rat
Killey, the medic writes to a friend's sister about the death of
her
brother. The narrator keeps pointing out the ways to tell
that
this is a true story. His friend was playing catch with
Rat,
and
stepped to the side coming down on a mine. He goes into
great
detail about the gore of the accident, then says that the
story
is fake.
Characters: distinguish between
them
Tim
O'Brien: Jimmy Cross: Martha: Elroy Berdhal: Kiowa: Ted
Lavender: Lee
Strunk: Dave Jensen: Rat Kiley: Mary Anne: Mark Fossie: Norman
Bowker:
Kathleen, Azar, Bobby Jorgenson, Linda:
Historical/cultural background
- What
do you
know about the Vietnam War.
- The
60s
were a time of change and turmoil. As a society,
America
moved
from an acceptance of authority (the Eisenhower years
[ex-general]
stasis) to a questioning of authority (JFK [young --
committed to
change]); From
Levitt
towns to communes
- What
does
change do to some people?
- Look
at
epigram of novel -- From what war is it from? Why the
Civil
War; why not, say, WWI or WWII?
- Go
to page
40ish of novel -- then 45.
Timeline
1954 CIA funded covert operations against North Vietnam in 1954
1957 Little Rock Schools integrated w/ federal troops
1961 Freedom rides in the south
1963 Kennedy Assassinated
1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
1967 Seventy cities experience black riots
1968 Tet Offensive
1968 Martin Luther King
1968 Robert Kennedy assasisanated
1975 Last helicopters leave South Vietnam
Truth and reality
- The Two Hilters
- Let's
start
with the writer: How many Tim O'Brien's are there? Are
they
the same?
- (Bring
in
several novels that do not have "A Work of Fiction"
written on
them) What's odd about the title page compared to the other
novels?
- What
about
the dedication then?
General questions
"Things They Carried"
- Consider the
following sentences "It was't cruelty, just stage presence.
They were
actors" (20). Why? Why characterize the soldiers as "actors"?
And what
effect does this have on their actions -- and our
understanding of
them?
- Why the
accumulation of specific weight and specific detail in the
lists of the
things they carry? What effect does it have on the reader? And
how do
they contrast with the other paragraphs in the story?
- What is LTV.
Cross crying about (17)? What is this story really "about"?
- Why is this
the first story/chapter in the novel? How does it connect to
the other
stories?
"Spin"
- How does
this story function as a foreshadowing for the rest of the
novel? Pick
out pages/details and explain.
"On the Rainy River"
- Why does the
narrator work in a pig slaughter house? Does it foreshadow his
experiences in Vietnam in some way? See, especially, page 42.
- Why is Tim
so upset with the people that support the war?
- What is
"courage" to the narrator? Given the story, do you agree or
disagree
with him?
- What is
Elroy Berdhal's function in the story? Why not just have
O'Brien
standing on a windswept prominence, debating whether he should
go to
Canada or not? What does Berdhal represent?
Day 2
Focus:
Assign secondary source readings; use of
symbolic/figurative
language; loss;
memory; revenge;
truth
and reality again -- why the book "lies" to readers
Psychology and fiction
"What
is clear in all these cases --whether of imagined or real
abuse in
childhood, of genuine or experimentally implanted
memories, of misled
witnesses and brainwashed prisoners, of unconscious
plagiarism, and of
the false memories we probably all have based on
misattribution or
source confusion -- is that, in the absence of outside
confirmation,
there is no easy way of distinguishing a genuine memory or
inspiration,
felt as such, from those that have been borrowed or
suggested, between
what the psychoanalyst Donald Spence calls 'historical
truth' and
'narrative truth'" (Sacks).
Sacks, Oliver. "Speak, Memory." The
New York Review of Books.
21 February 2013. Web. 17 February 2013. |
On
details leading people astray:
"The most coherent stories are not necessarily the most
probable, but
they are plausible, and the notions of coherence,
plausibility, and
probability are easily confused by the unwary"
"The uncritical
substitution of plausibility for probability has
pernicious effects on
judgments when scenarios are used as tools of forecasting.
