The Things They Carried Part 1

Questions:

Whats SOP and RTO? (23)
Whats premium dope? (23)
What is the meaning of the people carried sruff? (24)


Talking points:

During the first chapter, I was able to see that it talked a lot of different kinds of weapons like AK-47. Some of these weaposn were familiar to me because of a videogame I used to play called Call of Duty. It is aboyut the Cold War and there are a lot of mission which actually relate to some in Vietnam. These weapons are really different because of the way they are used since they have different purposes.

In Page 45 of the book, it talks about a person that carries a lot of candies during the missions they are doing. I realte to that person because I always have a type of sugar in my pockets in order to actually eat some because I am a huge fan of eating candy. I am always asked if I have any type of candy and I will respond that in fact I do have different kinds of candy.

In page 49 of the book, the author talks of imagination being a killer. I relate to this idea of imagination working as a serious badly thing because every time that it was dark, your mind starts to create different type of images from the objects in the surroundings. This will then come to frighten the person because that image that is being drawn tends to be something really bad and horrific.  

The author talks about a lucky charm in page 56 which is something that I can easily relate to because I also believe that luck can come from a special object. My lucky charm happens to be a cross that I were with my necklace. This is something that I began to wear during mid year and after that I have had a lot of luck in different aspects of my life. For example, every time that I wear that cross, my favorite soccer team hasn’t lost a game.

As I start to read the second chapter, I think that something will happen with Martha, because every time that someone is introduced to the story, then it is because of something. I think that maybe she will appear later in the story or maybe the author will talk a lot about her as I think she has something important to do in the story.
 
I’ve noticed that the character narrating the stories in the book goes to the past and retells the story but at the end it will start to be shown in the present. It is like the story is being told from the past so that the reader understands what has happened and then it will be told from the present as there are a lot of things going on during that time period that relate to the author.

In the chapter called Love, the author starts by saying that Jimmy Cross went to this apartment and they started to look at different photos of the different soldiers. I relate to this experience because every time that I go to my grandparent’s house, they show me the different photos they have from the family reunions that took place a long time ago. This also helps me in the idea of seeing how my parents looked like some time ago. It is amazing to see how much the world has changed and how the dressing style also has changed a lot.

Analyze: Page 111 to 112

He says that Mitchell Sanders was sitting quietly in the shade of an old banyan tree which gives the idea of a relax time that he was going through. It talks about the idea that the character was at peace and that nothing seem to bother him until that point. After that he talks about the body lice that he was taking off. He says that they were a lot of time in the bushes which means that the characters were really tired and that he couldn’t go in the process of taking off his lice. After that the author describes the war as a Ping-Pong ball with the idea that you could add a fancy spin or make the ball dance. This is something really complicated because war is something really important and serious which doesn’t relate to the dance. What I think that it means is that the soldiers avoid the aggression or attacks from the adversary. The spin relates to the trickiness there are in the wars because when you play Ping-Pong, the spin is used to displace the opposite side and that relates to war when secret plans and tricky weapons are used.

Analyze: Page 130-131

The author starts with a tricky opening sentence because he talks about the war and how remembering that moment leads to a story. He refers to stories as lasting for eternity and teaching the youth about the past. He says “Stories are for joining the past to the future” and this refers to how the stories helps to explain how things were in the past and then relate that to the present and then to the future. He later says, “Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are”. This means that the people used the stories they tell to remember how they got there. This is most simply seen in the photographs because they describe in a much easier way than a lot of words. Stories are something that links human beings because they can relate to the story as there are a lot of different versions and people may know the core of the same story. This passage is for the readers to know how valuable the stories are for human kind because there is nothing better than hearing a good story.

