Exploration 5: Lilyan Eldadah

The story that has meant the most to me so far in The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien was the chapter “On the Rainy River” because he expressed himself thoroughly and really got through to the reader. At one point of the book when O'Brien is talking about being at the boarder to Canada he says, “Would you do it? Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry? Would you cry as I did?” (O’Brien 54). This part of the chapter really helped me connect to the story and made me feel like I was part of the book, and I really liked it. In the chapter he repeatedly said that he has never told this story before and how he was really embarrassed about the story, so that made it more emotional and helped the reader understand/see the differences and similarities between young Tim O'Brien and old Tim O’Brien. I also really liked the character Elroy Berdahl because he was very persistent and self-controlled.

Like I said in the previous paragraph, the character I connected with the best so far was Elroy Berdahl, the old man in charge on the Tip Top Lounge from the chapter “On the Rainy River” because he helped and cared for young Tim O'Brien and helped him from making a terrible mistake, by only saying a few words.  Berdahl was described as “self-controlled” which I could connect to because I would rather keep to myself instead of judging someone else or being unkind. I always try to help people when they need assistance, which also connected me with Berdahl because even though O'Brien didn't need help Berdahl stuck by his side, mentally, and helped figure out what to do by saying so little.

Something I took away from my active reading about a specific convention of narrative, which I would like to point out, was O'Brien’s use of sensory details. Once we began looking for sensory details in our active reading, I felt like in every page there were examples of all times of sensory details; sight, sound, touch, and smell. For example: “The afternoon was sunny and cold. A stiff breeze came in from the north, and I remember how the little fourteen-foot boat made sharp rocking motions as we pushed off from the dock. The current was fast. All around us, there was a vastness to the world, and unpeopled rawness, just the trees and the sky and the water reaching out toward nowhere. The air had the brittle scent of October” (O’Brien, 52). Just in this one quote there are sight, sound, and scent details, which is amazing how he could contribute all those sensory details and make the quote flow so smoothly.

In the chapter “On the Rainy River”, Tim O'Brien says:

“Courage, I seemed to think, comes to us in finite quantities, like an inheritance, and by being frugal and stashing it away and letting it earn interest, we steadily increase our moral capital in preparation for that day when the account must be drawn down. It was a comforting theory. It dispensed with all those bothersome little acts of daily courage; it offered hope and grace to the repetitive coward; it justified the past while amortizing the future” (O’Brien 38).

This quote really struck me and I really liked it. I like they way he explains what he thought courage was because it helped me see how he understood and practiced courage. This quote was emotional and well written.

Exploration 5 - Haley ClevelandBull

1.    The story that meant the most to me so far is the story of “The Man I Killed”.  The reason this story meant the most to me is because it shows that humanity still exists – even in war.  An example from the story “The Man I Killed” is when Tim is staring at the lifeless body of the young man he had just killed, and he couldn’t stop thinking about who the young man could have been, “He had been born, maybe, in 1946 in the village of My Khe near the central coastline of Quang Ngai Province, where his parents farmed, and where his family had lived for centuries… He was not a communist; he was a citizen and soldier… He was not a fighter; his health was poor, his body small and frail.  He liked books [and] he wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics” (O’Brien, 119).  What I see in this story as I mentioned above, and shown throughout the entire chapter of “The Man I Killed”, is that throughout many wars men have dehumanized their enemy in order to make the killing easier, more justified, but here in this story it shows that though Tim is in war he is creating a story about a man he killed as if to say that he recognizes the value of the life that he took.

2.    In all honesty, I cannot say that I can relate to any of the characters in the novel, purely because I have never been in their specific situations within a brutal war.  I can only truly say that I find some of the men honorable; such as Tim for not dehumanizing the enemy, but instead carrying the burden and understanding the sadness of the life he took.

