- The passage should influence the entire book.
- Your explanation should unpack the passage by looking at what is written and how it is written? (This means lit terms.)
- It should affect the reader
Type out your passage and explain how the passage you chose fits in with the above three items and why you think it is significant.
33 comments:
In the novel, The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, the following passage is very significant to the novel, "In a true war story, if there's a moral at all, it's like the thread that makes the cloth. You can't tease it out. You can't extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. and in the end, really, there's nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe "oh" (p.77). This is significant because this quote is why the book was written. It wasn't written to tell a war story and have the readers react to the war times, it wasn't written for the soldiers to tell their story, it was written to show that there really isn't a moral to a war story. In a true war story, as Tim O'Brien explains, there isn't much to a war story at all besides the message each reader as an individual tries to pull out. I personally think this passage is significant because to me this is the reason behind the writing of the novel. It says straight up that there really isn't a moral, so why exactly was it written? None other than to get a reaction from the readers like the writer is getting from our class.
In the novel, The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien, I chose the chapter called Style. This is personally my favorite chapter, and I thought that it impacted the book as a whole. This chapter began with a girl dancing around her burned down town, house, and family that has passed away, while O'Brien and his friends watched her. They thought she was both crazy and interesting, and I thought it was significant because they really saw the after effects of war. The reader got a very detailed description on how this young girl responded, and how they did not understand why she responded the way she did. I believe that this impacted the book because it tied the war into a bigger perspective, it showed how it effects community and the country. These men went to war and saw how it effected everything all at once but the citizens at home only got to see their perspectives. And I believe that because of that it really impacted the way people saw men of the war.
in yellow birds I chose about a page to examine. The excerpt is from page 84 and it says "it was barely perceptible, that noise. I still hear it sometimes. Sound is a funny thing, and smell. Ill light a fire in the back lot of my cabin after the sun goes down. Then after a while, the smoke settles down into little ruts between clumps of pine. Wind whips up through the draws nearby and courses over the creek bed. And i can hear it then. i was not sure if it really came from the women around the campfires, if they pulled their hair crying out in mourning or not, but i heard it and even now it seems wrong not to listen. I took off my helmet and placed my rifle on top of it and allowed my ears to adjust to the ambient sounds in the night. there was something out there. I glanced and murph and he returned a sad and knowing look. The LT put the radio down and sat in his chair with his head in his hands rubbing the strange mark on his cheek bone. We all listened to it a while, watching the fires burn against the night. my chest tightened. there was something both ordinary and miraculous about the strange wailing that we heard, and the way it carried to us on the wind that began inside the orchard. later in the night two of the lights in the distance began to brighten, then another two, and then another. The LT walked to each of us and said, "the colonel wants to see you guys. Get ready."
We put our rifles out over the wall and gripped the fore stocks tightly. We put out out cigarettes and asserted our selves against the silence beyond our small encampment. I felt like a self-caricature, and that we were Falsely Strong."
This passage reflects the whole book because it shows how the eeriness of war is enough to come back and haunt people forever. The author writes this to show how a lot of the war was anxiously waiting on the enemy to start firing. Just the prolonged suspense is enough to drive someone mad. This effects the reader because it shows the reader how the soldiers were under constant stress and had nothing but a rifle to help cope. The author describes soldiers using the paradox Falsely strong. This means that the soldiers appear to be brutal war heroes but truly they are weak from the effects of war. The little references like that give the reader a look at how soldiers viewed themselves. The passage gives a very detailed look at how soldiers viewed the war.
While reading The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, I found a passage that I think is very significant to the entire book. O’Brien says, “I true war story is nerv moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue” (p. 65). This passage has significance because O’Brien says that a war story has no moral. Every story told or book written does not have to have a moral or a purpose. It can just be a story, that can be told time and time again. He also states that a true war story should never make the reader feel uplifted, or happy in other words. People should just take war stories as they are, and not try to change them so it feels less true. War stories always want to be told lightly so people do not know the truth, but if people listen to the stories, maybe it would be easier to understand. The passage teaches the readers and listeners to take war stories for what they are, and let these stories be just that. A story.
