Week 7: Open Topic

One of the recurring structures of the book is storytelling. I think this is an interesting topic to cover because O’Brien believes that stories contain immense power and allow tellers and listeners to confront the past together and share knowledge with each other. From Mitchell Sanders stories of the six men who hear sounds in the jungle to Rat Kiley shooting himself in the foot so that he can be excused from Vietnam, we see the author Tim O’Brien use storytelling as an attempt to lure us into the “Jungle” of Vietnam with him and Alpha Company. This is what this book consists of, short stories, and they are accounts from Tim O’Brien that he is manifesting through memory and filling us in on so when we discussed the criteria for a true war story the other day in class this theme of storytelling came to mind. In the book Mitchell Sanders admits to making up a few things in the story about the six men in the jungle just so he could get his point across, and we see why he did this, because true war stories aren’t believable. Nobody wants to hear about women being raped and children being murdered, villages being burnt, and POWS being tortured. Listeners want to hear crazy stories about a wall soldiers in the Jungle and this “storytelling” can be related to the “Red Convertible” or “Circus in the Attic” how the whole story practically was built around this bed of lies and heroic sounding stories.

Week 7 Open Topic

Thus far, my favorite "story" has been "How to Tell a True War Story". Focusing on the abstract definitions of truth in the story. O'Brien lists the things he thinks define truth. They differ from our textbook, straight laced teachings of truth. We were taught that truth was always honest, accurate, moral, and final. Most importantly we were taught that truth is absolute. O'Brien says, "If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for truth..." (69). Thereby saying, truth is obscene. He notes, that you cannot separate what happened from what you think happened. So truth is open to interpretation and dictated by the individual telling their truth as they think it was. Truth is a memory flaw...or strength, however you see it. Truth is also never believable because it is so unbelievable. So in a war story to tell the truth is to lie about the believable and tell the truth about the unbelievable...which of course could not be the truth to you or me or even the one telling the story. Here lies the imperfect, incomplete non-absolute. "The truths are contradictory" (80). The death of Lemon in the sun is beautiful yet gory, the story is about war but not really, it's about love. The yin and yang, opposites that contradict the absolute lines and boundaries we build around stories and our lives in general so that the abstract conscious can be silenced and our absolute sedentary minds can rest in peace at night. O'Brien also says the truth is ugly but then again it's also a contradiction, therefore making it beautiful. Finally he says, "...nothing is ever absolutely true" (82). So we are left with questions and no answers or answers we can make up based on our proposed truths and ideals. My question is though, if all these truths are truths, how do we ever know what really happened? How does that play into religion and "God's truth" (71)? -Hey, he said it, not me.

Week 7 Open Post

I think all of us born in the generation y era as they so call it have grown up with a different perspective on war than most. I know there has been wars going on all around us as we were kids, but it was nothing we really saw in real time. We learned most of our information about war through the "truth" that our history teachers taught us and movies. By truth I mean facts about the war. This brings me back to Hemmingways "A Farewell to Arms" quote when he says, "I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice. . . . We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates." When I read this I think back to History class were all those words dissapear and all we were left with were names and dates of places were battle took place, and what the outcome was in the end. The only people remembered were ones that were so called "heros" of a battle or who were high up on the peg board.

I grew up with this huge mis-understanding that wars were just a full on attack and the last man standing was the the winner. Its like a game of chicken, the first one who has any sense of compassion for others over pride is the one who looses. I know there is more to war than that, but it makes sense to me. As I get more into it you find out that war is not all it seems. It is a lot of waiting and messing around until you receive commands from your officer or the other side attacks. I think it is during these times is when most of the war stories come from. I believe that Tim O'Brien says that most war stories are not about war at all. It is during these slow times when people have time enough to think about war and it scares them. When your in war you don't really see anything, you just do as you been trained and time kind of stands still as you get lost in this brutal world of war.

