The Things They Carried - p. 171-207

So here's what I've been thinking... I've been talking with a lot of veterans. I've been going to the book talks, listening, watching ... and there is definitely a sense of family that comes through - no matter what the branch of service or the particular experience, it seems that there is a deeper knowledge that those of us who have not been through war simply can't understand. No matter how I search within, how much I listen and ask, no matter how hard I try to pull from my own life it seems as if I am only a spectator. And of course I am just that: a spectator.

I'm grateful to be one, actually. I'm grateful to have never been in a war. Yet, I also feel a bit uneasy in my role as spectator because I'm not just a spectator when it comes to history or war, but I'm also a spectator to the personal horrors recollected by veterans.  I am witness to their current state of being as a result of those horrors. I'm grateful for the privilege of being witness and yet immensely troubled by it.

Men and women writhe with survivor guilt, they agonize over memories they can't quite bring themselves to recall, and yet they acknowledge the impact of their personal shop of horrors as it manifests in their daily lives and impacts those around them. What internal struggle to reconcile it all.

Read Good Form, Field Trip and Ghosts.
Then read about the My Lai massacre in your reader's guide
Next, go to http://www.history.com/videos/my-lai-massacre#my-lai-massacre
Now go to http://www.history.com/videos/my-lai-massacre#remembering-fallen-friends

What seems the most potent?

Now consider...
How do you understand the role of 'story' and the activity of 'telling stories' in the way that people, veterans, and you yourself think about your lived experience? How does the 'crafting' of a story help or hinder the telling and retelling of our lives?

The Things They Carried - p.131-148/ 149-154/ 155-170

So here's what I've been thinking...

Now that the Big Read has had its public kick-off, I've had the priviledge of listening to and talking with more veterans in the context of TTTC. What's been interesting has been the way all these veterans, who saw action in different wars, still relate to the stories in TTTC. These men and women find their stories in the book. In point of fact, they find their stories in each other, too.

The other night, I watched three veterans nod as they listened to Gary tell about the way he came to be a recon corpsman (he enlisted with the Navy and was in the medical/ hospital corps then was attached to the Marines). They knew his story even though it wasn't their's. I see this repeated over and over again. They know the stories, they know the truth in TTTC lodged as it may be in fiction, and regardless embellishments. In fact, accuracy seems irrelevant.  They know the truths that lie at the heart of the war story.

Now, this is beginning to make sense. I know other people's stories, too. I have experiences which have almost uncanny similarities to points in the stories of others. Teachers definitely have those stories and truths no matter how they are wrapped up with facts and fictions. We know them.

However, I still struggle, as an outsider, with the truths. Apparently carrying souveniers, such as the thumb or the neclace of ears has a truth to it; such souveniers were and are common. The waterbuffalo story has a truth to it, I am told, though it is more likely to have been a person. Somehow, this seems plausible now. And, if this is so, was it written to be more palatable? Or was it written so that it could be told?

On p.152 TO writes, " By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain."
He adds, in referring to 'Speaking of Courage', that "(t)he emotional core came directly from Bowerker's letter: the simple need to talk."
And then, on p. 153, he notes, " - I was afraid to speak directly, afraid to remember."

When you read 'In the Field' it seems clear. The fear of remembering. It seems clear that to remember we must invent a way to make it plausible and palatable not even so much for others, but for ourselves.  And as I watch, as I listen to the veterans talk about TTTC and tell their own stories... they can get only just so far. At least at that moment.

My questions: How much factual information do we need to understand the truth? How would knowing the 'facts' about TO's service help or hinder one's understanding the book? How does our search for the truth enhance our experience of the text and understanding of the plot?

p.s. Gary will be joining our class for a discussion of the book on Thursday, March 24.

The Things They Carried - p. 117-136 (36)

So here's what I've been thinking...symbols are huge in our lives. We've been talking about sign systems and transmediation, and some of the signs that we recognize and use are symbols. Transmediation is about recasting our understandings into metaphor. In other words, we could each take our reaction to the text, consider what that might be in terms of a metaphor, and then recast it.

For example, I'm struggling with the fact-fiction dichotomy. It's as if I were the rope in a tug of war, wondering as I read, which side is pulling harder. So my metaphor is tug of war. I am going to recast this into dance (which you can't see right now - luckily for you), but you could probably imagine.... a gentle ballet movement, arms outstretched, turning into a vicious snapping of my body in different directions.... The recasting isn't very hard to understand at all since I've given you my metaphor ahead. Yet, you might still understand the metaphor were I to perform for you without telling you.... you might not have the specific understanding of fact and fiction tugging... but who knows? You certainly understand the underlying meaning of a tug of war as metaphoric representation of my feelings.

