The Things They Carried

Here is a biography of Tim O'Brien. 

In Tim O’Brien’s, The Things They Carried, the chapter titled, “On the Rainy River,” seemed to relate to me the most. He tells of how he was drafted into a war that he obviously did not want to partake in. He has a hard time deciding what to do, but really I believe that there were no choices. His country needed him, and that you cannot run from. He does try and run though. He spends around a week at a lodge near Canada, and has the choice of leaving, but doesn’t take it. He decides on the war that picked him. I believe this chapter relates to me the most because I was one of the kids that picked the military right after school. I was not drafted or anything, so I do not know what being forced to go feels like, but I do know what leaving feels like, especially when the country is at war. My stomach was in knots for the weeks leading up to leaving. Yes, I made the decision to leave, but a decision was one thing, and doing was another. I had moments all the time that I would just ask myself what I was doing. I was leaving the girl, the job and life that I love. However, I never regretted it for a moment, any of it. It sounds like a cold hearted thing to say, but I wanted to serve my country and that was the decision I made. When I read this story, I feel like I know exactly what the character is going through. Leaving into a future of uncertainty is by far the scariest event you can experience. The whole new way of life is frightening. You do it for the adventure and the potential glory. Mostly, you do it so people do not call you a coward. Reputation is a lot, you can dodge bullets and bombs, but you can’t run from a bad reputation. It’s the social consequences that really decide. 

Image found at: http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/c2/c14566.jpg

Poems

I found a biography on Bruce Weigl!

I choose to read the poems, “Song of Napalm,” and also, “The Colonel,” because by the titles, they sounded like they could be interesting to me. These poems were interesting, in a disgusting and horrifying way. Both of the poems include the idea of death, where the characters in the poem can do nothing about it. In the poem by Bruce Weigl, “Song of Napalm,” he says, “And the girl runs only as far/ As the napalm allows/ Until her burning tendons and crackling/ Muscles draw her up/ into that final position.” (Lines 36-40) This paints a horrifying picture in my mind. I imagine being the person in the poem and watching this girl running, engulfed in the sticky flame of napalm, and not being able to do anything helpful for her. She hits the ground still aflame, her body crackling and curling into her resting position, but we cannot go back to witness this. We can only relive her pain through this poem, and think of how lucky we were that it was not us.  In the poem, “The Colonel,” by Carolyn Forche, she writes, “The colonel returned with a sack used to / bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on/ the table. They were like dried peach halves.” (Lines 21-23) This creates a very real and very disgusting image in my mind. I can see these little halves curled and dried, just like a peach, falling out of the bag onto a table.  The look on the characters face must be horrified. What kind of person would keep a bag full of human ears? It must be a scare factor. The colonel could be a dictator, ruling a country with an iron fist, scaring off his enemies with his cut off ears. I know I wouldn’t want to mess with someone who had a bag full of ears, and has probably killed the people who they belong to. Both of these poems painted a very descriptive and ugly image in my mind, which made me react strongly. I focused in on the lines that I thought painted the picture the best.

Image found: http://www.richsincrediblepyro.com/effects.html

Weigl, Bruce. “Song of Napalm.” Poetry Foundation. 1999.  7 February, 2011. Web. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/print.html?id=171470/>.

Forche, Carolyn. “The Colonel.” American Poems. 1978. 7 February, 2011. Web. <http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/Carolyn-Forche/3469/>.

Sam Hamill

I found an Autobiography on Sam Hamill. 

The Necessity to Speak, by Sam Hamill, is one of the most powerful, true essays I have ever read. The ideas that are presented are so true that it is almost scary. How often I see things that I do not want to see. I have seen little kids with huge bruises on their faces, standing in line at the store, their parents needing to buy that bottle of liquor, so late at night. I have also seen kids get screamed at in line at the grocery store, the parents not caring who was around to listen. Everybody who did hear said nothing, including me. We were embarrassed to say anything. Embarrassed that someone would act in such a manor, embarrassed to even be there, but probably most of all, embarrassed for the child suffering. These parents often threatened their children with spankings when they get back to the car. This brings up Hamill’s idea of spankings. He believes if you are going to spank you child with a belt, why not a stick. If you use a stick, why not use a bat.  Parents believe in an acceptable amount of violence, why else would they spank their children? I believe that is not a good message to send the children. When they get older and have their own kids, maybe their acceptable violence limit would go up.  With that, then we have child abuse, but the parents would find solace in the fact that their parents did it to them when they were young, so it must be alright. Where is the acceptable limit? I believe there is no acceptable limit of violence. That theory went out the window long ago. These days with super weapons that are 180,000 times as powerful as they were in 1945, violence on every channel on TV, and military recruiters in our schools, there is no escaping violence. It has been molded into our way of life. So what does that say about the child and the abusive parent, the victim and the executioner, Hamill and I agree on this, we must save them, but how? 

Image from: http://www.betterparentinginstitute.com/Better-Parenting/parenting-child-raising-skills/use-the-rod%E2%80%A6spoil-the-child-the-spanking-controversy/