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.
I love metaphors; this is a great idea for a post!
ReplyDeleteIn many cultures the butterfly is a symbol for the soul. Ancient Greeks believed that butterflies were the souls of those who had passed. Monarch butterflies in Mexico are also believed to be the souls of the dead and in one town in particular Monarchs migrate once a year on the 'day of the dead'.
In the novel, we see the butterfly in the chapter titled "The Man I Killed". The butterfly first appears on the corpse's chin on pg. 124. On 127 the butterfly moves up the man's forehead, "up" in the direction of heaven; then on 129 the butterfly is gone.
I would integrate the butterfly as a symbol of the soul with an art lesson. I would ask the students to create a representation of their own soul using any media available to them in the art room. For example, one student may want to paint a picture of their soul, another may want to sculpt it.
I would probably save this particular lesson for when I am teaching in a private, Christian school due to the religious connotations. If I chose to do this in a public school I may send a letter home prior to the lesson explaining to parents that the lesson is concentrating on the use of symbols throughout cultures and not on any particular religion.
It seems to me that the Viet Cong soldier is a metaphor for O’Brien himself. O’Brien is seeing a man who, like himself, would rather be immersed in his own interest and studies; a man afraid, and yet, unwilling to disappoint or show his fears by running. This could have been him lying there dead with a “star-shaped hole.” I believe this story is an expression of that very fear; an illusion of where the unwillingness to show his fear could lead. He was everything the dead soldier was—a scholar, a son, a countryman—would his fate be the same?
ReplyDeleteTo recast the dead Viet Cong soldier, a symbol for TO’s own death, I would draw a picture of TO looking down at the dead soldier wearing the Viet Cong uniform. I would then draw the same picture but instead of the soldier’s face with the “star-shaped hole” it would be TO’s face surrounded by his disappointed family and friends.
I'm a little confused. A metaphor is a figure of speech whereby one thing is used to represent another so that the stark contrasts or similarities shine through. There is usually some juxtapositioning. I think I need a bit more explanation of your post, Brandi, to understand it. (I'm not always the sharpest tac on the chair)
ReplyDelete"Clean fingernails!" The Vietcong soldier had clean fingernails. I believe this may be a metaphor for innocence, civility, or virtue.
ReplyDeleteClean hands would be to obvious of a metaphor and who has clean hands in the jungle? but to say he had clean fingernails, that implies to me that he had personal standards.
He had to be in this war but he wasn't going to let himself go. His character and civility would remain intact. Those clean fingernails represented a better life, a clean life! and perhaps, one day he could go back to it.
One way to recast this metaphor is through art. The students could paint their interpretation of it.
An example, could be a dark painting with a bit of light shining on one area. This light would represent the tiny bit of hope that remained. The hope that one day he would return to a civil society.
I'm not sure if you are making the direct link. Your picture is about hope, whereas your metaphor is innocence, civility, or virtue. How can you recast innocence, civility, or virtue???
ReplyDeleteWhat I need for you and your classmates to think about not how a student could recast, but how YOU, personally, would recast.
On page 132 it reads, “For the first few moments I felt lost, not sure about directions, groping for my helmet and weapon." O’Brian is scared at this moment and it seems to me that the helmet is a symbol of safety. Later in the book he goes on to talk about how a helmet of another person was melted by an explosion. This makes me feel as if once your helmet is ruined or gone your safety is also taken from you. To me a helmet is safety when horseback riding and four wheeling. In this case O’Brian helmet symbolizes safety for a soldier. I can see how O’Brian is scared and grabs fast for his helmet just before he kills a man. War is a scary thing but it is life. Every person needs to feel safe especially in foreign places.
ReplyDeleteAshley, what would your transmediation be? Also, I think it's a bit ironic when you say that 'War is a scary thing but it is life'... I would change that to 'Wary is a scary thing; it is death'.
