Am Literature Tarriq Hansrajh
06/07/05 4th
Entry #1:
In my pockets:
Cell phone – 5oz
Keys – 2oz
Wallet – 3oz
In my backpack:
Spanish book – 5lbs
Trig book – 9lbs
4 1 inch binders – 12lbs
USHAP notebook – 1lb
Other misc. items – 1.5lbs
Total Weight: 29lbs 10oz
This estimate does not surprise me at all because when I think about all the work that we have to do I remember all the textbooks that we have to carry around. In addition sometimes I come home with my back aching, but that’s usually only when I carry my USHAP notebook with me as well
Am Literature Tarriq Hansrajh
06/07/05 4th
Entry #2:
“Rat” Kiley was born Bob Kiley on April 7 1939 in Albany, New York to Marie and Charlie Kiley. At age 11 Bob was given the nickname “Rat” by one of his friends when they were walking home from school one day when apparently Bob fell into a large open dumpster and when he emerged he had a few strings of spaghetti sticking out of the back of his pants. The nickname stuck with him all the way to his adulthood. Rat graduated from Creekside High School in 1957. He did not want to attend college right away but wanted to work in one of the factories in his home town to earn some money to pay for college. Even then his co-workers called him “Rat”. Two years later he had managed to save ten thousand dollar to put toward his college tuition but unfortunately he was drafted just like the rest of the men his age who were not attending college. When he was in Vietnam Rat encountered many terrible situations and was faced with severe heart ache when his best friend Curt Lemon is killed by a landmine. Rat was devastated by this terrible event and felt an extreme sense of loneliness especially when he wrote a letter to Curt’s sister and she never responded. Rat fought through the rest of the war seeing too many tragedies that are too horrible to mention here and when he returned to his family in 1973, two years before the war ended they found his behavior very strange. They found that he was not the same person that he was before and eventually the found that he had gone completely insane. Rat would mumble things to himself and would scream as if he saw his friend Curt being killed right in front of him.
Wallace Terry has collected a wide range of stories told by twenty black Vietnam veterans. The stories are varied based on each experience; from the horrific to the heart breaking and to the glorified image of Vietnam depicted by Hollywood. Wallace Terry does not insinuate his opinion into any of the stories so that the audience can feel as if they are having a conversation with the Vietnam Veteran himself. Terry introduces the purpose of the book by stating, “ Among the 20 men who portray their war and postwar experiences in this book. I sought a representative cross section of the black combat force.”(p. XV) Although the stories in this book were not told in any specific order, many themes became prominent throughout the novel such as religion, social, and health.
War changes people, with some changes being very dramatic and very quick. This is evident in the behavior of Norman Bowker, Bob “Rat” Kiley, and Tim O’Brien. These changes affected each person differently, but they all had dramatic changes to their personalities. These changes had very severe effects on each
Tim O’Brien begins his journey as a young “politically naive” man and has recently graduated out of Macalester College in the United States of America. O’Brien’s plan for the future is steady, but this quickly changes as a call to an adventure ruins his expected path in life. In June of 1968, he receives a draft notice, sharing details about his eventual service in the Vietnam War. He is not against war, but this certain war seemed immoral and insignificant to Tim O’Brien. The “very facts were shrouded in uncertainty”, which indicates that the basis of the war isn’t well known and perceived
Tim O'Brien's The Things they Carried put both my logic and emotions to great test. As it is a novel composed of war stories, one may automatically assume that reading The Things They Carried would be an enlightening endeavor, and an educational experience. However, I never thought that a book could captivate me the way that the stories in this novel have.
Tim O’Brien shows that the effects of the Vietnam War can differ depending on the person. For Rat, those effects meant loosing his innocence and his exposure to death sent him into a sad mental state. For Azar, it can be concluded that the effects of the war and his exposure to death made him realize that not everything was a joke and that it is not always best to be cruel and bitter. These soldiers experienced turning points, ultimately shaping them into different men with different personalities.
The things they carried, by Tim O'Brien. "Oh man, you fuckin' trashed the fucker. You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like fuckin' Shredded Wheat." I chose to start off my essay with this particular extract from the book because I think that it very much represents the story in itself. Azar said this, after Tim (supposedly) killed a Vietnamese soldier with a hand grenade. It shows that in times of war, how callous men can become. However, callousness varies, whether they choose to be apathetic, like Tim shows us after his grenade episode.
the things they carried truth The definition of truth is the epitome of what we all perceive to be reality. Truth is what we sometimes think about in the back of our head, but we are unsure of whether this truth is really “true.” The objective correlative is another term that is used to refer to truth. The objective is to get enough people to feel the same emotion and agree upon it.