Week 7 Open Topic

I was recently thinking about the discussion that we had in class on Tuesday pertaining to the rules of writing war stories. According to Tim O’Brien war stories are unique in that they are unbelievable. After we had the discussion I sat down to do some reading in The Things They Carried and realized that most of what was going on really wasn’t believable at all. I knew that what I was reading was possible but I really didn’t believe it. And I then began to deeply question the truth in every war story I had ever heard. I couldn’t help but think back to The Red Convertible and Soldier’s Home while thinking about why the veterans lie about what they have seen and done. Some do it to make sense of the war through there own interpretations and others do it simply to make there experiences sound more exciting. I simply found it very interesting that many of the stories that we have read and heard fallow O’Brien’s “formula” for telling war stories

My Schema Towards the Vietnam War

I was never really taught about the Vietnam War in the past. Most of my knowledge was gathered from watching commical movies such as "A Full Metal Jacket," or more serious movies like the "Platoon." I have also heard other things about how it was basically a slaughter, and have learned about the "Wall of Honor" that was created with each soldier's name on it that gave his or her life in the war. I am a firm believer in the past is the past. That is why I chose this picture, because all we can do now is remember those great Americans that gave their all and sometimes paid with their life to eliminate the spread of communism. When I look back I believe it is none of our business how other people want to run their country, and we should not, by force, make them conform to the way we run our country here in America. At first we were just trying to help, but everybody knows once you get in, shit gets deep, and it is hard to pull out.

I personally hate war and believe it is unecessary. I way I was brougt up was to be a lover not a fighter. In this theory it is believed that everything can be solved by coming to a solution that will bennefit all. As good as this sounds we all know that people are stubborn as hell and irrational. You can not have a constructive argument when the opposing side is not willing to except that he/she is wrong and is willing to search for a position that can be defended by both sides. You can't argue with someone who will not accept fallibility. Therefore we believe it leaves us no choice but to "lock and load" and blow there stupid idea out of their heads and replace it with 7.62 mm's of sense.

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index.html This is a website that I used to get more information on the war and how it came about. I'm kind of more interested in why the war started than all the battles that took the life of millions of people.

Response to post 1

It’s OK not to be super interested in studying war. After all it’s odd enough that there are people like me that actually enjoy studying a subject about death and violence. I think you made some interesting philosophical points about war however. I believe that there are things that can be said about wars in general that do not necessarily have to be Vietnam specific. I agree with you that there will always be wars as long as there are differing opinions. It is human nature to fight for our beliefs and survival. Humans are bred to protect themselves from any threat to their health or comfort as almost all animals are. Is war an absolute necessity to our survival? Which one of our survivals?

Response to Zach

Zach you hit the nail on the head. I think that you and I have similar ideas about the war. It seems like you are very interested in the Vietnam War from your post. I enjoy discussing war myself. The military history class that I took freshman year was one of my favorite classes of my entire college career. And by the way I’m glad you brought up the key role that the media played in this war because a lot of people from our generation are not familiar with the impact that the media had on the American perception of the war.

My “frame” of the Vietnam War is fairly insightful in my opinion. I have amassed a large amount of knowledge about the war by speaking with veterans, literature, and what we covered on the war in my military history class. The Vietnam War was a very difficult war for the United States. Firstly it was never technically a war. The U.S. government claimed that it was always a police action but it was essentially a war and an unpopular one. The general public did not understand why we were in Vietnam and their uncertainties were only perpetuated further by the media who would show graphic depictions of Vietnam casualties on a nightly basis. Furthermore the war was like nothing that the U.S. had ever seen before. This type of war was called an insurgency war where there was no clear front. Frankly the U.S. was not prepared for this type of fighting. I have also learned that there were two types of Vietnam for the soldiers. While not in combat soldiers had good food, entertainment from the U.S.O. and all the pot they could smoke. Unfortunately while in battle soldiers experienced some of the most bloody fighting conditions we had ever seen.