3.    One type of narrative convention found throughout the novel is the author’s use of metaphors.  An example of a metaphor that I found to be a powerful use of word comparison is, “ Vietnam had the effect of a powerful drug: that mix of unnamed terror and unnamed pleasure that comes as the needle slips in and you know you’re risking something” (O’Brien, 109).  This metaphor stood out to me because the author, in using this metaphor, is asking the reader to think about what war is really like, and offering an example that he would use to compare and explain what he felt war is truly like.

       

4.    One passage that I marked in my reading was towards the beginning of the book.  “It was a simple pebble, an ounce at most.  Smooth to the touch, it was a milky white color with flecks of orange and violet, oval-shaped, like a miniature egg… It was the separate but together quality that had inspired her to pick up the pebble… through hot days of early April, he carried the pebble in his mouth, turning it with his tongue, tasting sea salt and moisture” (O’Brien, 7-8).  I loved this quote because it evokes the powerful emotions of love, and sadness that Lieutenant Cross was carrying inside of himself, within the reader, and shows the sentimental and emotional value and complexity of an object as small and as simple as a pebble.

Exploration 5: Jorden Greene

The chapter that has meant the most to me so far would have to be Friends. I chose this one because it really materializes true friendship with the pact of ending a life if something terrible would happen. I might not go that far with my best friend but we have been through a lot. I feel like I connect with Dave Jensen the most because he was the field hygiene man and well if I was in the war that's what I'd be. I really enjoy how he talks about each individual character, telling how they carried their physical items and emotional baggage. "But it was not battle, it was just the endless march, village to village, without purpose, nothing won nothing lost. They marched for the sake of the march."  This passage really showed how the men felt about their tour in Vietnam. Just marching to march from village to village. Seeming like nothing was ever accomplished.

Exploration 5 Dillon Quigley

Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong was the most meaningful so far. It seems like such an impossible thing to happen, shipping his girlfriend out to him, her then getting caught up in the war. It seems so easy and possible but at the same time it seems like that could never happen. When Mary Anne firsts leaves the compound with the greenies the emotion Rat goes threw i just connect with. I think most people do, who hasn't had someone leave you. The feeling of emptiness he felt the amount of disappointment that he must have felt.Rat deals with emotions the way you think someone would.
A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on to it and takes the blast, but its a killer grenade and everybody dies anyway. Before they die, thought, one of the dead guys says, " The fuck you do that for?" and the jumper says, "Story of my life, man," and the other guy starts to smile but he's dead. That's a true story that never happened.
This little paragraph is true, even if this happened it would never be told as a story. No one would ever tell this story no matter what. It dies with the men there is no happy ending, it is war. some stories will never be heard because like this they will die with the men.

Exploration 5 Cody Compton

    1. The story that has meant those most to me, was On The Rainy River. This story meant the most to me because Tim had to make a very hard decision, to run away to Canada and be a coward, or stay and fight a war he didn't believe in and risk dying. He decided he would run and almost made it to the border where he spent six days with Elroy Berdahl, an owner of a fishing lodge on the Rainy River. During his time there he made his decision to stay and fight in the war, "The day was cloudy. I passed through towns with familiar names, through the pine forests and down to the prairie and then to Vietnam, where i was a solider, and then home again. I survived, but its not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to the war."
     2. The character that I can relate most to is, Rat Kiley, I say this because like Rat i always try to make the best of a situation like when they were humping through mine field and he came up with a rhyme. I can also relate to him because, like Rat sometimes I have strange ways of copping with my feelings. I if I'm pissed off or hurt about something I sometimes go out and shoot stuff or blow things up with Pyrodex, however I never go as far as shooting a baby buffalo just to hurt it. Some of Rat's qualities are he's a captivated story teller and a good friend.
    3. A narrative that I would like to point out is, Tim's description of Elroy Berdahl. He not only describes Elroy's physical appearance but he also describes how Elroy made him feel by just looking at him. Tim rights that Elroy's gaze sliced him open and made him feel guilty.
    4.   The passage that I chose to write about comes from the chapter Friends, it is about Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk, who in the past chapter got in a fist fight and weren't considered "enemies", however they grew to be great friends. "In late August they made a pact that if one of them should ever get totally fucked up -- a wheelchair wound -- the other guy would automatically find a way to end it." This has impacted me because I couldn't imagine making a pact to kill my best friend under any circumstance. I couldn't bring myself to it. that just shows how much a war can impact you, how strong their friendship truly was. I imagine killing an enemy, another human being, would be hard enough to do let alone you're best friend.  

