Pattern #4

The poem "Edward" was very strange to me. It was very dark considering the killing of his father. In our small group, I was really surprised when we came to the realization that the mother was the one who wanted Edward to kill his father. He reveals this at the end of the poem when he says "such counsels you gave to me". This really shocked me! He hates her for making him do this and he is blaming her. When she asks what he will do for her, he says "the curse of hell from me shall ye bear". This is a very strong feeling. He is bitter I think after the act since he says his family can beg in the streets. He is rejecting everying since he wants to leave, but his feelings towards his mom are most negative. I think that this shows he blames her. Also, in this poem I think that he shows some remorse by saying "woe is me". He does not have enough remorse to help make his family's lives better. Instead, I think he is saying they are better off without him so he is leaving.

MY LAST SUMMER BLOG:)

For the last blog, I want to talk about the ending. I mean how can you blog about a book and not talk about that? You can't! So this book ends with O'Brien saying "I realize it as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story" (page 233). After reading this line, I was really confused. I was not sure what he wanted us to take from this at first, but after thinking I somewhat understand it. Linda's death was hard for Tim at a fairly young age. He had to deal with it, and I think he dealed with it by telling stories. In his dream, Linda compares herself to a book and says she "jsut hope[s] somebody'll pick it up and start reading" (page 232). When she says this, I think it compells Tim to start writing and telling stories. By telling stories, you do not forget. Since the dead cannot come back and tell people about themselves, Tim feels like he should tell their story for them. He starts to tell stories as a way to coop with his greif. By telling stories, Tim remembers the people not as just dead people, but as the people he knew and loved. His stories bring them to life.
Overall, I really did enjoy this book. It had some good and interesting stories. I did like it better than the other book, so I am glad I saved it for last!

Euphemism!!!!

When I was reading, I found two instances where euphemisms were used. On page 209, it says "Too many body bags." On page 224, it says "she kicked the bucket". Both of these mean that people died. I found it weird how O'Brien could explain to the finest detail about a dead person, but at page 209 could not say a lot of people died. I think that death is such a touchy subject, and honestly, I think it should. Death is not an easy thing to deal with. When I saw euphemisms in a book about war and death, I thought about how much we hate to talk about it. I am not sure I just found these euphemisms somewhat ironic in the story since we heard all about Kiowa, Lavendar, and the young soldier's death. Euphemisms are used so much and sometimes they can be funny, but they really do lighten the situation or make it not so hard to say what happened. This is just something I thought of when I cam across these.

Dead and Alive

This book has a lot of stories pertaining to death. One phrase that caught my atttention was on page 78 when O'Brien says "you're never more alive than when you're almost dead. You recognize what's valuable". This really was interesting to me because we always hear about how people see things in a life/death situation. In Dear John, John has a near death experience when he is shot. He tells his father that right before he blacked out, he saw coins and his dad. Coins was a memory he had with his father, so pretty much he just thought of his dad. He sees what was truly important to him throughout his entire life. The person that had been there for him no matter what. In addition, I read a book this summer called Secrets of a Shoe Addict. I honestly didn't like this book at all, but when reading The Things They Carried I was reminded of a scene in this book. One of the women in the book reveals that when she had a near death experience she did not see anything. She said it was then she realized she had nothing important or worth living for in her current life so she changed the way she lived. She became more holy and pretty much forgot her life before. I hope to never have this sort of experience, but if I did I hope that I see what I find most important to me.

Literary Term #3

Dialect

• Page 19: "They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness, Greased they'd say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping."
• Page 119: " 'You fuckin' trashed the fucker,' Azar said. 'You scrambled his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like Shredded fuckin' Wheat.' "

The dialect of the soldiers is a major part of the story. I think that the dialect throughout the story makes the reader feel like they are more connected to the soldiers since they are hearing the true way they speak. Also, I think the dialect is a way of how the soldiers deal with the terrible things occuring around them, such as death. They use harsh language as a way to coop with the sad and distressing situations they face. On page 19, they use these types of phrases to make the death of Lavendar not so tough on them. By making some humor, they are trying to keep their minds off how terrible it is that one of their men died. On page 119, Tim killed a man and Azar is trying to lighten the mood by making a somewhat humorous comment. He knows that Tim must be in shock and saddness of what he did, but Azar wants to make him treat this as just any other situation they've come across.