The passage that I chose from Yellow Birds was " Anyone can feel shame. I remember myself sitting in the dirt under neglected and overgrown brush, afraid of nothing in the world more than having to show myself for what I had become. I wasn't really known around there anyway, but I had the feeling that If I encountered anyone they would intuit my disgrace and would judge me instantly" (p.132) I felt that this passage had significance to it because it can relate to many people. When Bartle comes back from war he feels that he is the outcast in society. He feels that everyone knows what he did and that they will judge him. This can also be true in todays world as well. Men and women that come back from overseas are not the same people they were when they left to go there. War can have a great impact on ones life causing them to change their whole way of life. This passage tells the reader to really understand the words because they are as true as they can get. What the soldier sees and what they tell you can be two totally different things. This is how Bartle felt when he came back. He kept to himself and did not really want to talk to anyone about what he had seen/done. This just shows some of the affects that war can have on the individual when they return home.
A passage in yellow birds that i think is significant to the whole book is when the writer said “He was lying in the dust and there was a lot of blood around him. Doesn't count does it? Murph asked. No i don't think so where we at? Nine sixty-eight?” (p.11) This passage means that murph and the speaker are counting how many people died in the war and in this particular passage their friend the translator had gotten killed. After he had gotten killed the two really didn't show any remorse for their friend and just asked each other if he counted to the overall number or not. The Literary device that is used is imagery and depicting the gore and blood of war. This should affect the reader because it will open their eyes to what war is really like.
While reading The Yellow Birds, a passage that I think is one of the most important in the book, is the second paragraph "Then, in summer, the war tried to kill us as the heat blanched all color from the plains. The sun pressed into our skin, and the war sent its citizens rustling into the shade of white buildings. It cast a white shade on everything, like a veil over our eyes. It tried to kill us every day, but it had not succeeded. Not that our safety was preordained. We were not destined to survive. The fact is, we were not destined at all. The war would take what it could get. It was patient. It didn’t care about objectives, or boundaries, whether you were loved by many or not at all. While I slept that summer, the war came to me in my dreams and showed me its sole purpose: to go on, only to go on. And I knew the war would have it's way.” (Pg. 1). I believe this passage to be significant because it summarizes the entire war throughout the book. I explains that war never stops, and none of them were guaranteed to live or die during the duration. The whole time the war just tries to take more and more from them, and in this passage the heat of the summer in the middle east affects their lives significantly. The narrators use of imagery helps the reader visualize how hot it really is in that environment. In the sentence "It cast a white shade on everything, like a veil over our eyes." (Pg. 1) the narrator describes the heat as a veil over their eyes because the sun is so strong. The narrator keeps referring back to the war as 'It' using repetition throughout the passage. This passage effected me because it shows how strong you have to be to endure the war, but no matter what you do you are not destined to live or die, and that you can only do your best to survive, and the rest is up to war itself.
In The Things They Carried, the chapter titled “Good Form” is very significant to the entire book. The chapter is short, only a little more than a full page, but it explains why O’Brien writes the way that he does. On page 171 he writes “For instance, I want to tell you this: twenty years ago I watched a man die on a trail near the village of My Khe. I did not kill him. But I was present, you see, and my presence was guilt enough. I remember his face, which was not a pretty face, because his jaw was in his throat, and I remember feeling the burden of responsibility and grief. And rightly so, because I was present. But listen. Even that story is made up. I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. Here is the happening-truth. I was once a soldier. There were many bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and afraid to look. And now, twenty years later, I’m left with faceless responsibility and faceless grief. Here is story-truth. He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay in the center of a red clay trail near the village of My Khe. His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut, the other eye was a star-shaped hole. I killed him. What stories can do, I guess, is make things present. I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again.” (pgs 171-172). This passage really explains how important perspective is and how it is used in the book. O’Brien has already made it clear that not every story he tells is completely true in this book, because he wants to make a point to the reader and true war stories do not have a moral. He basically explains how he uses imagery and pathos throughout the book in this one chapter by comparing it to the real, raw truth. The “story-truth” he refers to paints a vivid picture for the reader and connects with them on an emotional level, whereas the “happening-truth” did not have the same effect. When O’Brien says “I did not kill him. But I was present, you see, and my presence was guilt enough.” (pg 171) he is mimicking the way he has written the rest of the story thus far. He is writing about himself and his feelings and his grief. However, when he continues to say that what he has just said is still not even true, I believe we can assume that in some capacity, it is true. Because someone felt that way. Someone killed that man. Maybe it was not O’Brien, but someone, somewhere, on some side of this war, killed another human being. They took a life that was arguably as equal as their own, and those around that man did not try to stop him. They did not even try to help the man who died. They just felt the pain and guilt. They felt that they were afraid to look, O’Brien writes. They were afraid to be responsible because this was a life. They did not want to and could not think of it that way then, but in retrospect they feel the repercussions of how cruel and ugly the situation was. This is what O’Brien wants the reader to feel. He wants the reader to feel how the men who were present felt and how the man who killed felt. He wants them to feel how the dead man felt. The only way to do that is through his storytelling, and if that means attaching faces to people he never actually saw and describing details he might not have felt in that moment, then he is going to add that so that we understand exactly what he is trying to say.