When people think of the military, they often think about the time they spend over in another country, hoping they make it back alive. No one has ever considered the possibility that they may have died inside. Soldiers are reborn through war, often seeing through the eyes of someone else. In “Soldier’s home” by Ernest Hemingway, the author illustrates how a person who has been through war can change dramatically if enough time has passed. This story tells of a man named Harold (nick name: Krebs) who joined the marines and has finally come back after two years. Krebs is a lost man who feels it’s too complicated to adjust to the normal way of living and is pressured by his parents.
The novel The Thing They Carried is a compilation of short stories that share underlying themes and characters. One of the stories is called “How to tell a True War Story”. In this story the narrator expands on a central theme of the distinction between truth and fiction when writing a war story. The story, like most of the other stories in the novel jumps erratically between events, which oftentimes creates confusion and a sense of the surreal in the story. Throughout the story the narrator repeatedly shows that when writing a war story the “story truth is truer sometimes than happening truth.”(O’Brien pg. 171) This quotation encompasses the theme and supports it. The narrator’s use of stylistic devices coupled with stories such as “How to Tell a True War Story” and “Good Form” exemplifies how fiction can fully represent the truth whilst the facts fall miserably short.
In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien the author tells about his experiences in the Vietnam war by telling various war stories. The quote, "It has been said of war that it is a world where the past has a strong grip on the present, where machines seemed sometimes to have more will power than me, where nice boys (girls) were attracted to them, where bodies ruptured and burned and stand, where the evil thing trying to kill you could look disconnecting human and where except in your imagination it was impossible to be heroic." relates to each of his stories.
The United States became frustrated with the death of wounded prisoners in Vietnam War. This is so deleterious John F Kennedy sends a warning to the west. Tim O’Brien Story about Vietnam could have been a biography because he played a role and it is based on a somewhat a true Story. O’Brien didn’t go through with this because of what he wrote is what he did see, what could have happened, and what he kept from being told. In the book simple themes guilt, shame, and innocence play a vital role in the soldier’s life.
In Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, numerous themes are illustrated by the author. Through the portrayal of a number of characters, Tim O’Brien suggests that to adapt to Vietnam is not always more difficult than to revert back to the lives they once knew. Correspondingly the theme of change is omnipresent throughout the novel, specifically in the depiction of numerous characters.
Envision a man that sat on a grimy concrete block, as nightfall began to crystallize before his eyes. His hair, charcoal-grey, was matted and straggly, as if he had ever known the pleasure of a hot shower or comb except when he was in the war. His once shimmering brown eyes were know hollow and cold. His eyes, that were once filled with the upmost blissfulness, now sagged like the bulky bags underneath his eyes, consumed by the loneliness and despair he felt for himself, for his lack of purpose in life. This man did not bare a smile, only crinkles where one used to be. He wore his only faded blue jacket with a tan shirt tucked underneath it. He wore cruddy worn out jeans that barely seized his thin waist and boney legs. His only pair of shoes that were once white, we're now grungy. His finger nails were bitten and dirty. This man, like many other homeless veterans, struggle everyday of their lives.
July of 1933 was a very eventful month for me and the rest of Machine Gun Kelly’s gang. My name is John Hand, notoriously known as “Hand Gun Johnny”, a name Kelly gave me as I rose to the ranks of his right hand man. Kelly had made a name for him robbing small banks, and bootlegging alcohol but he always wanted more, or his wife wanted more. Me and the boys always joked about how Kelly’s wife Kathryn Kelly, had always been the brains behind all of our schemes to rob and bootleg. This scheme whether Kelly plotted it or Katherine plotted it was like no other thing we had done before.
Otis sat at his tattered corner booth, the pale pink and teal upholstery ripped and worn by all those who had rested there before him. His charcoal-grey hair was oily and unkept as if he hadn’t known the pleasure of a shower or a comb since his early days in the war. His once green army jacket, faded to a light grey, covered the untucked, torn, and sweat-stained Goodwill T-shirt under it. He wore an old pair of denim blue jeans that were shredded in the knees and rested three inches above his boney ankles; exposing the charity he depended upon. His eyes, filled with loneliness and despair as if he had realized a lack of purpose in his life, were set in bags of black and purple rings two layers deep. His long, slender nose was set above a full crooked mouth with little lines at the corners giving his face the character of someone who used to smile often, but the firm set of his square jaw revealed a portrait of a man who knew only failure.