I'd like you to work with the symbols in this section of the story. Take one of them, such as stockings, and identify what you believe it is a metaphor for - in this case - comfort and protection. Once you have the metaphor, then recast it.

Henry Dobbin's girl friends nylons - symbol of comfort and protection - I would choose performance/ sculpture and ask two people to work with me while I 'sculped' them into a smaller person being hugged by a larger person, both with eyes closed and gentle, soft smiles on their faces.

Use the Six Points of Departure to help you.

The Things They Carried - p. 85-117 - on writing...

So here's what I've been thinking...I'd like you to think about the writing, the figurative language, and the way the TO creates the experience of Marie Anne's transformation for us.
How does TO bring our senses into play in this piece?
Select something from the text, share it with us, and speak to the author's craft (don't focus as much on the story, but consider the writing).
You may respond to others, but you should have your  own reply to the question crafted. No duplication, so the early bird gets the worm.

The Things They Carried - p. 64-84

So here's what I've been thinking... on the telling of a true war story... Why does it seem so abolutely important to me to know what is true and what  is not? If I had known the story was simply fiction, then I would be fine. We all know that writing comes from what you know; I've heard authors talk about inspiration for stories and characters that they take from their lives. It makes sense. But how do you make sense of something that is defined as fiction and non-fiction and then wrestles with the truth?

Here are some statements from the text. Read them through quickly...

• A true war story is never moral.
• As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.
• You can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you.
• In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.
• In many cases a true war story cannot  be  believed.
• You can tell a true war story by the way it never seems to end.
• 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 unravelling the deeper meaning.
• War is hell.
• War is hell, but that's not the half  of it, because war is also  mystery and terror and  adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes  you a man; war makes you dead.
• The truths are contradictory.
• There  is no clairity.
• In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever  absolutely true.
• Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else that point  doesn't hit you until twenty years later....

So what does this text make us wrestle with?
Does it make us wrestle with the way the book is written as  fiction/ non-fiction? Do we wrestle with  a memoir, memory, hindsight, time and space? Is it truth or something else?
Does the deeper meaning count as the truth in a true war story? What if there is no point? What if something just... happened? Or something like it.... just happened?

This is a book, a series of interwoven stories, that demands of me.
It demands that I work for answers that may not exist, but yet I still need to struggle to find satisfaction, to find the point, to find understanding>
It this what war demands too???

Respond in your own fashion.

class with a viewpoint: The Things They Carried - up to p. 61

class with a viewpoint: The Things They Carried - up to p. 61:
I think storytelling is just that telling a story. Sometimes they are true and sometimes they are not true, but they are always stories. We all have our own story. I am often told to write my daughter's down, that she would enjoy having it someday. The funny things she says and does.(not that she is anything special except my daughter) I think about that when I am reading. Could this be true? Can this really happen to people? Do people really survive this? To know that parts of this story are true make this book more relevant to me and make reading it more enjoyable yet more amazed that these things really happen and people really survive.

So here's what I've been thinking... The character Elroy Berdahl could almost be considered TO's conscience? The way the character is betrayed as just being there and quiet. There is never any real conversation between them at least none that is portrayed. When I was reading this part, I kept thinking, this is a fiction part and the old man is his subconscience telling him it is wrong to flee and this was TO's way to put the feelings into words.

The Things They Carried - up to p. 61

So here's what I've been thinking...
On page36, TO talks about what stories are for, he says, "Stories are for joining the past to the future." And this got me to thinking in several directions simultaneously.

On war... if you read a bit of the introduction to Memory,War,  and Trauma (http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=PAXDbcO9HXMC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=war+%22episodic+memory%22+viet+nam&ots=SmQ1PO7_bX&sig=R1GnDlC9PYV78eYNq-P74EyYUCo#v=onepage&q&f=false) by N.C.Hunt, he talks about the break down of belief systems that happens when people experience traumatic events, and how this changes, even totally breaks down, identity. Storytelling, says Hunt, is a necessary part of who we  are; it is not an option. He goes on to quote Gergen and Gergen, and other researchers who note that our stories fashion our identities, it is how we make meaning out of our lives, "how the self is fashioned out of our cultural resources". See p.115-6.

Given that, TO's statement makes absolute sense. Stories are like bridge of the self, linking lived experiences into an identity. The fact that we may recreate stories differently in different situations, with different people makes sense. I am in a different context where my identity is somewhat recreated when I am teaching children, when I lounge about watching reality t.v., or when I compete in a triathlon. All my stories, though, are meant to create my identity, a coherent sense of self.

