While he pretended, she was "elusive on the matter of love" (1). While she might have signed her letters with love, Jimmy "knew better" (2) but the idea made him feel better so he allowed himself the luxury of living in the fantasy. Jimmy's guilt fo Continue Reading...
Krajek points out that what she took from O'Brien's lecture was the fact that a fiction author can help the reader connect with the story in reality, even if the story is not true. "His lecture's overarching message illustrated his belief that ficti Continue Reading...
I can make myself feel again (O'Brien, p. 180). And, through story truth, what the story is able to do for O'Brien, it becomes able also to do for the reader. In "The Lives of the Dead," O'Brien further elaborates on his need for stories universal Continue Reading...
1). The character in the novel/author 'Tim' never believed in the cause of the Vietnam War, and nearly fled to Canada to avoid serving. That decision to servie affected him in an unalterable fashion, and O'Brien's recounts the story of Vietnam to him Continue Reading...
Furthermore, in environments that are highly conducive to trauma, such as war or a paramilitary educational institution that is predominantly filled with Caucasian males who are permitted to attack one another during a certain period in their caree Continue Reading...
At the same time, the style is expected to give the reader an idea of what is happening, and that too in a more refined version. In his language there are poetic references for the brutality and masculinity of war as feminine features. He has talked Continue Reading...
Truth and Memory in the Things They Carried Tim O'Brien's novel, The Things They Carried, is more than a novel because it allows the reader to experience the Vietnam War in a personal way and it allows O'Brien the opportunity to bring closure to the Continue Reading...
Kiowa's death also evokes the notion that for the U.S. Vietnam was a quagmire; his drowning functions almost emblematically to suggest America's deepening entanglement in Southeast Asia. 'This field,' O'Brien writes, 'had embodied all the waste that Continue Reading...
This foolishness becomes emblematic of the entire Vietnam experience -- situations are created to display violence and bravery that have tremendous significance to the soldiers, but serve no real purpose. Just as Rat mythologizes Kurt's willingness Continue Reading...
He lay in the center of a red clay trail near the village of My Khe. His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut, the other eye had a star shaped hole. I killed him." (O'Brien 180). Very similar observations can be made about Turner's poetry. Tu Continue Reading...
Coming of Age Stories: Explorations of Components of the Narrative In literature, one of the most frequently dealt with theme is the story of one character's developing over time and reacting to the various experiences that he or she faces through t Continue Reading...
Furthermore, the author has also eluded to the negative consequences in which there is a complete lack of ability to define what truth is. In this context, O'Brien ends his essay by stating that a true war story is actually "…about love and me Continue Reading...
"In war you lose your sense of the definite, hence your sense of truth itself, and therefore it's safe to say that in a true war story nothing is ever absolutely true. Often in a true war story there is not even a point, or else the point doesn't hi Continue Reading...
These sentences run counter to what most people say about war. War is often glamorized and most often glamorized by those who do not have to fight in war. Politicians often build up rhetoric for war to make men feel as though they are doing the coun Continue Reading...
Real Hearts Going After Apocalypses Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad was one of the first works of fiction to explore modernist notions of reality, and specifically, what makes an experience "real." "Apocalypse Now" can, in many ways, be thought o Continue Reading...
As he himself admits, "I have a very grim perspective. I do feel that it's a grim, painful, nightmarish meaningless existence, and the only way to be happy is if you tell yourself some lies. One must have some delusions to live" ("Cannes 2010: Woody Continue Reading...
In the third chapter of Flight, Zits describes who is perhaps "the only real friend of [his] life" as a "pretty white boy" who "doesn't even like or respect Jesus -- or Allah or Buddha or LeBron James or any other God" (Alexie 24). In what is otherw Continue Reading...
Nan Goldin Photography Nan Goldin -- Empathy and Obsession Nan Goldin is a famous American photographer who was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1953 (Williams 26). From an early age, she demonstrated a passion for photography, often using it in he Continue Reading...
He also says that he wants to be more on his own, "not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body" (90). Later, he tells her that he wants to "know what passion is... I want to feel something strongly" (94). The only Continue Reading...
Because of the newer mobility of a significant amount of suburban America, driving to national parks was even more an option. The more people visited the Parks, it seemed, the more of a synergistic effect upon their funding and use (Jensen and Guthr Continue Reading...
Pulp Fiction, by director Quentin Tarantino, is a prime example of a film that utilizes a multiple narrative structure. The film has three narrative stories that are signaled by inserted captions, and told in "episodes" that are shown non-chronologic Continue Reading...
Wyche agrees with this notion, adding that the station's position "between two sets of rails, whose significance lies 'in their figurative implications' (Renner qtd in Wyche 34), and between two contrasting landscapes that symbolize the couple's opt Continue Reading...
This appearance does not improve as the book progresses. Because their first set of knives is taken away, the twins go to the butcher Faustino Santos twice to have knives sharpened for the murder. In piecing together the story later on, the narrato Continue Reading...
Healthcare We can compare the healthcare workplace to what is seen by a person when he/she looks through a kaleidoscope: since there are numerous different patterns that appear as the moments pass by. The shortage of nurses which has been publicized Continue Reading...
It is impossible in six short pages to fully comprehend the attitudes that White Americans had to Native Indians and black Americans in the early centuries of our nation's founding. That was m not my intent. My goal rather, was to illustrate first Continue Reading...