The Things They Carried Part 5

Throughout "The Ghost Soldiers", the author talks about how he wanted to get revenged on Dr. Jorgensen because of the incident they had on the battle field. O'Brien talks about the possibility of getting his revenge with the help of other soldiers that may have something against the replacement doctor. Based on my own experience, I’ve never had any thoughts of revenge against someone; I would only get mad as it is normal for a human as well as trying to avoid the person. I think that revenge is something useless because every time you plan to actually do something wrong to that person, at the end it always turns out to be worst for that person. I think that revenge is normal on the people that have had any problems as a little kid like for example being bullied, many fights with their parents as well as not having any friends to count on in hard situations. I believe that in times of war and the soldiers fighting every day is something common because they need to let all their anger out even if that is between two of the same team.

In that same chapter, the author talks about how Dr. Jorgensen and O'Brien sort things out and they shake hands as a proof of their friendship. This action can relate to my life as well as the life of all humans because at one point they have experienced this action. It is something universal to shake the hand of a person in order to sort things out. If I were to remember my past I would find a lot of this situations because as a little boy I had a lot of fights with friends and family but then I realized that most of my problems were inside me with all the events that I had in my life. I believe that as a young person everyone encounters the same problem because they don't like what they do or what other people do. This creates problems that at the end no matter how big or how small the fight was, it all resolves with a small hand shake.

The message that I get from the last page of the book happens to be that people still think of the dead being alive. This has happened to me with my mother as I still feel her with me every time I am doing something. This feeling arises every time that I visit Bolivia or I watch videos of me as a little kid. The imagination of thinking that the dead people are still alive makes me grow up and think how my mother would react with all the things that I have achieved in my life. In the book it says that the soldiers talked about the dead in stories that at the end would make them come to live again. These stories are the ones that I hear from my aunts as well as from my grandmother because I want to learn more about her. Some people say that living in the past (thinking of the dead people) is something wrong because it can create diseases as well as it can hinder your potential in the present. I certainly do not think that is something bad because the people that actually have a dead relative that death has pushes them into doing new stuff and achieving bigger things. I believe that has happened to me because as a young boy I didn't mind about school or my grades, but after my mother's death all of that changed in a good way.

Analyze “The Ghost Soldiers” (Page 619-620)

O’Brien decides to talk about his feelings about Dr. Jorgensen by explaining, “I now felt a deep coldness inside me, something dark and beyond reason”. This sentence describes how the author was feeling when he thought about the one who hurt him. When he says that there was a deep coldness inside of him as well as darkness, then that means that he had all the intentions of doing it with all the revenge he could but he still doubted. That coldness happens to be the indecision but the darkness represents the cruelty he was planning on attempting against the doctor.  Next the author talks about his desire to do evil things and he qualifies this as one of his intentions. He says that he is capable of doing those dark and evil actions. The next sentence confirms his desires to hurt the one that didn’t helped him when he needed his help. O’Brien says “For weeks it had been a vow- I’ll get him, I’ll get him-it was down inside me like a rock”. This means that in his subconscious mind, he had the need to go and have revenge against him. The simile that we can see which explains that the vow he had felt like a rock inside of him happens to describe that it was like a necessity and that it hurt him not acting quickly. When you have rocks inside your body, they create a pain that is unstoppable. This same pain can be felt inside of the author’s body. This can be proven in the next sentence where O’Brien says “Granted, I didn’t hate him anymore, and I’d lost some of the outrage and passion, but the need for revenge kept eating at me”. This once again proofs the idea that it was nothing he could but just get revenge as a matter to level things up and get peace between the two people.

The Things They Carried Part 4

In “Speaking of courage”, O’Brien narrates how Bowker is thinking about his deceased friend Max Arnold and how the lake in which he was happened to be the scenario of his death. It was something really sad to read as it reminded me of a similar accident that happened in my life. In Bolivia, I have a house located in the outsides of the actual city and the owner’s son was playing in the garden close to the pool. He was about 3 years old and with all the curiosity of a normal baby, he decided to go to the pool. He was really curious and he climbed to the border of the pool in order to see what was inside and the most unthinkable thing happened. The kid fell to the pool and since he was so young he didn’t knew how to swim which resulted in his death. All of us and their parents were really sad and we knew it was a painful loss. It is something that I happen to think every time that I step into a pool and now I am always really careful with younger kids in order to try an avoid any incidents so that there is no more sadness about this type of situations.

