Lovely Literature

"He had reached an age where death no longer has the quality of ghastly surprise, and when he looked around him now for thefirst time and saw the height and splendor of the hall and the great rooms opening out from it into other rooms, his grief began to be mixed with awed pride. " (168) Our perceptions of people after they die tend to be skewed in many directions. Some people end up hating people more after they die, but many people tend to focus on how great the person was, even if they were...well...terrible. Gatsby's dad, now granted he was his dad so that changes the perspective even more, was in complete awe of what Gatsby had made with his life. He always knew that his son would reach great heights, because that's what parents do. They think of the best possible situations for their children and when disaster strikes, it's the other person's fault or the other person is "a madman." Parents are really good at that though, no matter how mean or rude their children were to them. Gatsby completely cut ties with his parents, yet his dad was so proud of him for everything he became. He also didn't question how Gatsby became so rich, so he ignored that fact that there were possibilities of illegalities in the way his son got his money. He also ignored that there were no people at his funeral even though he was apparently so well liked and so popular with his parties. Death skews everything and throws it out of proportion, especially with our relationships and views on others.

"Myrtle Wilson's body, wrapped in a blanket, and then in another blanket, as though she suffered from a chill in the hot night, lay on a work-table by the wall, and Tom, with his back to us, was bending over it, motionless." (138) At this point, Myrtle has been killed because she ran out in front of a yellow car which so happened to be Gatsby's car. Previously, Tom had been driving the car and told George that it was his car, so at first George suspected him until Tom told him that it was really Jay Gatsby who the car belonged to and he didn't even stop to see if Myrtle was okay when he ran her over. I believe Tom was really just nervous because he didn't want George finding out about his affair with Myrtle. He wanted it to remain mysterious who the man was that she was having an affair with because he was a coward. I think he was afraid that if George found out then he would kill Tom...because...well he ends up killing Gatsby. And people do crazy things for love. I find it interesting that Tom was so upset over Myrtle's death because I don't think he truly cared about her like he thought he did because men who hit their wives or mistresses...that is just shady to me. I don't feel like a man should ever, ever hit a woman who he claims he loves because if he loves her, he would never want to physically harm her. I think Tom is so shocked and upset because he feels like he just lost his wife and his mistress so he is really striking out when he thought his life was progressing perfectly. Tom is a man of pleasure and self-satisfaction, so once his satisfaction was dwindling, he had no where to run to but right back home.

This poem is rather intriguing to me. Why would someone write an elegy for someone who is not actually dead...? Unless that death would be metaphorical in that the person has shut them out of their life, but the speaker has not shut out his father in his life. His father seems to have the mentality that he is ready to go when he is ready to go, but the speaker is not ready to think about death. Even though he is not ready to go, the speaker is speaking about his father as if he is dead...kind of seems like a juxtaposition to me there.

"I think he wants to go,
a little bit-- an new desire
to travel building up, an itch"

Death is not presented in a bad way in this poem. Instead, it is the end of an old journey and the beginning of a new journey. The speaker is not ready to end the current journey he is on and he wants to experience more while his father is over his current journey and is ready to move on to another place. The speaker feels as if his father is so ready for this new journey that it is almost like he is dead. He is not living to live anymore but living to die. Then again...aren't we all living to die?

"How the rain never stopped. How the cold worked into your bones. Sometimes the bravest thing on earth was to sit through the night and feel the cold in your bones. Courage was not always a matter of yes or no," [page 141].

This quote comes from Bowker's chapter when he's in his hometown circling the lake. This also goes back to how war changes people. Bowker felt like Kiowa's death was his fault because he couldn't stand the smell and couldn't grab him out of the poop. I think watching a death like that would weigh upon me as well. He eventually hangs himself because he feels like war sucked everything out of him, like his life is suddenly pointless.

The number of deaths that are told in a nonchalant way in this book astounds me. I'm sure O'Brien doesn't mean to convey that they are not important, but I suppose once you're so used to death, you can easily write about it like it's nothing.

It sounds like this quote says sometimes the most courageous thing you can do is live. I agree with that, but I think killing yourself is definitely the cowardly way to get out of a difficult spot. Everyone is put on here for a reason, but it is not one person's choice whether or not to stay on this earth.

O'Brien truly seems scarred by this one man he "kills" in My Khe. He uses repetition of the same descriptive paragraph several times.

"He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man of about twenty. He lay with one leg bent beneath him, his jaw in his throat, his face neither expressive nor inexpressive. One eye was shut. The other was a star-shaped hole," [page 124].

He was truly shaken up about this. He talks about it later on page 172 and says that he didn't actually kill this man physically, but he felt like he killed him. I think that's what he is saying atleast. This part really confused me...well I won't lie, a good majority of this book is confusing because O'Brien tries to explain that a true war story is never true, but it is always right. Or something along those lines.

Is this a metaphor for all those who died? He feels like he was in this war, connected to all kinds of people who were dead and were killing others. Since he couldn't stop the war himself, did he feel like it was his fault that so many people were killed? I am quite confused. Sometimes when I read books, I feel like I think much deeper than the author did when writing.

He uses repetition to show his shock from staring at this man he didn't even know. O'Brien felt like he killed this man, and he started going through the thought process that the man may have had before entering the war. The repetition establishes that even though he has seen death multiple times, it never becomes easy.

"It wasn't to kill; it was to hurt." [page 75]

The things we humans do when driven by intense emotion. Scary huh?

It kind of freaks me out when O'Brien describes Kiley killing the water buffalo. He literally tortures a living, innocent animal because he watched his best friend, Curt Lemon, die. Not only did he witness his best friend die, but when he tried to write a heartfelt, compassionate letter to the Lemon's survivors, he is denied any response.

I've never watched someone die. I was there when my grandma died...but I did not actually watch her stop breathing. Death scares me...but not having enough time to live my life before death scares me even more. Lemon only lived for 19 years. I turn 18 in 3.5 days. Talk about scary :/

I'm truly trying to live my life. I don't want to look back and regret one decision I make. Summer Field Study was an amazing experience to be able to expand my little box that I live in. I got to climb a mountain before I'm even allowed to vote! Plus, I hiked more of the Grand Canyon than about three-fourths of the people who visit have even seen. Sure, it may seem insignificant to anyone who didn't experience these wonders...but it sure has made me feel more fulfilled.

So in the words of Rihanna and T.I...

Live your life.

peace ;]

So far, I've noticed that O'Brien loves his literary devices. I'm still not very far into the book, but I've found a great extended metaphor he uses to compare the military men to actors.

"It wasn't cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors. When someone died, it wasn't just dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their lines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself," [page 19].

O'Brien's metaphor elaborates on how commonly accepted death has become in the military. One day a soldier can be saving a fellow soldier, and the next day, that hero is dead. Since it happens in the blink of an eye, how can they even prepare for death? I've come to the conclusion that being a soldier prepares one not only for battle, but also for death. Depressing, huh?

I'd also like to connect this to a post Alix Richardson recently wrote. She said that from previous knowledge, the war was extremely unpopular on the US homefront. While America was not fully behind entrance into the Vietnam war, they still supported the men who were deployed. O'Brien writes, "...they would never be at a loss for things to carry" [page 15], referring not only to the heavy burdens they were carrying, but also the lists of food, weaponry, and other supplies he wrote about just sentences before. America, while not open to the war, was still cognizant of their boys fighting their lives away.