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.