ReplyDeleteThis metaphor I thought was a bit confusing at first, because I had a difficult time identifying if the following passage was a metaphor or a simile. “'Not a minister,' he said, 'but I do like churches. The way it feels inside. It feels good when you just sit there, like you’re in a forest and everything's really quite, except there's still this sound that you can't hear.'” (pg 122)
ReplyDeleteThis could possible be a stretch for a metaphor, but they're saying that when one is in the forest there is a silence just like a church, or in this passage the church is a forest. Both emit a comfortable silence which is is almost a sound that is more felt then heard. This sound wraps around a person creating a sense of comfort and peace. As guys were camped out there they were being rejuvenated. The fortress refreshed them and allowed them to collect themselves before proceeding to the next place, even thought they would go out on patrol. Was it the sound, created by the church, that did this or was it the feeling that sound produced to created this effect? So the question must be asked, is this sound, that can' be heard, the absence of sound or a sound that is felt rather then heard?
As for transmediation, it would be interesting to sit in a church, maybe a cathedral, like the few in Spokane, and then sit in a forest. Following each, the students would paint what this sound would be if it were a color. It is an interesting study finding out how the different colors or color combinations effect people. Therefore, have the students paint color after each place they sit and then have them explain why they chose that color.
The trail that the man was killed on was a metaphor to me. TO says “One lay beside him (sandals), the other a few meters up the trail.” Pg. 124-125. “Smiling at this, he (Azar) shrugged and walked up the trail toward the village behind the trees”. Pg.126. “His head was wrenched sideways, as if loose at the neck, and the dead young man seemed to be staring at some distant object beyond the bell-shaped flowers along the trail”. Pg.129.
ReplyDeleteI know the flowers had to mean something there, but the trail stuck out to me. It is like a great line of life. The dead man’s trail was over, Azar’s trail was still going, and the sandal had a bit more life in it. I think TO left a bit of himself with the man he killed on that trail. It was the end of his innocence, but marked the beginning of some serious guilt. I think we all have a trail filled with innocence, guilt, love, sadness, discovery, etc, (and lots more life).
I think I could see this as a maze. Along the maze there can be things like love, loss, discovery, marriage, children, right of passage, GRADUATE FROM COLLEGE, jobs, and death. Not necessarily in that order. Kind of like the game of Life (which I love to play). We make decisions on which way to go and hope for the best, but we have to live with the consequences.
@ Russell... I don't know if you can call it a metaphor if you take the meaning literally. The author was making a comparison "as if" or "like" rather than a metaphor. Nonetheless, I would ask you - what is the "sound that you can't hear" - what is this a metaphor for?
ReplyDelete@ Jessie... I suggest you think about the bell-shaped flowers... a direct reference to bells and where do we find bells? Announcing weddings, funerals, calls to church in general, right? What would be the "distant object" beyond a trail, lined by bells? Perhaps a type of heaven, a kind of salvation, hope, the end? Something we, as the living, can't see...
ReplyDeleteAnd... what is your transmediation?
The entire section about the girl who was dancing titled “Style” I believe is metaphorical. I don’t know if I believe the girl truly was dancing, she may have been, but from the style of book we know she may not have been. I think instead of taking this story literal, I would say that her dancing’s was more of a metaphor for how she was acting. She was a young girl confused in her twirls, slightly on edge –dancing on her toes. She probably was very graceful in her movements as if she was dancing.
ReplyDeleteTransmediation- Write a poem about how someone’s movements can portray the way they are feeling. For example when I think of a depressed person, I image a person who tends to be hunched over, walks slow and hard, looks down, etc... In this story though a young girl is moving in a particular way that explains what she is going through and possibly adds in some of her own culture in her grace.
The "Clean fingernails!" of the Vietcong soldier is a metaphor for innocence, civility, or virtue. It makes me think of being clean in a spiritual and moral way.
ReplyDeleteI would recast this metaphor through art. I would paint dark, and chaotic brush marks on a canvas. This would represent the scars and wounds that war makes on the lives it touches.
Then I would paint one very small fine line of bright white. This would go horizontally across the page. It would represent the good that a person clings to in the midst of war, like having clean nails.
The chapter titled "Church" gave me some distinct metaphorical epiphanies. Firstly, the fact that the soldiers took refuge in a church showed me that nothing in war is off limits. Not even a church, the supposed holiest of places. The sanctity it possesses is unrivaled by many things but obviously not by the ever stretching arms of a war.
