Week 9 assigned topic

Explication of "Missing": In "Missing" there is a particular scene that embodies the theme of the entire narrative. I believe that the the realization that you can't really ever bury your true identity or escape it no matter where you move to is the true theme of the story, and the scene where his daughter Hoa appears and he describes her appearance really lightens the scene and helps him realize how he has not escaped his past and that he has broken traditional barriers in this Vietnam village. In the scene it says, "And Hoa appeared. My daughter is tall now, her body changing from a girl to a woman, and her hair is the brown of the dried tobacco, not black but the color of what we grow and prepare here, and I don't know why I was caught by her hair at that moment but it is long and it has this color that belongs to no one else here, not my wife, not me." At this point he realizes that he has mixed his culture of U.S. and Vietnamese to create his daughter who he loves very much but reminds him of his past life over in America. He describes her hair as the color brown of the dried tobacco and not black which is the usual color of vietnamese hair and then describes her skin as the color of the coffee that they grow and sell there which is a reference to him thinking of her as a symbol of the same thing that they export over to America. What we take from this scene is how he sees America in his daughter. Another scene that relates to this is later in the story where he says, "But I looked again at Hoa and she was bending to the table and she picked up the dragon head and turned to face Tri's daughter and I could see Hoa's face for a moment there, caught full in the sunlight, and in this light the parts of her body that she had because of me seemed very clear, the highness of her brow, the half expressed roundness of the lids of her eyes, the length of her nose, the wideness of her mouth, her hair neither dark nor light. And I had a twist of sadness for her, as if she had gotten from me imperfect cells that had made a club foot or an open spine or a weak heart." Here he says the parts of the body she has because of me and then he goes on to describe these and eventually feel saddened for here because he knows the expectations of the village here and how it feels to be an outcast and the doesn't want that for his daughter so he is sad that he gave her these genes that makes her appear different than the "normal" vietnamese in the village. These examples prove that no matter where he goes he will always see reminders of his past, he will always be reminded of his past because it's something that you can run away from but never truly escape.

Week 8 Assigned Topic

I believe that O’Brien and Farrell both have very similar definition of what it takes to tell a story although they go about defining them in different ways. O’Brien’s incredibly direct explanation is more my style. I agree with both of these writers in that war stories and all stories for that matter are really about the human condition and feeling rather than just an explanation of what happened. Have you ever noticed how reading a police report is very different from reading a novel? This is because to tell a good story you have to describe not only what happened but how those occurrences affected the characters of those stories. Vietnam stories are about how the trauma of the war affected the people in it. A good war story should evoke emotion in the reader in a way that one could identify with the soldier even though they have never experienced anything close to what that solder went through. War stories should also entertain us. I know it sounds a little sick that stories about death and war can be entertaining but, they really are and that is why we read them.

Week 8 Assigned Post

War: to me is a saw movie. It is a place where everything you thought you would do fades away and true human instinct is what your drinking. You don't think about morals, or anything else for that matter. All you can think about is survival. And u clutch your grudge like a cornerstone. Its what we have been doing since the begging of life itself, survive. And you will do anything you can to get it. You just react and what you do then will determine if you will croak or live another day. When I think about this definition it always brings to mind the saw movies. Like I believe was the first one, the girl woke up with her head strapped with this metal gadget as a movie plays about how it rips your face off. Then she listens to this creepy voice about how the key to get it off is in this guys stomach. That girl never in her life thought she would have to take a knife and cut a person open. She didn't think, she just did what she had to do. I believe this is what war is. Just a bunch of people that are so scared that they start to loose the very thing that makes them sain. It literally makes you crazy and makes you do crazy things that you will remember for the rest of your life. And with all that weight on your brain your never really the same again in the head. You loose all sence of whats real or not and your kind of just stuck in the war. Once you visit it you never really leave.

Week 8 Open Post

I wanted to talk a little about the movie Hearts and Minds that we previously watched in class. I'm really not quite sure what to think. In one corner I'm wondering if the movie was filmed to be one side, and on the other side... "where we just actually over there killing people for no good reason?" I lean more towards the rational corner cause I'm pulled to it like a dog its' bone. It is true that they interviewed a lot of Vietnam civilians who lost their family and homes to the bombs of the Americans. It is also true that they showed mainly war footage of the Americans wrecking their nations and of no Vietmanese fighting back. Based on what we saw in the movie you could conclude that it was filmed on sided and their was actually more to it. I have no doubt that their was more to it, but I believe a lot of the movie was filmed very acurately. We started the war for what we thought was a good cause, to rid Vietnam of communism. But this is just like any other war we faught, "once you get in and shit gets deep, it's hard to pull out." This war was no different. The U.S. went over thinking it was helping the world and then things just went to hell.