A passage I chose from The Things They Carried, was in the chapter Spin. “The war wasnt all terror and violence. Sometimes things could almost get sweet. For instance, I remember a little boy with a plastic leg. I remember how he hopped over to Azar and asked for a chocolate bar- “GI number one”, the kid said- and Azar laughed and handed over the chocolate. When the boy hopped away, Azar clucked his tongue and said, “War’s a bitch.” He shook his head sadly. “One leg, for Chrissake. Some poor fucker ran out of ammo.” (pg. 31) This passage is important and affects the reader because when the reader thinks of “War”, they think of death, injuries, depression, danger. But the first sentence of this passage talks about how sometimes, the war was not that bad. Which shocks the reader. The men in the story all carry some sort of pain and baggage. The men had to deeply think about their reason for being in war, what they were to contribute. This passage makes the reader understand that through all the pain and sadness placed upon the men, they still found a reason to push forward and not think of the war in such a harsh light. The speaker uses the little boy with a plastic leg as a symbol for hope and faith. The boy had his leg blown off from the war surrounding him. He still takes life as it comes and hops around looking for chocolate bars. That little boy makes the men feel thankful, and gives them hope for the future. This passage is significant because the war was many things, violence, terror, destruction, but considering the circumstances the men started to appreciate the little things, and look at war from a different perspective.
The passage I choose is from The Things They carried I believe that this passage influences and shows importance for the whole book. The author says “In a true war story, If there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe “oh” “ (p.74)
I feel like this passage is very important because throughout this chapter O’Brien says several times that a true war story does not have a moral. And that not every war story is true, it could have little detail or there could be exaggeration. You can never know because the situation is different for every person because every person sees things differently. People may not understand the whole a war story might not have a moral but that’s because this chapter tells you that you’ll never understand that, and you will never understand war unless you are there.
The passage I’ve chosen from is The Things They Carried, I believe that the passage from the chapter Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong influences the reader’s perspective of the story. The author writes Rat Kiley explaining “...I saw it. WHen she came in through the wire that night, I was there I saw those eyes of hers, I saw how she wasn’t even the same person no more. What’s so impossible about that? She was a girl, that’s all. I mean, if it was a guy, everybody’d say, Hey, no big deal, he got caught up in the Nam shit, he got seduced by the Greenies. See what I mean? You got these blinders on about women. How gentle and peaceful they are. All that crap about if we had a pussy for president there wouldn’t be no more wars. Pure garbage. You got to get rid of that sexist attitude” (O'Brien 106-107). I believe that this chapter, along with being one of my favorites, truly leaves an impact on the rest of the book. O'Brien shows the reader through the passage that gender doesn’t matter during war times and to think otherwise is a mistake. The entire chapter shows the transformation of this sweet woman to a numbed warrior and it shocks readers that this would happen to a woman. But, the reader doesn’t bat an eye to all the men who’ve gone through the same transformation as Mary Anne and I believe that is O'Brien's point in including this story in his book. Rhetorical questions ask the reader why exactly it matters that she was woman when in reality it doesn’t matter. Mary Anne wasn’t the only person to be transformed by Vietnam, nor was she the last, readers shouldn’t be shocked by this transformation just because she is a woman. This transformation has been happening throughout the book and I believe that is the impact if this passage in the story.
A significant passage in The Things They Carried is when O'Brian says "They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.” This passage goes along with the theme of the entire book. It shows the reader how hard it is for the soldiers to see men die everyday, while they are still alive. It makes them believe that they do not deserve to live when good men have died. sSome of these men feel that if they do not die for their country, then they have not given enough. This passage influences the entire book because it proves to the reader that the things the soldiers carry are not always physical, they carry around everything they have seen and been through, which causes a lot of pain for them. The tone of this passage is sad to the reader. It opens the readers' eyes as to what the soldiers actually have to deal with during and after war. These soldiers go through a lot and this quote is a metaphor for how much the soldiers have gone through.
