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?