Since a lot of what made up the U.S. soldiers were younger men they did not really have a sense of the task at hand. They were taught to kill and so they did. Anything and everything they killed without even thinking. Just caught up in the moment, sleeping anything that moved. It was like an operation gone bad, and one I'm sure the U.S. would love to had buried deeper into the earth. What happend?

Week 8 Open Topic

I believe an important key element and theme in The Things They Carried is in "Speaking of Courage", here Norman Bowker returns home and discovers that the world has moved on and this "perfect" little town is dead, the people, the shops and his own father. This story in particular runs parallel to The Red Convertible and Soldier's Home in the aspect that it plays off the constant emphasis of isolation in place and self. Bowker returns home and drives the same 7 mile drive around the lake all afternoon, no one asks him about war, people are going on with their lives in peace without question to outside the nice houses and fences and lives on the "lake side" of the street. They are unaffected because the are ignorant to it, the don't ask because it doesn't pertain to them, they don't want to face the reality, or they simply just do not care. This idea of isolation is emphasized with the way his father "Fights his own war" and watches baseball, Sally and her new last name, new life and forgotten past, the man who can't start his boat. It is blatantly obvious when he even honks at other people and they don't look up to notice him. He is aware that he is alone and will never be able to honestly tell his story, even if he "tells" it to another, the response would be dull and flat, the point would not be made, he would still be left feeling isolated because the story will never really be told. An important image I picked out and noted would be the boys that were walking with knapsacks, canteens and toy rifles. He passes these boys in an almost memory kind of way. As though he is driving through his past and is invisible to the world around him. "He watched the boys recede in his rear view mirror" (140). He is looking back, implying looking to his past and watching these little boys playing war fade away. He is watching himself fade, his presence fade, his childhood and most importantly his innocence fade.

Week 7 assigned topic

Will post it here shortly!

Week 8 Open Post

For this weeks open topic discussion I have chosen to make a few little comments about the film Hearts and Minds. Firstly I found this film to be very interesting. It is probably not known widely throughout my generation but during the Vietnam conflict politicians would often say that the goal for American troops was to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese people. Obviously the film makes an interesting commentary on certain ways that Americans actually did affect the heats and minds of the Vietnamese people predominantly in a negative way. I do however believe that it is important to understand that there were many different types of American soldiers in Vietnam. Not all of the troops in Vietnam spent there time in whore houses and smoking pot. Although some Americans damaged many homes and killed civilians there were soldiers who did not participate in these sorts of activities; at least without the fervor that was portrayed in the soldiers by the film. It is also important to remember that this was a war on insurgents and guerillas. Often times there were Viet Cong troops living among civilians who would farm during the day and run combat missions at night. So at least in my mind it is easy to see how the separation of the VC from civilians could become blurred in the minds of American soldiers. I think that the film has an important and valuable message that should not be overlooked, but I also think that it is important to observe differing viewpoints.

WEEK SEVEN SUMMARY

I made a lot of comments to various posts; I find this blog really interesting and much of the writing and analysis powerful and compelling. It's very sophisticated stuff, and I have to confess, I'm impressed and intrigued by the dynamic here.

I can't help but notice, though, that a number of you (like, all except Zach) fell short in terms of posting everything that was required. It might be a good idea, given the holistic structure of things, to make sure you're making up for such oversights in future weeks ;) and to go back through the posts and comments for this week, and consider engaging some of the very interesting issues that have come up...

Week 7 assigned topic

In the primary sources article of PBS, President Johnson addresses the nation to inform them of the North Vietnamese regimes deliberate attacks against U.S. vessels operating in international waters, and how he has sent planes to bomb these hostile attacks. We later find out that these claims were false and that he sent these planes overseas without Congressional approval and because of this, Congress enacted the War Powers Act in 1973, requiring the president to receive explicit Congressional approval before committing American forces overseas. In my open topic this week I wrote about how O’Brien uses “stories” to explain war, and in order for it to be a true war story it must seem false or unbelievable. This example of the Tonkin Gulf incident correlates because President Johnson uses a false story to dupe the US people into believing that there really is a reason to go to war. We see examples of this same dishonesty and corruption in The Things They Carried. One example is when Mitchell Sanders tells the men about the six men hearing voices in the jungle, and he admits later to making up bits and pieces of this story just so his listeners would listen to it and believe it.
http://www.war-stories.com/camouflage-whisenant-1967.htm In this article, it describes the innocence of the boys fighting over in Vietnam and how things were so boring sometimes that they had to find whatever entertainment they could in order to keep from going insane. In “The Things They Carried” O’Brien talks about this same boredom and how two boys were tossing smoke grenades around instead of a football and how Ted Lavender adopts a puppy and later Azar kills it and claims his own immaturity as excuse. (Spin, 37)
This article and the PBS primary source give more insight into what the Vietnam War truly was and the theme of innocence and deceit has given me new tools to look at while I’m reading “The Things They Carried.”