“My first instinct was to yell out to him, “You made it, buddy, keep going,” but i remembered how odd it would be to say a thing like that. It was not long before the others saw him too.” (Powers, 21) This quote comes from the beginning of the book, although it represents what Powers is trying to covey throughout the entire book. Powers continuing theme is the story of how Pvt. Bartle is struggling with the affects of war. He continuously thinks about Murph and also the other human lives out their on the battlefield. Even if they are not on his team. Around this part in the book Bartle witnesses something that he could never unsee.. An enemy soldier trapped. The soldier ends up getting killed and it brings a point to Bartle's head. That man could of been him. Everyone out there is just like him. He didn't want to be that 1000th death.. but he could of been. War is not in ones control and that is what makes it scary.. Whatever he witnesses while he is at war, he will never forget even when he returns home and war is over. This influences the impacts of war on Bartle throughout the entire book for example when he returns home, he keeps thinking about Murphs death and what he could of done to "save" him. It may affect the reader in the same kind of way. They know the tough times that the character went through during war. So the feelings the character has can impact the reader and how they interpret the situation.
The passage that I have chosen is from The Things They Carried, personally believing it sets the overall look of the novel. The author explains, "They all carried ghosts" (O'Brien 9). This description gives the reader an entire view at the book. The author uses a metaphor of what the soldiers carry during the war. They all relive a past time before entering into the war. Each individual thing that they carry is nonexistent while at war. They hold onto some object from their pasts and find a superstition in it. This affects the readers because it can call out to them and something from their past that has vanished and became a ghost to them. The readers can carry it themselves in any personal way they decide. The main character, for example, carries letters and photographs from his ex love, but continues to relive his memories with her inside his head. This ghost he carries is something that gets him through war, which for any person in the world, it could get them through anything if it is relevant to their being. I find this significant in the book because everyone carries a ghost with them, whether it is a necklace, letter, or piece of art. It is an object that gives someone peace and a strength to keep moving because that past life was a life to remember.
The passage from Yellow Birds i chose to analyze is the first sentence of the book, “The war tried to kill us in the spring” (Powers 1). I feel this passage affects the book in many ways. Throughout the book, our narrator mentions how while fighting in the war, many around him died, and he almost died. But he didn’t. He persevered when times looked rough and he stayed resilient. He personifies the war by saying that it literally tried to kill the soldiers. This gives the war a more empowering personality, and lets the reader see the war in a new way, a way that separates the actual war from the people fighting in the war. I feel this passage is important because it sets the scene for the book. It establishes that there is always a desire for death from anyone. Also, spring is seen as a time of rebirth and life. It is a situational archetype seen as healthy and life-giving. But in this one sentence, it shows that not everything is full of life and goodness, even if it should be. This sentence shows the true nature of things, and that life can go any which way, regardless of season.
In The Things They Carried by Tim O’brien, I thought the quote on page 68 had a lot of importance to the novel. “In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. It’s a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t, because the normal stuff is necessary to believe the truly incredible craziness.” I think this quote is important because they have a hard time giving the story-teller credibility. I think this paragraph makes the reader look at the book and say “how much of this story is true?” It is also important because it shows how their minds get all jumbled up while in battle. It is not their tip priority to look at a situation and think “this would make a good story to tell one day.” They use everything that is made up to just fill holes where the truth should be. It is to enhance the story, and make it as it seemed instead of how it is.
I think that the passage from 144-146 in Yellow Birds is a very powerful passage. It is a moment that we really get to see into Bartle’s mind with great detail unlike anywhere else in the book. This passage is filled with so much raw emotion that there is no way it couldn’t be significant. Before this passage we rarely see him dive into what is bothering him, but we could all tell he had something to say, through the interactions with his mom specifically. Bartle pours out all of his thoughts and feeling that this experience has given him, and it seems like this is the first time he has ever let it out. The passage is written out in one long sentence, almost like a stream of consciousness, which adds to the emotion of the passage by making it seem almost draining. Anytime someone shows that much emotion it should leave a lasting effect on the listener as it is never easy to share your emotions that have been eating you away for a good amount of time.