ReplyDeleteThe monks in this pagoda were happy that the soldiers were there, yes, it was obvious from the descriptions of their interactions with the men but this security was only temporary. The cool and dark pagoda was a humble abode to the monks, but to the soldiers it was just another place to use for their own benefit, for the benefit of the war. At the end of the chapter Dobbins gives the monks a can of peaches and a chocolate bar for cleaning and oiling his gun. Then he forces them outside into the bright morning sunlight. This action reminded me of transitioning, or adapting to new environments. The monks were used to that cold, dark, dank and damp church. It was their life. All of a sudden they were shaken from that lifestyle when those foreign American soldiers trooped into their home. They were forced to adapt and make the best of a situation. They were going from dark to light. Transitions. Adaptations. To make sense of this, or recast it, I thought of waking up. By this I mean waking up in the morning from a restful, slumbering night of sleep to the instant when we open our eyes in the morning, when we are in that amorphous state of reality. We have to adapt to what the morning has to offer us. We couldn't have known what was coming when we opened our eyes after having been in the dark for so long. Brightness floods our world, much like what happened to the monks, and we must transition into what the day has to offer us. If I were to use this concept in the classroom, I would have students reenact the process of waking from slumber. As a class we could perform, interpretively, what we feel this "transitioning" process looks, and feels like.
The metaphor that I felt I could easily recast because it related more to my personal life, were the stockings that Henry Dobbins wore tight around his neck. When I read this chapter I felt that the nylons were a symbol for memories that he would never forget. He wore them around his neck for the purpose of not letting war suck him completely in, resulting in the forgetting about his past life back at home. His girlfriend’s stockings created a blockade from war that always reminded him of not only her smell, but of the good times he spent with her and will now never forget.
ReplyDeleteI would recast this metaphor into language arts….creating an acronym for the names of the most important people in my life. The roles that they play are so special to me and complete who I am today that if they were gone, I would be nothing. Dead or alive, I never ever want to forget these people so I would create this acronym that has only special meaning to me. I would extend this cast by creating a necklace out of beads with the acronym on it and wear it around my neck that way these people will always be with me wherever I go.
Similar to Emily’s metaphor of tug of war that she decided to recast, it would also be hard for one to understand the recasting of my metaphor if they were to see my acronym necklace, just as it would be hard for someone to understand Emily’s dance if not told, first, about the metaphor. For the letters in the acronym mean nothing to anyone else because it remains only a symbol in MY life.
Post to clarify my previous blog:
ReplyDeleteMy view was that these two men—enemies—were moving in a parallel direction (the juxtaposition). “…He was a citizen and a soldier…He would have been taught that to defend the land was a man’s highest duty and highest privilege…Secretly, though, it frightened him. He was not a fighter…” (pg 125). This really sounds to me, like the very inner conflict TO had with himself on the banks of the Canadian border. Later we are to find that this story is fiction. TO has not killed this man, but he has envisioned his own death through the death of an enemy soldier. He saw in his enemy someone who was not a soldier, who like himself, only wanted to go to school. “…He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics…” I saw it as a visual metaphor—built in one’s mind when reading—that compared the parallel lives of two enemies. O’Brien writes of a death. And I feel the power in this metaphor comes from the realty that it was a death that could easily have been his own.
Okay…I’ve been thinking about this for over a week, so here it goes. In the chapter titled Style, it opens with TO describing a “black hair and brown skin” fourteen-year-old girl who was dancing outside of her burnt home. Inside was her family. For me, this dancing girl represented the afterlife of her family. She was graceful and light-footed. Probably a lot like the trails of smoke from the smothering fire. Though, for the soldiers witnessing this, it could have been a metaphor for carrying on even after the death of fellow soldiers.
ReplyDeleteThis could then be recasted into installation art. Image several long ribbons, like the ones that swivel from the wands in Terri Hamilton’s dance class, attached to the floor while large floor fans create an uninterrupted breeze making the ribbons ripple upwards in a continuous wave towards the sky. The fans themselves could represent the living soldiers, and like a fan, they have an on and off switch. If they choose to keep the switch on, the soldiers display of strength and motivation to go on is seen through the dancing ribbon.
“The guy was dead the second he stepped on the trail…..”(129).
ReplyDeleteKiowa was telling T.O. this in an attempt to get him moving forward. T.O. had been staring at the young man he had just killed and was having a hard time wrapping his head around the situation. Of course the guy was not dead and Kiowa’s figure of speech was the metaphor that jumped out at me from this chapter.
