One of the more noticeable things I have seen so far, the one that I personally would like to touch on in detail, is that they seem to be doing all of this for nothing. Yes, they have missions that they are given from high command that they must carry out, but there does not seem to be any real reason behind what they are doing. Or, perhaps there is according to high command, but i guess it seems more like the soldiers themselves do not know why they are doing what they are doing. To quote, the narrator justifies this by saying, "Their principles were in their feet. Their calculations were biological. They had no sense of strategy or mission. They searched the villages without knowing what to look for, not caring... They carried their own lives. The pressures were enormous." It seems within the stories, they do not really care about what they are doing. They just do what they are told to do, what they have to, to stay alive.
Another quote I would like to touch on is one that I believe that we touched up on in class, but I was playing Sudoku, so I was consciously in and out of the conversation, sorry Mr. D. The quote is: "The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed." To me this one quote represents many of the stories. When telling the stories the narrator gives more of a tell of feelings, whether than the exact event; partly, I believe, because when emotionally straining events happen, like constantly while participating in a war, there is more of a recollection of feelings then the actually events. This represents the stories, because in a straight forward manner they may be lies, but within them they hold absolute truth of what happened during the actual events.
I predict there may be many more events that force us to ponder between the presence of a truth and a lie, or between presence and absence in regards to familiar actions
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Hmm, I don't really think Mr. D was thinking of two quotes as liberally using the book, but okay. On your first quote I see that through out the whole text it seems this vacancy of any purpose to be at Vietnam or what they're doing. It plays out in the sense of they are just a pair of feet and hands with no other purpose but to follow orders of the higher ups. This also leads into the ideas of the perfect soldier it seems O'Brien purposely brings out a lot of the soldiers flaws and absent mindfulness to show that these are not perfect soldiers fighting for their country but young men who don't necessarily want to be there and feel no specific passion for their country. On to your second quote, I feel very strongly about this postmodern view taken by O'Brien to not necessarily needing to tell the exact truth but rather to get the feeling across. That it was only necessary for the reader to have felt the same things they felt as they went through their time in Vietnam.
ReplyDeleteHey you. Well great job with the blog. i really enjoy the ideas of what you presented. And i also like the quotes you had. They had a great meaning behind it. good job. Okay, let's get going with this comment. The first one...well i thought that this was meant to stand for them (the soldiers) being just a soldier. not knowing what to do but just walk around and find something to kill. i think that Tim O'brien trying to show them to have a central point in fighting the war. It seems like all the characters had different views with the war which makes this war pointless.
ReplyDeleteWell, that's all i have for you. :D