The passage I chose from The Things They Carried was on page 171: "But listen. Even that story is made up. I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening truth," This passage is very short but to me, it is the most impacting passage O'Brien wrote through out the entire novel. O'Brien writes this book completely made from stories. They're not just war stories. They make you feel something. Although not all of his stories are one-hundred percent true, he writes in a way that makes you feel the way he felt as he lived through the war and fought and lost people he had loved. From page one O'Brien's storytelling is so vivid and emotional it throws you right in the middle of it all. Right until the very last page. You picture the water buffalo as you read, you can almost feel the deep sticky sludge as they trek through it to find Kiowa, and you can see the youthful beauty that Tim saw in Linda as he tells his stories. O'Brien write is a way that makes the reader feel something and that is was the entire novel The Things They Carried is built upon.
While reading The Yellow Birds, I thought the following passage was very beneficial to the novel, "I shocked awake and spat up water from the river and they banged on my chest until i spat out more and I lay on the bank, drunk and smiling, looking out at the strange faces gathering there. I lay for a little while half in and out of the water and it ran over my feet, lapping up and down and cooling them, shallow enough to be safe where i lay. I smiled absently and thought of the old palomino nuzzling me as i came around" (pg.147). I thought this passage was significant to the novel because it is comparing Bartle's incident to war itself. The use of imagery in this passage helps the reader picture what Bartle is going through while drowning. The reader can imagine in his/her head all the feelings and thoughts Bartle is having in this dream while drowning. This passage is similar to war because this dream Bartle is having was bizarre and peculiar. You could't really understand what was going on during this dream, why he was having this dream of the horse nuzzling him? Or why Bartle was unusually happy and calm during this astonishing dream? War is exactly like this dream he was having. War is a great thing to be apart of to protect your people and to make sure everyone is safe but at the same time war makes you confused and upset just because you don't understand why all of this is happening. All you get from war is the death and sadness.
The passage I chose from The Things They Carried was on page 37 " This is one story Ive never told before. Not to anyone. Not to my parents, not to my brother or sister, not even to my wife. To go into it, Ive always thought, would only cause embarrassment for all of us, a sudden need to be elsewhere, which is the natural response to a confession. Even now, Ill admit the story makes me squirm." The story he is talking about is war. But they are not just war stories the quotes shows the inner struggles that also come with those war or stories he is talking about. This connects to the book as a whole because it shows what they carried through out their time at war. Also what they did to help them be emotionally ready for it also.
I’d come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person, a college grad, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, all the credentials, but after seven months in the bush I realized that those high, civilized trappings had somehow been crushed under the weight of the simple daily realities. I’d turned mean inside. ( page 190) When, in “The Ghost Soldiers,” O’Brien tries to exact revenge on Bobby Jorgensen for his failure to treat him competently, he concedes that he is acting irrationally. Though it is difficult for O’Brien to admit, after a certain amount of time in Vietnam he realizes that he is capable of evil. The only way for him to deal with hurt is to hurt back. The terms O’Brien uses juxtapose his previous life,one of intellectualism and striving for success through studying,with his life in the jungle, where accolades like Phi Beta Kappa have no relevance. The foreign, academic terms “Phi Beta Kappa” and “summa cum laude” contrast starkly with the simple, blunt descriptions of life in the “bush,” just as the civility of his college years contrasts starkly with his newfound meanness.
The passage I chose in the book the things they carried was enemies, because it shows that not only during war are they fighting for their country they are also fighting with some of the soldiers from their country. This passage influences the whole book, because it shows some of the struggles that the soldiers went through during war. It showed that they were humans and got into fights with each other. They weren’t only afraid of war, but each other.This passage would affect the reader by making the reader think about what it’s like to fight in war and not trust anyone you’re there with. It makes the reader understand what it’s like to be there. In the end of the passage the two boys get along and find that they can trust each other which shows the reader the emotional rollercoaster that soldiers go through.
He looked left, then right, and the dust popped around him, and I wanted to tell everyone to stop shooting at him, to ask, ‘What kind of men are we?
-Bartle chapter 1. This quote sets up the idea of the entire novel "What kind of men are we?" Bartle, the narrator, has looked outside of himself here and is seeig the world with different eyes. Shortly after this quote, the man dies and Bartle is pretty sure his bullet is to blame. Through the whole book, Bartle takes responsibility for the atrocities around him, even though he's only one man just trying to get through a difficult situation. When he gets home, Bartle can't let go of this feeling. He's pretty much stuck in his own head. He thinks the world has changed and he can't find a way to live in it anymore... pretty sad stuff.
