Literary Term #7

Flashback

• page 55: "Chunks of my own history flashed by. I saw a seven-year-old boy in a white cowboy hat and a Lone Ranger mask and a pair of bolstered six-shooters;I saw a twelve-year-old Little League shortstop pivoting t o turn a double play.....My whole life seemed to spill out into the river.."

This is a great example of flashbacks. During an important life changing decision, Tim's life flashes before him because he is about to completely change. No longer will he be the person he once was. After his choice, he will alter himself and become a new person. Either way he will not be who he was in his youth. Flashbacks allow for the reader to become a part of the character. They start to feel their feelings and become engaged by wanting the character to pick a certain way. This is also important to the story becasue it reveals Tim's past in a clever way. I think this flashback allows for the reader to understand where Tim is coming from. Lastly, the flashbacks are an effective way of showing that change is about to occur.

Literary Term #6

Motif

• page 19: "There's a moral here, said Mitchell Sanders."

This is a common phrase made when finishing a war story. This is an important motif since storytelling is one of the major themes of the book. The moral of the stories is either ridiculous or funny, or it is really a life lesson or new thing they have learned as a result of a certain situation. i think that it may also be a way to make a sad story humerous. An example would be on page 20 when the moral of the story of Lavendar's death is "Stay away from drugs..they'll ruin your day every time."(page 20). Yes, this is a true statement, but it is funny because really this is not a good moral to the story. We just heard a really depressing death story and the moral deals with drugs? I didn't think his death really had much to do with his use of drugs. (In addition, this phares presents irony because to Lavendar the drugs made his day better. Just wanted to point that out!)

Okay, so the motif really supports the theme of storytelling. On page 74, it says "In a true war story, if there's a moral at all, it's like the thread that makes the cloth". This shows that the motif of a moral is important because it makes the story. It makes the story worthwhile and able to be told over and over. This is just my thoughts on why the motif is important to this book.

Literary Term #5

Rhetorical Questions

• page 38: "Was it a civil war? A war of national liberation or simple aggression? Who started it and why? What really happened to the USS Maddox on that dark night in the Gulf of Tonkin? Was Ho Chi Minh a communist stooge, or a nationalist savior, or both, or neither? What about the Geneva Accords? What about SEATO and the Cold War? What about dominoes?"

These are a list of rhetorical questions going through O'Brien's mind when thinking about the war. It is obvious they are rhetorical because he is not looking for someone else to answer them. The purpose of these in the story is to show how every character must have had these type of questions running through their mind. Also, it may be used to show how everyone during this time did not truly understand the war. Even after the war, I am not sure if the soldiers do. So if soldiers there still have questions, think about the public who is pretty much out of the loop. This could also be an example of STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS. We are seeing what is going on in the mind of O'Brien. This allows for the reader to become a lot more connected to the story and the main character. This engages a reader by making them feel like they are a part of the story.

Literary Term #4

Epithet

• page 37: "Tim O'Brien: a secret hero. The Lone Ranger."

This epithet is used to describe the connection of O'Brien and his experience with courage. When he describes his perception about how courage works, he uses these phrases to describe himself before going into his story to support his theory and adjectives concerning his character. I think that these epithets gives us the readers a better understanding about O'Brien. We see how he percieves himself, and what he thinks about courage. Courage is a huge part about being a soldier. By using his courage at certain spurts or situations, O'Brien really is a "secret hero" because he doesn't use his courage all of the time, just in times he finds necessary or appropriate. He is the "Lone Ranger" in his story about how he used his courage. The epithets strengthen our view of O'Brien. It is a way to describe his character in a different, yet effective way.

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.

Literary Term #2

Dramatic Irony
In Chapter 1, there is an instance of dramatic irony. I do not want to summarize but after Ted Lavender died Kiowa said that "the man does care" (page 17) when talking about Jimmy Cross. This is irony because we the reader knows that the page before we find out that Cross thinks to himself that "he loved Martha more than his own men" (page 16). This shows that Cross did not fully have his mind or thoughts on his men. Rather, he was directing all of his care and affection towards Martha, a woman who did not even love him! This irony shows us how well Cross has hid from his men how he really is. They think he just is all for them, when in reality he does not want to lead them. He would rather have Martha loving him. The purpose of this irony for the story is to give the reader a better understanding of Cross and the perception of him to his soldiers. It also gives us knowledge of why Cross feels guilt for Lavender's death.

The Start of Second Book Blogs

I finished reading "The Things They Carried" recently, and this is what my next twenty blogs will cover! I am going to again start with literary terms and then discuss certain scenes or phrases that caught my attention while reading. Sooo let's get started!
Literary Term #1
Paradox

• page 7: "Where things came together but also separated."

This is clearly a paradox. In a letter to Jimmy Cross, Martha brings up this contradictory statement. An ocean's shoreline brings things together from the ocean to the land. It also takes things away, making them separate. In addition, it brings two very different things together that might usually not. I think that this is somewhat mean of Martha to say to Jimmy because this is just adding to his false thinking of her loving him. He might take this as that the two of them are together but separated by the ocean or war. He may also think that the pebble is a way of keeping them together since it was at the shoreline. This is just how I took this paradox. Lastly, this paradox may serve as a way to tell the situation that the soldiers are in. They are in an unknown place. They are together as one, but the war has separated them from family and loved ones. The ocean is the new unknown area they have been taken to. The land was what they knew. I am not sure if this is true, but it was another way I interpreted this.