With all of the incidents and memories that O’Brien narrates when he mentions the sewage field and also the lake happens to mean that characters are still thinking of the war and not being able to actually escape into a new reality. It would be metaphors that actually remind them of the horrible things they have been exposed to. I can relate to them because those incidents are the ones that change us and also that make us mature. Some of the things that keep coming to my mind would be during school or at the streets when little kids experience hugs with their mothers. That makes me remember my mother and how we used to do that. Something that I have mastered with all the memories that arise to mind is to distract myself and realize that I am actually thinking about that. Every memory is from the past so what I do is tried to realize that and if I can then I say to myself that this is from the past and that I have to start and let go. Then after that I would just then distract myself with any activity.

 
After reading the chapter “Notes”, it was really difficult for me to understand what was going on because it went from past to present. This was something that challenged my reading skills because once I read it again I realized that I had been confusing things which therefore created my confusion. I know that this book has challenging words but that chapter demonstrated me that I still have to do a lot of writing and reading in order to have a better level if I want to go to the US.

In “In The Field”, the author talks how Jimmy Cross felt guilty for the death of Kiowa and the incident that relates to me happens to be the part where Jimmy thinks of a letter to send to Kiowa’s father and tell him how great soldier his son had been. This part I can relate to my life because I recently watched a movie titled, “Saving Private Ryan” which happens to be a war movie. The movie has to do with how 3 brothers are killed in the war and how the US government sends the mother a letter telling her that all 3 of the brothers have died. Then the Chief of Staff at that time happens to learn there is a fourth brother and decides to send out 8 men to find him and bring him to his mother. This relates to the part of the letter because I imagine how the father would felt after receiving this terrible news. I use the picture I have from the movie which helps me in visualizing this actual scene in the book.

Analyzing Chapter “Speaking of Courage” (page 429)

O’Brien says “Now, in the late afternoon, it lay calm and smooth, a good audience for silence, a seven-mile circumference that could be traveled by a slow car in twenty-five minutes”. The important thing here to analyze would be the idea of the lake and how it “lay calm and smooth” because it gives us an idea that the environment demonstrated or showed a peaceful and relaxing feeling. Another thing that helps us proof this idea that we can get from this sentence is that it then says that it was a good audience for a silence which meant that Bowker was in search for something peaceful and he found it in that lake. He then states this sentence “It was not such a good lake for swimming”. The way that this sentence is organized as well as what it is saying happens to tell me that something bad happened in that lake that involved swimming as well as a serious loss. That sentence changes the feeling of the narration because at first it happens to be relaxing and joyful but then this sentence actually changes the mood. The next thing that is really important is this simple sentence, “And the lake had drowned his friend Max Arnold, keeping him out of the war entirely”. This proves the idea that I had of the incident that changed Bowker because he could get peaceful vibrations from that place as any other lake but that lake was special as it was the actual site for the death of his friend. I believe this changed Bowker because any death changes a person because you are no longer able to speak to that person ever again.

Analyzing Chapter “Speaking of Courage” (page 481)

This same passage talks about the idea of Bowker and how he is in the lake peacefully waiting and relaxing himself. O’Brien narrates this message with such a good style because he makes it very clear for the reader because he says that he gets out of the car and wades into the lake without undressing. This fact makes it very clear that he didn’t care about himself but about what had happened with his friend and how he still went into the lake without taking of his clothes. This gives an important message because the fact that he didn’t undress makes it clear that he respected a lot his friend and also the memory of his friend. The next thing talks about the water temperature and how that felt against his skin. The next sentences are the ones that create the end of this chapter with a good description from the author because it is easy to follow what the character was doing inside the lake. He says, “He put his head under. He opened his lips, very slightly, for the taste, then he stood up and folded his arms and watched the fireworks”. This tells me that he has already acknowledged his sadness and that he cannot do anything to go back to that movement. The action of how he stood up demonstrates he was able to understand that he had to continue with his life and not to stay all the time depressed. Finally it ends with a good statement because he was able to understand that it was a great show for a very small town.