“You’re nothing, that’s the secret: a uniform in a sea of numbers, a number in a sea of dust. And we somehow thought those numbers were a sign of our own insignificance. We thought that if we remained ordinary, we would not die. We confused correlation with cause and saw a special significance in the portraits of the dead, arranged neatly next to the number corresponding to their place on the growing list of casualties we read in the newspapers, as indications of an ordered war (Powers 12).”
This passage affects the entire story because this is how the author feels during the entire book. He feels worthless and meaningless, especially during the war. The tone in this passage is very low and emotionless, and very depressed sounding. He does not feel like he matters at all in society. After the war, Bartle refused to make friends or spend time with the ones he had. He was alone. Even during the war, all Bartle had was Murph. He believes he is insignificant so why try to be his own person? He’s going to die anyways, so it doesn’t matter if he was spontaneous or a loner in the end. Even as he’s dead, he doesn’t matter. To the government, Bartle is still a number. One of the millions sent out by the government to fight and die for the war. His tone creates a low mood for the reader, who then reflects on the passage. The reader then emphathizes to poor agent Bartle, who doesn’t think he is significant. The reader thinks Bartle is significant but understand why he would think that. Then, Murph gets brutally murdered and Bartle doesn’t know how to feel, how to react, or how to take in all the new feelings. Bartle starts thinking that since only a few people cared about Murph when word came out he had passed, Bartle would not be missed, leading to the feeling that he means nothing. I think this passage is very significant because it reflects the speaker's tone throughout the entire book, which then determines his actions, like not seeing his friends or always being alone. There is a lot to see about a person when you hear them speak about themselves or the world around them and I think this really reflects on the speaker’s life actions. If Bartle didn’t think he meant anything, he wouldn’t have tried to make himself a better, more social person. He lived his life on the low side because he didn’t care if he made it better or not.
I chose the passage from The Things They Carried "She knew about the war; she knew I'd been a soldier. 'You keep writing these war stories,' she said, 'so I guess you must've killed somebody.' It was a difficult moment, but i did what seemed right, which was to say 'Of course not,'" (O'Brien 125), because it explains the reason why he writes war stories. O'Brien felt that the time wasn't right to tell his daughter who was too young at the time, so he continues to write war stories in hope she will ask again one day. This impacts the reader through a emotional tag as he wants to preserve his daughters feelings as anyone would want to do but does not want to lie to her as when she finds out later it will cause some dissonance which many people face domestic distress. The way it is written is trying to back up his reasoning for lying to his daughter as if he almost is being accused of being a bad person. O'Brien writes like this to connect the reader a little further and try to give a more personalized feel to the book.
A passage that I thought was significant is on page 13 in The Yellow Birds. Bartle states: "Of course, we were wrong. Our biggest error was thinking that it mattered what we thought. It seems absurd now that we saw death as an affirmation of our lives. That each one of those deaths belonged to a time and that therefore that time was not ours. We didn't know the list was limitless. We didn't think beyond a thousand. We never considered that we could be among the walking dead as well. I used to think that maybe living under that contradiction had guided my actions and that one decision made or unmade in adherence to this philosophy could have put me on or kept me off the list of the dead. I know isn't like that now." This passage influences the entire book because it presents a truth that is prevalent in war and also in the story. This is because it shows the reader that anybody could lost by war, including Murphy, and shows that war is not controlled by fate, but by chance. The passage affects the reader by showing them the ambiguous nature of war and making them feel disconnected from soldiers' struggles. The language shows this to the reader. This passage is significant because it provides a crucial feeling that Bartle and Murphy have throughout the story. This is how this passage is significant to The Yellow Birds.
The passage i chose is from my story The Things They Carried, and the entire passage consists of two sentences. They pack a powerful message, and it is where O'Brien says "It wasnt a war story. It was a love story". It shows how people view war differently, and the stories in which are told can be showing different perspectives or can be showing alternating views. For example, some people who have never been to war would think that the story of how Rat wrote to Lemon's sister and got upset about it to extreme violence is just a war story, not looking deeper into it. They wouldn't realize that everything done was out of a love for a fellow comrade, out of a passion for someone you bond with while you're both afraid for your lives 24/7. People just think that since it has violence, since it's in a war, it's only a war story and they would choose not to look deeper into it. Thus, the passage affects the whole book in that it shows this theme of the true meaning in war, the true emotions shown and the way in which people bond. Love is a powerful thing and the story embodies it in order to show the meaning of war stories arent to be gory, but to show such powerful feelings.