Exploration 5 - Andrew Balsiger

1. The story On The Rainy River has meant the most so far because I don’t think I would want to go off to fight a war that did not make any sense to me. Tim O’brien talks about how the war doesn’t make any sense and says “Knowledge, of course, is always imperfect, but it seemed to me that when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can’t fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can’t make them make them undead.” Overall he doesn’t believe the war should be fought and does not want to go off to an almost certain death for a mistake of a war. If I was in his situation it would be very hard to give up my life to go fight a war that didn’t make sense.

2. I think the character I have connected with the best is Rat Kiley because he has had a hard time dealing with the stresses of war. I can only imagine how stressful a war environment is and I do not think I would be able to handle it very well. It really stood out to me when Rat lost his best friend Curt Lemon and took out his anger on the baby buffalo. I feel like if something that traumatic happened to in a war environment I would take out my anger on something else as well.

3. I like how he characterizes the soldiers with their one greatest fear. He continuously talks about how the soldier was always carrying his greatest fear, which was the fear of embarrassment when he tells the story from before the war. It really shows how true that statement was, and how no matter how many physical items they carried they wouldn’t shy away because they were scared of the embarrassment. Most everyone who went to war went because they would be embarrassed not to go. This not only helps explain why they do what they do, but it also helps characterize the time period and how people thought during the war.

4. In the story spin Tim talks about how bad things never stop happening during the war and then says “But the war wasn’t all that way. Like when Ted Lavender went too heavy on the tranquilizers. “How’s the war today?” somebody would say, and Ted Lavender would give a soft, spacey smile and say. “Mellow, man. We got ourselves a nice mellow war today.” I like how he included this paradox. It really shows that no matter how desperate their situation was in Vietnam they tried to make it better and make it seem like the war wasn’t actually that bad.

Exploration 5- Haley Miner

1.  The story that has meant the most to me so far was when Tim was talking about how he is always writing war stories or telling them and his daughter keeps telling him that he has an obsession. This means the most to me because my father was in the Vietnam War and I use to love hearing all of his stories about his time in Vietnam. My dad never forgot anything from that war even though he wished he did. Tim says "But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget." Tim could try to forget all the things that happened but he never will because he will always have that memory of Vietnam.
2.One person I connect with is Elroy Berdahl because he never had to ask Tim why he was there. It was like he knew already and he never brought it up. Elroy could tell it was best to just let things lie and not be spoken about. He is a kind old man that wants to help in anyway he can. It is almost like he has that third sense and can tell things about people even when they are not said. I like to believe that I can see the pain and hurt in people as well. I always do my best to help and that is what I see Elroy doing. I know that in my time of need I would like a random stranger to help me and not ask any questions. It was just the kind thing to do.
3.One thing I noticed is Tim always takes us back to the title when it comes to the things they carried. He does not have to directly say who carried what but you can tell by his writing that every person in this book has something physical and emotion that they carry with them. Tim does a good job at showing the characters personalities and troubles they have as the book goes on.
4."You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead." This quote impacted me because it shows that he knew what he would have to deal with if he did not run away to Canada. He knew he did not want to kill other people when he believed America should not have been in this war. Tim did not want to make the mistake of taking another person's life and regret it later on. It impacts me because people make mistakes every day and think nothing of it, but when it comes to life or death they do not take the time to think about if they are doing the right thing or if they are just hurting other people.