The Things They Carried Part 3

O’Brien describes in the chapter “The Dentist” that they where in the place were it felt like a two-week vacation but for their enemies it was their secret basement to place and launch their rocket attacks. This is a perfect example of how people can view the same event or place in different perceptions. I have a perfect example because every time that I have vacation most of the times I come to La Paz, Bolivia in order to be with my friends and also family. If I happen to come on the earlier months of the year or mid-year, most of time I would go to my old school because it is a way that I can learn new stuff and also have fun with my friends. They see it as a place where there are a lot of activities and things to do but I see it as something really good because I don’t have to do anything. For example they work on special subjects and I decide to help them in order to help myself learn more things.

 In this same chapter, the author talks about his experiences with dentists as well as the people with him like Lemons. If I relate this to my life, the times that I went to the dentist were some of the most painful I have had in my life. I have never had a good dental floss because I am a really lazy person so sometimes I wouldn’t brush my teeth in between meals from lunch and dinner. As the dentist tried to explain me, I didn’t hear him because I thought that I had better things to do than to do whatever they told me. At the end, when I had a lot of pain in my teeth, I understood that the dentist transmit their message as best as possible so that we can avoid these pains. The pains are really high that I think it is something really serious because you use your teeth every day. In terms of the techniques to brush my teeth happened to be described in page 277 because the author describes how the dentist showed him the proper way to actually brush teeth so that no problem could arise.

 In the chapter that is titled “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong”, the author describes how Rat never backed down because he claimed that in all of his stories, he had witnessed them with this own eyes. This relates to my lifetime experiences because when I was 14 years old, I was retelling an event to my sisters about how my trip to the US was but when I started talking about a show that I visited, they told me that it was too good to be true and that I don’t have that much luck to experience something that good. This was very painful because I knew that it was true as I had seen it with my own eyes and when I was retelling the story, I didn’t ignore any details because I wanted to sound as true as possible, I right now know how Rat is feeling because it is not a pleasant feeling to have when you feel something to the people that really mean something to you as they are the ones that wait for the stories anxiously.

Analyze Chapter The Man I Killed (page 389):

In the start of the chapter, the author starts to describe a man which I suppose happens to be the one that he killed as the title of this chapter states. He starts by describing the face of the person as he says that “his jaws was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, one of his eyes was shut and the other one was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman’s, his nose undamaged…his clean black hair was swept upward into a cowlick at the rear of the skull”. This gives out a creepy message about the person because as you start to put everything together and start imagining the face of the person then you could think that he was really ugly and that he was a criminal. For example the teeth gone would represent the idea that he didn’t had any floss as well as that we was really poor. Having the nose undamaged would demonstrate that he was a really good fighter and didn’t receive any hits in his face. This gives out a good message of the person because they simply picture out a scary guy as the ones that fight in the wars. If we keep on reading the description that O’Brien starts to make about the person, we realize that it had to be a great victory for the author having come out victorious about the fight. If we look at his physical appearance we can realize that he had “bony legs, a narrow waist, and long shapely fingers. His chest was sunken and poorly muscled-a scholar, maybe. His wrists were the wrists of a child. He wore a black shirt, black pajama pants, a gray ammunition belt, a gold ring on the third finger of his right hand.” This completes the picture of the creepy guy as well as it demonstrates the Vietnamese culture. With the physical description of his body, we didn’t seem that rough or strong but I am sure that it was a huge challenge because it is not easy to kill someone.