POST-1 (week six)

When approaching my opinions of the Vietnam war/era I am blind to the dynamics and contraversies about this war. To be honest, I am ignorant to that war or any war but the current war which even then I would hardly consider myself up to par on. Who do I blame this on? Well, I blame it on three things, 1) the media, 2) my history teachers in the past and 3) my own ignorance and general lack of motivation to educate myself on the issues. I have my opinions on war itself and sure I would like to know more. It although, is hard to gain knowledge or have the drive to gain knowledge about Vietnam when past teachers played it off as "We don't have time", or didn't even cover, much less, touch the subject. My history classes consisted of eating candy and playing on myspace while the teacher left the class for extended periods of time to "run copies" or "make important phone calls". I do although, have a general opinion of war. I think it is a necessary evil that is unavoidable. I believe that for as long as there are human beings there will be war. The truth of the situation is that two people can look at the same concept or standard and see it differently. So as long as there are individuals with seperate opinions there will be war. War on a global scale isn't surprising considering there is war in our own countries, war in our neighborhoods, wars between races and wars in our living rooms. Sure, in an ideal world there would be peace and everyone could coexist naturally but the painful reality is that at times war sparks change and leads to peace between nations. War, depending on the context, helps us to coexist globally. War has been a part of the world from the beginning of time. The bottom line is there is no correct answer. War is good and bad. Peace is good and bad. It is all relative to the places, people in those places and the ideals they uphold. It's a toss. As for how I came about looking through war through this particualr open window, I was raised by parents who lived through this war and other wars, who had parents and grandparents fight in this war and were general "hippies", on the flip side I was born in a generation that generally supports the war and a nation that believes it can justify any such type of war. I was raised to see things from two seperate perspectives and evaluate them as a whole not on seperate terms. We are a nation of people who can justify hate by love and love by hate. The lines are blurred and our education system is weak. Our leaders at times are corrupt and we tend to take everything at face value. I believe that to take a specific war and try to break it down to form a solid unbiased opinion would be difficult. I wasn't there, I am not there in the current war now. All I know is what I hear, read and see for myself. So, my justification is to look at both sides and take them both for what they are. I have nothing in concrete, if that makes me fickle, fine, so be it. We are raised to believe that everything has a right or wrong answer, a yes or a no, a black or white. The flaw with this type of teaching is that the world, the mind, and the body function in grey. That's the not so simple simple truth.

-The image included represents my overall feelings of war in general. War is found with peace and peace is found with war. They both create mankind in an individual unique way. Is is right or wrong, who is to say? I believe the world works in opposites. Either way you look at it, it's a state of the individuals minds. As a whole we will never agree but it will always be there. Below is a web site that gives a brief breakdown of the Vietnam war and posts the consequences of the war. In this you find a yin and yang, good and bad, peace and anti-peace if you will. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/vietnam/index.cfm

Impact of War on Media, my perception of the Vietnam War!

My History teacher and my current roommate have probably had the greatest impact on my perception of the vietnam war. In 7th grade US History class, you have different things on your mind, like Lauren sitting to your left, and you're not really concerned when your teacher covers the Vietnam war but there are a few things I remember. Also, my roommate is a history buff and he has war films on top of war films on the Civil War, both WWs, and of course Vietnam so he likes to ramble on about Saigon and the Vietcong. My first perception of the war is that it was very costly and traumatic. I had always heard that we, the United States, had gone into the war cocky with immobal weaponry that wasn't suitable for Jungle warfare and this was the reason that we sustained so many casualties. I knew that this was America's first helicopter war, which allowed medical units to retrieve injured soldiers quickly yet there were still over 300,000 were wounded and died, and that this war was the "Television War". This was the first war that was heavily monitored by the media and I learned this not only through classes but also through movies such as Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Forrest Gump. I was taught that the media created a very negative impression of the war and that the government only showed us what they wanted us to see. During this era the television became the window to the world and our government and media would only show us bombings of US Embassies and suicide bombers or other outrageous acts from the Vietcong that would persuade our judgement about these people. In a video I watched over Vietnam there is a man by the name of Robert Elegant and he was a news reporter that wrote a story titled, "How to lose a War". This article stated that for the first time in history the outcome of a major war wasn't decided on the battlefield or in the negotiating chambers but on the printed page and the television screen. This has basically been the "frame" that I have viewed the Vietnam war through, that the media had the biggest impact on the war and that the US viewers got a distorted image because of the editing and deliberate hiding of information by our own government. The article that I attached keeps with this same perception that I had and actually helps deconstruct my own schema about the war by providing more depth into the media's role. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2526