What happens, though, when my beliefs, my sense of self is challenged? Breakdown. So I recreate, rebuild myself through stories, making sense of my past and present....

Now, as teachers, how does this connect? Think about the work we are doing with 1st grade and linking text to self! What about building background in 5th grade so that there is context for Hamlet? We are building schema, yet, but we are literally enacting stories of ourselves... and you, as you write your narratives... what identity are YOU creating through story?

Think about the stories in The Things They Carried... how might TO be creating his identity, re-establishing himself? And does it matter if the stories are a blend of fiction and non-fiction?

Reacting to chapter 1, The things they carried

So here's what I've been thinking...

The first chapter of the book really focused on the things soldiers carried and I found myself fascinated by the list on p.13, both the actual items the soldiers carried and the way the author transitioned into specific things individual people carried, and then what everyone ‘carried’. It was an incredibly well crafted piece, tangling the everyday and mundane with the realities of war in  a way that gave me reference and allowed me to be part of the story.

I had to look up Psy Ops leaflets, p.13. Psy Ops is short for psychological operations and in Vietnam one of the psy ops used were in the form of leaflets. It’s a form of “non-lethal warfare” and apparently quite effective. I found a pic: http://www.psywarrior.com/viet.html   with links to more examples and another site with a pic of an aerial drop: http://www.flickr.com/photos/flounderfishcamp/4423391285/ . There’s also a brief history of psy ops at: http://www.psywarrior.com/psyhist.html . I had honestly never heard of psy ops and it really gave me a pause when I realized how much more is involved in fighting a war than guns. My husband also told me that they would drop ‘bombs’ on villages, so called bombs with flares in them, but they only sounded like bombs and would explode with a flare. This was another form of psy ops used to scare people. This kind of disturbed and depressed me, and kept me thinking for awhile about the trauma of war, the way it insults the minds of everyone a war touches. And yet TO writes it into the list in such an innocuous way that I didn’t think it would be anything in particular.

How everyday he made those leaflets seem!

I was tricked into being complacent by the way he sandwiched psy ops between fingernail clippers and bush hats, as if this was just everyday stuff. And then when I found out what they were, I was jarred. It's as if I were looking at a table strewn with everyday knives, forks and spoons only to suddenly notice that all the handles are carved from human bone.

How did you react to the things they carried?

One more thought before the book

So here's what I've been thinking... given all the discussion we have had so far, what does this mean for testing on texts such as The Things They Carried? Are there always clear answers? Right and wrong answers? Or is every answer right? Let me use what may be an obvious example.

Setting.

What is the setting for The Things They Carried? At first glance, I might say, "Well, obviously, Vietnam." On second thought, though, where do the stories actually take place?
I don't mean the difference between fiction and nonfiction.
What I am thinking about is that the stories are taking place in the mind and heart of someone; that is, there is a narrator who paints the setting for us not simply by stating where he is or where the stories he writes are 'set', but by actually describing in so much detail, in so much sensory detail, that I am inside the author as he tells the story, I see through his eyes, I feel and taste and smell and touch what he does.
It seems as if I am one with the author as I lose myself in his story.
And the story becomes what I experience. I leave my soft, smooth leather chair; leave the incessant chirp of my cockateil; the smell of coffee wafting up beside me and the last bite of my marmalade smeared toast, and I see only what the author's eyes see.
And quick as can be, I can become each and every character in a story, a changeling caught inside the hearts and minds and actions of the author's creations.
Where am I? Not Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. But not Vietnam,either. For me, the setting has become not so much a tangible place, but a place of the intangible, a place that is the characters where my heart and mind exist on a plane that  is as real to me as my own skin. The story is set in the characters that I am becoming.
Hmmm....thoughts?

Still Thinking about The Things They Carried

How can it be that so many people can enjoy and even relate to the same story and yet come from very different times, places, positions and backrounds?

Thinking about The Things They Carried

So here's what I've been thinking...
I decided to include Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried" as a required text for our class so that we could each participate in a larger book discussion as well as take advantage of having the author visit during GetLit! And I thought blogging might give us all a different experience. Remember that postings should be short, conversational, and worthwhile.

So, have to I admit that I've had some reservations; the book has some pretty violent and graphic scenes (I've already listened to it on cd), but my husband assures me that even an eighth grader could manage this.
I don't know;  Gary, my husband, is a Viet Nam vet so his perspective may be somewhat colored by his experience.

Yet...don't we all come to a text from our own history? And given that, how can there be unequivocal right and wrong answers about a story unless we trivialize the learning that storytelling brings to us by debasing the knowing to the simplest and most sanitary level of recall?

I sometimes wonder whether two people can ever be reading the same story even as they read the same text...

Thoughts?