The Things They Carried Part 2

In the chapter Enemies (page 202), O’Brien talks about the enemies he encountered while he was in the war in Vietnam. He says that Lee Strunk and David Jensen got into a fistfight which reminds me of the moment that I had many problems with my friends. For example, once I had fight (not a fistfight) with one of my best friends because of a misunderstanding. He received a message that I had been talking about him in a bad way so he got really mad. This wasn’t resolved until some days later because both of us carried a high pride so no one wanted to apologize. At the end I was able to let go of that pride and went to his home, started to talk to him and told him I was really sorry but I explained to him that I had never said anything liked that. At the end he was able to understand because he knew how Bolivia’s society really looked liked.

In the start of the chapter Friends (page 208), the author talks about the friends that helped him in the process of adapting and surviving to the war. This reminded me of the good friends that are obtained in the childhood of each person. This reminded of the friends that I have in Bolivia because I grew with them for almost half of my lifetime. These friends are the ones that you can tell them a story or a secret that actually is very personal and still count with all of their support. I was able to tell them about most of my problems and also I was able to receive a lot of support and help. I remember that all of my friends were there when I really needed them in the moments in my life where I felt that I couldn’t find a solution.

The chapter “How tell a true war story”, clearly talks of the experiences that O’Brien went through during all his time. The idea that I could relate the most is in page 252 where it describes how Curt Lemon dies and then it says “Rat Kiley had lost his best friend in the world”. I was able to relate a lot with Rat Kiley because a friend is really close to a person, especially when it is the best friend. I haven’t lost a best friend yet, but I have lost my mother when I was just 7 years old. This was a hard and painful experience because you lose someone that is going to help you grow and teach you about the greatest lessons in life. I was able to see that this experience has helped me grow because now I am a more independent and responsible man. I have set new goals and sights in order to honor the memory of my mother and most of them are in school and my person.

Analyze Chapter Enemies (The Fight)

First of all, O’Brien talks about the fight between the two characters. He says “it was something stupid- a missing jackknife- but even so the fight was vicious”. What this means is that even tough the fight was about something stupid, it was really scary and brutal. Generally when you have a stupid fight nothing happens because the people involved in the fight are able to sort things and they are ready to forget that problem. This was something different because the fight in the military are really tense because they are so respectful that even the almost thing that could hurt them, they get really angry. The next thing that the author does is that he talks about the fight and how Jensen was way bigger than Strunk. He narrates how Jensen pinned him down to the floor in order to have a clean space for this face. I would think that something important in the military is not using the weapons and to resolve every problem with their own fists and like a man. Next the author says “He hit him hard. And he didn’t stop”. This use of simple sentences makes the idea more intense and with a greater message because it simplifies things and it goes directly to the message. By using the short sentences, the author is fulfilling his objective which is to describe the fight as best as possible and transmit the message. He narrates that Strunk’s nose made a snapping sound like a firecracker but that didn’t bother Jensen which kept on hitting him. This is a simile because it is comparing the idea of how the nose broke and with the comparison to the firecracker it is easier to visualize. The description of needing 3 people in order to pull Jensen out of the fight definitely describes that he was really angry and that he didn’t want to stop until he saw that person dead. When someone is really worried and angry, that person receives more strength because of the adrenaline that is produced.

Analyze Chapter How to tell a true War Story (Meaning of the War Story Page 247):

O’Brien talks about a war story as a thread that makes a cloth when it has moral. He says “You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning”. This happens to mean that people cannot understand or hear a true war story by hearing it in short phrases or short stories. True war stories have to hear from the beginning to the end so that there is complete understanding. The author says that you can’t extract the meaning without already having figured out the deeper meaning. This means that there is more than one true meaning in a war story. It is better to tell a war story with a lot of details. He then ends that paragraph by stating that most of the people cannot really understand the story and that they will respond with an “Oh”. He later explains “True war stories do not generalize”. That means that you cannot tell a war story without generalizations because it will be something really bad because not all war stories end with the same purpose or the same way. Most of them end different because only the ones end with a similar ending would be the ones that at the end there is peace and an agreement is reached. He really wants people to see that war is something really serious because people tend to joke with war stories as they think that it is not true.