The passage I choose is found on page 68 and reads: "In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be
skeptical. It's a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn't, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness." This passage affects the entire book because it is alluding to the fact that nothing he wrote in the book was true. This is telling the audience that the importance behind a war story is the emotion reaction that the audience gets from reading it. The truthfulness behind it is irrelevant according to O'Brian. But this passage itself affects the reader by making them question not only this book, but all other war books they have ever read.
The passage i found was page 68 in the book The Things They Carried and reads: “In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. It’s a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t, because the normal stuff is necessary to believe the truly incredible craziness.” I thought this quote had a lot to deal with the novel and was important.This passage impacts the entire book, i believe this quote makes the reader look at the story and wonder how much of it is actually true. It also shows how their minds aren't really in the right spot while they are in battle. I think this quote is important because they have a hard time giving the story-teller credibility. Their main priority it to not make their story a main priority and think "yeah this will make a good story one day".
"I want him to resist now, as I remember it. Not like Sterling suggested, but to resist nonetheless. It wasn't that I thought he should have hoped that his being abandoned could be changed, but I wanted something that I could look back on and say, yes, you were fighting too, you burned to be alive, and whatever failure or accident of nature caused you to be killed could be explained by something other than the fact that I'd missed your giving up" (Powers 82). This is foreshadowing Murph's death. Murph's death is what pushes Bartle over the edge. It stays with him even when the war is over. This is motivates him to dispose of Murph's body, which eventually gets him into trouble. Bartle looks back on this moment multiple times throughout the book and wonders if Murph's death was his fault. The repetition of the word resist emphasizes the point that Bartle wishes that Murph would have resisted death so he would still be alive today.
The book that I’ve been “reading” is The Things They Carry" This is one story I’ve never told before. Not to anyone. Not to my parents, not to my brother or sister, not even to my wife. To go into it, I’ve always thought, would only cause embarrassment for all of us, a sudden need to be elsewhere, which is the natural response to a confession. Even now, I’ll admit the story makes me squirm."(O’Brien 37) O’Brien is describing a war story that he has never told before. But they are not just war stories the quotes shows the inner struggles that also come with those war or stories he is talking about. This connects to the book as a whole because it shows what they carried throughout their time at war. It shows how war can affect someone so powerfully
In The Yellow Birds, Powers gives us a clear understanding of war at the beginning of the book in chapter 1. The quote "We stayed awake on amphetamines and fear" (pg 5) states how when you are a soldier in the war that it is scary and unpredictable to the point where the men and women in the army cannot get a good nights rest and have to be on edge all the time. The narrator Bartle in the story also says in this chapter how his back hurt from sleeping on cement on the building where the men were. This shows the physical struggles that soldiers felt also along with not sleeping well. They didn't have proper beds. He writes this first chapter giving events that he has experienced so far. He talks about all of the hardships that him and the other soldiers went through. He sets the tone of this book in this chapter with a sad but somewhat angry mood. He uses profanity in the quote "Here we go again, Same old shit again." (pg 7). This shows how Bartle and Murph were annoyed and angry at the war because the same bad things always keep happening. Another quote from Chapter 1 is where Murph and Bartle were right next to Malik when he got killed, "We did not see Malik get killed, but Murph and I had his blood on both of our uniforms." (pg 11). This shows the crazy and unexpected side of the war because Murph and Bartle were just having a conversation Malik and then all of a sudden Malik gets shot and killed right next to them leaving his blood on their uniforms. "Nothing seemed more natural then someone being killed." (pg 11) A few sentences after the last quote, this shows that during the war something horrible like witnessing someone die becomes a natural thing to experience.
I think that the reader can feel sympathy for the people in the army right away with this first chapter. Kevin Powers wanted to give a perfect and basic understanding of what the war was really like to inform the reader right away as they keep reading.
In The Things They Carried, the passage I chose is "proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life" (O'Brien 77). This passage influences the entire book because basically, that quote means that being as close as the soldiers are to death, it brings out the life in them, and makes them feel more alive than ever. The entire book is about war and death and the affects it has on the individual, and this quote backs up the meaning to the whole book all together. This quote makes me understand what war makes the individual feel emotionally, and mentally, and the affect it has. It helps me realize how close to death each and every one on the soldiers are, and how it could make them feel more alive than ever.
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