Consider
these two scenarios, which were presented to different
groups, with a
request to evaluate their probability:
- A massive flood somewhere in North America next
year, in which more than 1,000 people drown
- An earthquake in California sometime next year,
causing a flood in which more than 1,000 people drown
The California earthquake scenario is more plausible than the North
America scenario, although its probability is certainly smaller. As
expected, probability judgments were higher for the richer and more
detailed scenario, contrary to logic. This is a trap for forecasters
and their clients: adding detail to scenarios makes them more
persuasive, but less likely to come true. See "Good Form"
(details=squirrel) and end of "How to Tell" (missing the point).
On the difference between memory and experience:
"A
comment I heard from a member of the audience after a
lecture
illustrates the difficulty of distinguishing memories from
experiences.
He told of listening raptly to a long symphony on a disc
that was
scratched near the end, producing a shocking sound, and he
reported
that the bad ending "ruined the whole experience." But the
experience
was not actually ruined, only the memory of it. The
experiencing self
had had an experience that was almost entirely good, and
the bad end
could not undo it, because it had already happened. My
questioner had
assigned the entire episode a failing grade because it had
ended very
badly, but that grade effectively ignored 40 minutes of
musical bliss.
Does the actual experience count for nothing? Confusing
experience with
the memory of it is a compelling cognitive illusion -- and
it is the
substitution that makes us believe a past experience can
be ruined. The
experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering
self is
sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and
governs what we
learn from living, and it is the one that makes decisions.
What we
learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our
future
memories, not necessarily of our future experience. This
is the tyranny
of the remembering self."
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
|
"Rainy River"
- Finish background on war and shift to
language
- Amour meat packing -- gun, etc. He's been
in "war" and doesn't like it.
- Move to Elroy: and courage
"Speaking of Courage"
- What do you make about the lake? How is it connected
to the war?
- What day of the year is it?
- Why does he keep riding around the lake
- Why include the scene at the drive in?
What's going on there?
- How does the very end of the story replicate the war?
- Why does he take a sip of the disgusting water?
"Good Form"
- Why include this story/essay?
- What's the difference between happening truth and
story truth?
- Go to Colin Powell videos
"How to Tell a True War Story"
- Discuss the nueroscience of memory: how it's all
constructed and how the only true memory is the first one.
- Go to the different times Lemon dies
- Love story: the letter Kiley writes: it's clear he
feels love
- but mention how he's stuck in a Vietnam mode and
can't tell that what he writes to the sister is creepy.
- Here
or earlier, analogy of me on trial for murder: three people:
me, friend
who is my alibi, person in holding cell with me the night I
was
arrested -- and who has been promised reduced time if he
testifies.
- my buddy stumbling over what we were doing that
night,
- person I was in holding cell with says
Day
3
Focus:
Getting a handle on your interpretation -- choosing a
reading/approach
to the novel; connecting the ideas in the novel to sources;
questions
for Essay #2
From
Aristotle's Poetics
"The true difference is that one relates what has
happened, the other
what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is a more
philosophical and a
higher thing than history: for poetry tends to express the
universal,
history the particular. By the universal I mean how a
person of a
certain type on occasion speak or act, according to the
law of
probability or necessity; and it is this universality at
which poetry
aims in the names she attaches to the personages."
http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/poetics.1.1.html
Written 350 B.C.E Translated by S. H. Butcher |
Relativism
In philosophy, the position that all value judgements (e.g. ethics,
morality, and truth) are relative to the standpoint of the beholder. To
put it another way, relativism does not accept that there is
an absolute ground or reference point that could provide an objective
guarantee that things are not necessarily the same as they are
perceived to be by a given subject. If one is neither religious nor a
hard-headed realist,
then some version of relativism is unavoidable, which creates
a great many difficulties for philosophers in this situation because it
is easy (though not necessarily accurate or just) to turn this into an
accusation. Postmodernism has
been taken to task on numerous occasions for precisely this reason: it
challenges the plausibility and possibility of an absolute ground. As a
consequence it has been charged with being apolitical, ahistorical,
unethical, and so on, because all these things -- politics, history,
ethics, etc. -- are said to require a ground to function properly. As Jean-Francois Lyotard shows, the problem with relativismis that it enables historical revisionists such
as Holocaust-deniers to claim that their position is as valid as any
other. His solution, only partially successful, is to focus on what he
calls truth-regimes. Alain Badiou offers a slightly different solution to the same problem via a retooling of Jean-Paul Sartre's
concept of the project. Badiou's project is that which attracts
political conviction, i.e. a belief equal in strength to religious
belief. See also anti-foundationalism.
