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.