The Man I Killed

For this next blog, I thought that it would be good if I talked about my lit circle book and explore in a similar format of my Reader Response Lit Circle role of what I thought about the book and some quotes and passages that I felt really helped bring out some of the work’s major underlying themes. But first, I have to say that my lit circle book, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, is tied for being my favorite book that we’ve read this year in AP Lit (it’s a tough call between this and Frankenstein) or all of my high school literature classes for that matter. I love how O’Brien has interwoven so many small stories following various characters in the past, present, and future, all of which connect together to bring out the trials afflicted on those who served in the Vietnam War, who deal with hardships not solely unique to war such as regret, lost, guilt, and pain, all of which help to bring out a greater commentary on the nature of this particular war and the brutal disillusionment surrounding it alongside the bitter repercussions that troubled everyone involved with it. One particular story that stuck out to me was “The Man I Killed”, which in a superficial overview is the telling of Tim O’Brien himself having thrown a grenade that left a young Vietnamese man with a “star-shaped hole that was red and yellow” (O’Brien. 120). While it is true that this incident is evidence toward O’Brien’s commentary on the ruthless violence of the Vietnam War that was a daily event for the soldiers humping along, that is only part of the commentary that leads toward understanding O’Brien’s overall themes. O’Brien interlaces the telling of his shock of having killed this man with telling the story of the Vietnamese man, who “was made fun of for his smooth skin and his love for mathematics. The young man could not make himself fight them...in the presence of his father and uncles, he pretended to look forward to doing his patriotic duty, which was also a privilege, but at night he prayed with his mother that the war might end soon. Beyond anything else, he was afraid of disgracing himself, and therefore his family and his village” (O’Brien. 121). This passage is critical in understanding O’Brien’s commentary about the war, because in this moment, he looks at the Vietnamese man and sees not only innocence compassion that has been tarnished by the sight of war, but also how someone an entire world away could have gone through the same exact circumstances and thought process that O’Brien himself had when he was drafted in 1968 for the war. O’Brien, like he does in many of the other stories, makes note of how this young man was just that: young, just like him and most other members of the Alpha Company who are fighting in the war. This was a war that was started by the authorities elders in political power seeking influence by proxy over others, but consumed the young, who as a result found their innocence stripped away from them and replaced by either unprecedented brutality of combat, or death itself. O’Brien makes the young Vietnamese man out to be a mirror image of himself, noting how the young man’s motivation of going to war for the sake of not so much patriotism, but fear of embarrassment and being judged and excommunicated by his family. For that, the young man would go to fight and find himself permanently excommunicated by the toss of a grenade by his feet. This section was also very important because it is the first time that the perspective of the other side is even speculated about. Up until this point, the Vietnamese had been more ambiguous and less easy to identify with. But here, O’Brien shows how the people that were killed were not native savages or alien invaders, but rather, just people who wanted in all their hearts to simply be at home with the people they love doing what they love most, but instead find themselves unwillingly fighting for a cause they don’t believe in.

Hope is the thing with feathers

To start off my set of blogs for this last month, I felt it best if I were to open up with a look into some poetry, looking at Emily Dickinson’s, “Hope is the thing with feathers”, a poet whose works I have not yet explored to the greatest extent but after reading through the poem felt it necessary to attempt to entail a few of Dickinson’s key elements within her work. As the title would suggest, Dickinson’s work is an extended metaphor, made clear by the opening lines of the work, which say, “"Hope" is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul/And sings the tune without the words And never stops—at all”. It does not take much analysis to reveal how Dickinson is using the extended metaphor of the bird to provide a visual and somewhat audial representation of hope, an idea which in it of itself transcends beyond the pages and be just as easily applicable to our own lives as any other time in history. The image of a bird being a symbol of hope could also be interpreted as a biblical allusion to Noah in Genesis, where following the great flood that lasted 40 days and nights, Noah sent out both a dove and a raven to determine if the waters had receded enough for landing, “When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth” (Genesis 8:11). Just like in Dickinson’s work, the dove of Noah served as a visual symbol that the greatest challenges that we face in this life can only be countered by the hope of there being an end to troubles and there being something better. It is more than just an emotion, but as Dickinson states, it becomes a personal embodiment in a person’s very soul, able to bring them out of whatever darkness or despair they may have been lost in and allow them to live again and, like Noah, know that there is rest for the wearied heart. But hope is not something that everyone wishes existed, as made evident by the second stanza, “And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—And sore must be the storm That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm”. No matter how different some of the most powerful “storms” across history have been, most all of them have the same goal of crushing hope because they know of its potency. Such is the true underlying reason for the brutality of various regimes and dictatorships over time, wishing that people could only see the raven that never returned, never to know of the dove that brought back the olive branch of life. The power of hope is something “that kept so many warm” as Dickinson put it, telling of how powerful hope truly is. In this way, hope can be seen as being like a fire, fueling and giving strength to those who go to it, and also serving as a beacon of light to guide the way. For all that hope does for people, Dickinson’s final stanza serves as a reminder of hope’s greatest attribute: it’s selflessness. She writes, “I've heard it in the chillest land And on the strangest Sea Yet, never, in Extremity, It asked a crumb—of Me”. Hope is something that is given in complete selflessness, never asking for sort of reparations, only wishing to see the fruits of its labor multiply. President Snow of The Hunger Games put it best by saying, “Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear”.