Buchanan, Ian. "relativism." A Dictionary of Critical Theory. Oxford University Press, 2010. Oxford Reference.
2010.
http://www.oxfordreference.com.libproxy.ocean.edu:2048/view/10.1093/acref/9780199532919.001.0001/acref-9780199532919-e-595.
Accessed 21 Dec. 2017.
And for a longer, more textured discussion, see this definition.
|
Quick review of Secondary Sources
"In the Field"
- How does the metaphor of the "shit field" resonate
throughout the story. See, for example, bottom of page
163.
- Who
does O'Brien (author) suggest contributed to Kiowa's
death?
(164,
166, 170, 176, 179) Why does he have different people take the
blame --
what does this ultimately show about the cause of Kiowa's
death?
And who showed Kiowa the picture of Billie?
"How to Tell a True War Story"
- Perception
- Different times Lemon dies
- Lemon's sister v. Rat's letter
- VC Baby Water buffalo:Why more upset
"Lives of the Dead"
- First
sentence: how can a story save your life? How does it
"save"
Linda's life? Does it save anyone else's life? Does lack
of a
story cause anyone to die?
- End of the novel -- metafiction
- What's the function of Linda? Why add her to the
story? What add her at the end instead of at the
beginning?
Quick question: what's the purpose of "Ghost Soldiers"?
Any general comments/questions?
Review Essay Questions and show possible divisions with thesis
statements.
Questions
to Mull Over As You Read
General questions
- Consider the
relevance of the following quote to the entire story:
"Absolute
occurrence is irrelevant. A thing may happen and be a total
lie,
another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth"
(83). How
does this relate to 1) the story/novel itself; 2) the nature
of story
telling in general?
- Which "True"
is he talking about in the title of the story/chapter ("How to
Tell a
True War Story) -- the "happening-truth" or the "story-truth"
("Good
Form" 179)? How can you tell -- or not tell? Does O'Brien feel
this
distinction is important? Why or why not?
- Trace the
transformation of Mary Anne "Sweetheart:" she changes from
____ to
_____. What could she symbolize? Why/how?
- What
"Courage" is referred to in "Speaking of Courage"?
- How does the
metaphor of the "shit field" resonate throughout the story.
Why not,
for example, a regular muddy field?
- How is
imagination something positive in the book? (consider, for
example,
"Lives of the Dead," "Good Form"). How is it negative ("Thing
They
Carried," "Ghost Soldiers" -- other stories?)? What's the
point?
- Why does
Bowker taste the water at the end of "Speaking of Courage"
(173)?
- What can the
narrator O'Brien do that Bowker cannot? How can this ability
save the
narrator? (Consider "Notes")
- How does the
narrator change? From what to what? (Take this in stages --
use
particular chapters to trace this change) What stories show
this? Where
in those stories? Does your opinion of the narrator change?
- What's Linda
doing in the novel? How does she or her story connect with
other
themes? If she and that chapter was not in the novel, how
would it
change? Another way of looking at this is why does "Lives of
the Dead"
conclude the novel?
- In an
interview, O'Brien stated "If there is a theme to the whole
book it has
to do with the fact that stories can save our lives" (qtd. in
Coffey
202). So, where's the theme? Point to at least three quotes
that prove
this.
Group
Questions
Group questions #1
- What is
Elroy Berdhal's function in the story? Why not just have
O'Brien standing on a windswept prominence, debating whether
he should
go to Canada or not? What does Berdhal represent?
- Think about
the following story connections: "Things They Carried" --
"Love" /
"Speaking of Courage" -- "Notes." What is O'Brien
attempting
to construct/show with these stories pairs? It may help
to
connect these story pairs to "Good Form." Why does O'Brien
include this
("Good Form" chapter? Why doesn't he place this chapter
earlier?