Although I don’t relate to much of this story and absolutely none of the things these men endure in war, I have been in the situation of helping a friend through a hard time. It was interesting reading through the process of how Kiowa tries talking T.O. out of his head and moving on, almost as if saying all in war is fair. And maybe it is and maybe they are all dead the second they step on the trail.
Transmediation ‐ I like the idea of taking a metaphor, figure of speech, or an idiom and drawing ones version of how they see it.. For students I would have them choose and draw their version of a metaphor from a story using how they imagine it in their head, not necessarily how they think the metaphor ties to the story.
My metaphor(s)is written and bluntly stated in a simile on pg. 117 in the chapter titled "Stockings". It compares Henry Dobbins to America. It explains him as being "like America itslef, big and strong, full of good intentiond, a roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along, always there when you needed him, a beleiver in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor. Like his country, too, Dobbins was drawn toward sentimality."
ReplyDeleteDobbins strength is compared to Americas. We fought for our country to become who we are, which is exactly what Dobbins is actually doing, for America. I beleive this is an metaphor for all the soldiers that have done the same.
Then they have the part where he is "full of good intentions". I believe this is a metaphor for American as a country. We are currently and in the past helped other countries that are in need. I understand the fact that America can do some pretty evil things in wars but as it states, theres good intentions in there somewhere. We help the people that can't help themselves.
"Roll of fat jiggling at his belly" stands for how lazy America has became which makes us "slow of foot" but America is always there to help.
The last metaphor I would like to discuss is the "directness and hard labor". I say this because America had a goal to become a free nation and we achieved that goal. We had a particular direction as a country to become who we are today. We have worked so hard as a nation to become a strong and free country. The hard labor could also be a metaphor for the "working class" in America. Just an additional thought.
Transmediation: I would convert this into a Social Studies lesson plan about the development of the United States and/or the wars and the purposes of them that we participated in as a country, whether it be for ourselves or for another country.
Like others that have posted here, I also look at the chapter entitled,”Style” when I think of a metaphor used in this section of the book. The girl that is described as dancing was not dancing at all. I believe that the dance was a metaphor for her acting out hysterically because of her family being killed. The last page of this chapter reinforces this for me when TO writes: “That night, after we’d marched away from the smoking village, Azar mocked the girl’s dancing. He did funny jumps and spins. He put the palms of his hands against his ears and danced sideways for a while, and then backwards, and then did an erotic thing with his hips.” Then the chapter ends when Henry Dobbins tells Azar to “dance right” if he didn’t want to be thrown into the well. I took this as if Henry was telling Azar to “Act Right”. I believe that Azar was mocking the girl being hysterical about her family’s death and I think it offended Henry.
ReplyDeleteAs far as transmediation, I would have students write about how people physically act when they are extremely happy or sad. I would ask them to describe how they might be able to tell if a person was really excited about something compared to being mad or sad about something based only the persons actions.
I think about the scene when the monks help Dobbins disassemble and clean the machine gun. How careful they were with the oil and to make sure that everything was assembled correctly. When I think about this scene, I am reminded of the peace the monks represent and the violence the machine gun represents. I asked myself, why would this be in the book? So, I began to think about the symbolism within the part of the story, which for me is something I struggle with.
ReplyDeleteThe monks themselves lead peaceful lives that I am sure have been entangled with the violence of the Vietnam War; just as the young soldiers. I would imagine the lives lead back in the states were generally peaceful, minus some quick tongues. When I think of peace, I also think of innocence and youth, because as a child we are naïve enough to think that the world can be a peaceful place, like the contestants of Miss America, we took want and believe in world peace. Within war, the ideology of peace is not longer in the mind of soldiers; just survival.
Which brings me to the machine gun; the source of life and death. To me, the machine gun represents a shield of sorts, an object that protects the soldier from harm while delivering fatal blows to the enemy. Without the machine gun, it would be much harder for the soldier to survive. Imagine giving the soldier some matches and a knife to defend themselves against the bombs and guns of the enemy. Unless they are Chuck Norris, I doubt they’ll have much of a chance. Anyways, the point of the gun is to protect the life of the person who carries it, a violent protection needed to bring peace to the soldiers and hopefully allow them to return home safely.