- In an
interview, O'Brien writes that "If there is a theme to the
whole book
it has to do with the fact that stories can save our lives"
(qtd. in
Publishers 202). How does the novel show this? Trace out
this
theme in the novel by showing that, indeed, the novel does
argue that
"stories can save our lives."
- Though
ostensibly a war novel, the stories touch on many other issues
as
well. What, for instance, does the novel suggest about
____,
_____, love, courage, how people cope?
Group questions #2
- This novel
is filled with references to
storytelling and writing (this is called metafiction - fiction
about
fiction). Connected to this is the idea that, as O'Brien
mentioned in
an interview, "stories can save our lives." How does this work
in the
novel? Could you divide it into different facets? What
incidents could
you use to prove your point?
- Much of the
novel deals with questions of truth: first, decide on
O'Brien's
definition of truth ("For O'Brien truth is _______." "O'Brien
looks at truth as _____") and
then explain how the novel illustrates this definition. What
incidents show this? How can you divide/classify it?
- What is O'Brien saying about
history? ("For
O'Brien, history is _____" "O'Brien believes that history
_____"). What
ideas/incidents in the novel show this? As above, can you
break down his view of history as ____ into different
categories?
- How do the questions O'Brien
raises in the novel -- the slipperiness of truth, the ease
with which
people can be fooled, the apathy and willful ignorance of much
American
society, etc. -- manifest themselves in 21st century
America? Another way of answering this questions is to
ask
yourself "How is this novel still relevant?"
- How is this
a novel about love? What kinds of love? About coping? About
guilt?
About fear? About _____?
Works
Cited
Kaplan, Steven. Understanding Tim O'Brien.
Columbia, South Carolina: U of South Carolina, 1995.
Rudd, Mark. "We, the Young People." Ordinary
Americans: U.S. History Through the Eyes of
Everyday People. Ed. Linda R.
Monk. Alexandria, VA: Close Up Publishing, 1994.
248-49.
Sintoni, Joseph. "Our Country, Right or Wrong." Ordinary
Americans: U.S. History Through the
Eyes of Everyday People. Ed. Linda
R. Monk. Alexandria, VA: Close Up Publishing,
1994. 252.
Secondary
Sources
Read "Why Fiction Trumps Truth" By Yuval Noah Harari. Then choose
one essay from numbers 1-19 and one essay from the Biographical
selections, 1-3. Print, read, annotate and be prepared to answer the
following question: "How did reading these secondary sources help your
understanding of the novel?"
General
- The
Undying
Certainty of the Narrator in Tim O'Brien's The
Things They Carried. Steven Kaplan. Critique 35.1
(Fall 1993): p43-52. NOTE: if the link is not working on your
computer,
try lowering the privacy/security settings on your browser. If
that
does not work, click on the "Library Links" from the course
menu on the
left, go to "Literature Resource Center" and get this article
(hint:
search by subject "The Things They Carried" or author "Kaplan,
Steven.")
- Salvation,
Storytelling,
and Pilgrimage in Tim O'Brien's The Things
They Carried. Alex Vernon. Mosaic 36.4 (Dec.
2003): p171-188. NOTE: if the link is not working on your
computer, try
lowering the privacy/security settings on your browser. If
that does
not work, click on the "Library Links" from the course menu on
the
left, go to "Literature Resource Center" and get this article
(hint:
search by subject "The Things They Carried" or author "Vernon,
Alex.")
Coping
- Recovery
from Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms: A Qualitative Study of
Attributions
in Survivors of War.
- Developing a model of narrative analysis
to
investigate the role of social support in coping with
traumatic war
memories.
- Hope, Coping, and Social Support in
Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
- "Healing processes in trauma narratives: A
review." By: Kaminer, Debra. South African
Journal
of Psychology. Sep2006, Vol. 36 Issue 3, p481-499. 19p.
- From
the New York Times:
"The
Hollow
Man"
Truth
(note: if you decide to write about this for your essay, read 7, 9, 13 before writing thesis.
- "Relativism." Noel Castree, Rob Kitchin, and Alisdair Rogers. A Dictionary of Human Geography : Oxford University Press, 2013. Oxford Reference. 2013.
- Plato's Allegory
of
the Cave
- Relativism,
Truth,
Reality.
- "Saying
Good-bye to Historical Truth"
A 1991 essay by psychologist
Donald Spence.
- Reversing the Truth Effect: Learning the
Interpretation of Processing Fluency in Judgments of Truth.
Full Text Available
Academic Journal
By: Unkelbach, Christian. Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Learning,
Memory & Cognition. Jan2007, Vol. 33 Issue 1, p219-230.
12p. 7
Charts. DOI: 10.037/0278-7393.33. .219.
- Making Things Present: Tim O'Brien's
Autobiographical Metafiction. Silbergleid,
Robin. Contemporary Literature, Spring2009, Vol. 50 Issue 1,
p129-155,
27p. (Article) CLICK ON PDF TO READ THE ARTICLE. NOTE: if the
link is
not working on your computer, try lowering the
privacy/security
settings on your browser. If that does not work, click on the
"Library
Links" from the course menu on the left, go to "Literature
Reference
Center" and get this article (hint: search by subject "The
Things They
Carried" or author "Silbergleid, Robin.") PDF Full Text
(1.5MB)\
- `How to tell a true war story': Metafiction in
The
Things They Carried. Calloway, Catherine.
Critique, Summer95, Vol. 36 Issue 4, p249, 9p. (Literary
Criticism)
NOTE: if the link is not working on your computer, try
lowering the
privacy/security settings on your browser. If that does not
work, click
on the "Library Links" from the course menu on the left, go to
"Literature Reference Center" and get this article (hint:
search by
subject "The Things They Carried" or author "Calloway,
Catherine.") HTML Full Text
PDF Full Text
(283KB)
- David
Broyles "Why
Men
Love War
- "The
Most
Curious Thing" by Errol Morris -- on torture at Abu
Ghraib.
- From Ramparts magazine: "The
Whole Thing Was a Lie"
- How to Revise a True War Story John Young
- Kolbert, Elizabeth. "Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds." The New Yorker,
27 Feb. 2017. www.newyorker.com,
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds.
Accessed on 2, Nov. 2018.
Biographical
- Conversation
with
Tim O'Brien. Tim O'Brien and Tobey C. Herzog. Writing
Vietnam, Writing Life: Caputo, Heinemann, O'Brien, Butler.
Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press, 2008. p88-133. Rpt. in Short Story
Criticism.
Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 123. Detroit: Gale. Word Count:
21839.
From Literature Resource Center. NOTE: if the link is not
working on
your computer, try lowering the privacy/security settings on
your
browser. If that does not work, click on the "Library Links"
from the
course menu on the left, go to "Literature Resource Center"
and get
this article (hint: search by subject "The Things They
Carried" or
author "Herzog, Tobey." You'll have to click on the
"Biography" tab at
the top of the page.)
- A
Conversation with Tim O'Brien. Tim O'Brien and Patrick
Hicks.
Indiana Review 27.2 (Winter 2005): p85-95. NOTE: if the link
is not
working on your computer, try lowering the privacy/security
settings on
your browser. If that does not work, click on the "Library
Links" from
the course menu on the left, go to "Literature Resource
Center" and get
this article (hint: search by subject "The Things They
Carried" or
author "Hicks, Patrick." You'll have to click on the
"Biography" tab at
the top of the page.)
- An
interview. Tim O'Brien and Martin Naparsteck.
Contemporary
Literature 32.1 (Spring 1991): p1-11. NOTE: if the link is not
working
on your computer, try lowering the privacy/security settings
on your
browser. If that does not work, click on the "Library Links"
from the
course menu on the left, go to "Literature Resource Center"
and get
this article (hint: search by subject "The Things They
Carried" or
author "Naparsteck, Martin." You'll have to click on the
"Biography"
tab at the top of the page.)
On a different note . . .
General Essays on Vietnam
- The Long History of the Vietnam Novel New York Times
Radio
Essays
"Reel" Life Fiction as
Truth
PDF of novel
© 2001 David Bordelon
|
|
