Bowker's Struggle

In response to Speaking of Courage

Throughout the entire story of Speaking of Courage, Norman Bowker is driving around and seeing and thinking of people, and has a conversation in his mind with each person about his time at war. It seems that he is wanting to tell everything on his mind just to get it out of his mind and to get some closure from the intense and horrific experience of war. These people have no idea of what war was really like. There are two types of lives that can be lived during war. One being living in the war and fighting/seeing it first hand. The other being living in the war via television and radio. Bowker thinks deeply about what he would say to each person he thinks of about his time and experience at war. It is almost as if he is desperate for either to tell someone, or for someone to ask him about it. However, in this desperate need to tell someone, when he has the opportunity to tell a person working in a restaurant, he doesn’t. It is almost as if he has an epiphany about himself and the war. This represents the loss of innocence and burdens of war. If he really wanted to tell, he could have, yet he doesn’t. This is because he does not want to burden them with the images and feelings he had seen and felt during war. While he thinks about what he would tell people, he goes into great detail, and that is what he wants to keep from these people. Throughout The Things They Carried, there is this idea that ignorance is innocence in the sense that if people don’t know how horrible the war really is, and that they don’t have to experience it, then they still have some innocence in them.

Together, Separate

In response to Drinking fountains by Elliot Erwitt

Together but separate

I’ve heard it all before

White

The epitome of humanity

So they say

Colored

My life, my name

A disgrace that should be exterminated from the human race

NO

I am no such thing

I am not venomous and I will not feel guilty for living in the nation of the free

I am not free

I am discriminated

Suffocated in the land where torture is a normality

What has this country become

Where giving death and hate is the equivalent of giving sense of the meaning of life

This land and these pale people

They are the wolf that will blow us down to the ground

But what will be on the other side

What will you do

Loss of Innocence at Its Finest

In response to Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong

Mary Anne had gone through an abundance of changes from the very beginning of her arrival in Vietnam. She started off as almost a classic girly-girl, makeup and hair nicely done, outfit clean and “bubbly personality, a happy smile” (O’Brien 95). She also spent all her time with her boyfriend, who was one of the soldiers in Vietnam, who had her come visit. While she had been this very young, innocent, and coy character, she had also been very curious. She would “roam around the compounds asking questions: What exactly was a trip flare? How did a Claymore work? What behind those scary green mountains to the West? Then she’d squint and listen quietly while somebody filled her in” (O’Brien 95). Gradually, she began to change her hair and clothes to a less feminine look and to a more simple and casual look. Her personality, mentality, and morality changed from happy and bright to a more blank and almost numbing feeling. She started really seeing the effects of war as she would help injured soldiers and even disappear and go on ambushes without telling anyone, and those “scary green mountains” became more interesting to her. Once the change was in full swing, she had worn a necklace of human tongues and stayed with a group of hunters called Greenies. She had completely alienated herself from everything she was before. Eventually, she had left into the green mountains of Vietnam and never came back.

This drastic change in Mary Anne had occurred due to her getting to experience the war. There were two different realities that people lived during the war. There was a huge difference between living and experiencing the war first hand versus hearing news about the war and not actually fighting in it. The change represented the loss of innocence that not just Mary Anne felt, but many soldiers during this gruesome war. This metamorphosis that occurred in Mary Anne had taken about six weeks to happen, however it had continued with her till she disappeared for good. The entire experience of war had been too much for her to handle and she may not have even known it. She was lost and numb to the fact that she was changing into a completely different human being that seemed hardly human at all. While the change had been clear to both the soldiers and the reader, it wasn’t easy for her to see. The change was extremely difficult for her boyfriend to watch and experience, “It was as though he had trouble recognizing her. She wore a bush hat and filthy green fatigues; she carried the standard M-16 automatic assault rifle; her face was black with charcoal” (O’Brien 102). While she thought she was possibly finding her “true self”, that was hardly the case, because she was turning into something that was hardly life-like. The effects of war were so cruel and harsh, that it could drive a person completely mad without their knowledge.

There is this idea that because Mary Anne was a woman, it made the story so much more tragic and sad, however, that is not true. There was already this constant lament for men in war who had been scarred, and the idea that this was about a woman was somehow worse. The soldiers in the story may have thought that due to the fact that in that time it was very rare that a woman would handle herself as a soldier would and that a woman would go outside of society’s social norms. It goes along with this idea that women cannot do much for themselves in the way of having their own protection and being able to fight their own battles. While it is true that she was a woman who had at first been very feminine and the idea woman in that society, the loss of innocence would affect anyone and be equally sad for any person, and especially with the Vietnam War being as horrendous as it was, the effects would be equally as scarring to a man as it would be for a woman.

Dehumanize the Enemy

In response to Faces of the Enemy

The dictionary definition for dehumanization is said to be the denial of positive human traits and characteristics or the "humanness" people have. In The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, dehumanization plays a huge role in soldiers lives for them to live with themselves after killing people just like them, fighters for their country. It is a need for them to dehumanize their enemy. Living with the facts that they have murdered people is too much, so they have to completely and thoroughly believe they have killed and stopped the enemy to make it bearable. They live these lives already with so much emotional baggage, carrying “grief, terror, love, longing--these were the intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight” (O’Brien 21). The pain they already carry is enough to drive any man completely mad, and the only real way to keep their own sense of morality is to not think about all these horrible things they are doing to an enemy they don’t know.  It is always a confusing topic to think about murder and killing, and it is questionable whether they are the same or not. Murder sounds like taking lives of innocent people who did not deserved to die. While killing the enemy sounds like doing a justful act in a fight for something worthy. Both words mean the same thing and coincide with each other, yet have a complete different meaning internally to the soldiers from Vietnam.

This idea that killing an enemy is so much easier to live with instead of believing that a person exactly like everyone else, and doing what they think is right or was taught is right, is killed for doing what they believe is right. When hearing stories of people who murder and kill people without reason, they are thought to be monstrous and crazy, but soldiers who have done the same are not put into that same category of a monster. And why is that? War is hardly a just act, it is cruel and frightening and scarring, which is evident in the stories of The Things They Carried as well as Faces of the Enemy, both focussed on the Vietnam War. During this war, the soldiers had “no sense of place or direction, probing for an enemy that nobody could see” (O’Brien 221).. There was no telling exactly who they were killing, which may have made it easier to just shoot and kill the “unknown monster.” However, because it was a faceless enemy, it was also hard to tell who the “bad guy” was on the opposite side of America. Many soldiers had been killed on both sides, as well as people who had nothing to do with the war. Not knowing who they were fighting made it hard for Americans to know who they were against, so they had to almost dehumanize everyone they saw, just to be safe and sure. This entire idea of dehumanization is such an intense and cruel aspect of war, but made essential to justify these mass killings for one side to win.

Supporting Sonny

In response to Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin

James Baldwin is considered to be one of the greatest writers of his time during the 1900’s. He would write about the discrimination and situation of African Americans, as well as being inspired by his personal experience of living in Harlem in poverty. He was not only an incredible and inspirational writer, but a very prominent Civil Rights activist. Discrimination was a continual theme through his writings as well as showing the injustice and loneliness of African Americans during this time.

One of Baldwin’s most famous writings, Sonny’s Blues, is known to be the story of how two brothers come to understand each other, and an underlying way of showing the two sides of the African-American experience. However, there is a huge aspect of how these two brothers lives are influenced and affected by surrounding, minor characters.

In Sonny’s Blues, Sonny has been sent to jail for using heroin, and his brother, who is also the narrator, has just found out by reading the story in the newspaper. They have not seen each other in over a year, and the story in the paper results in Sonny’s brother eventually writing him. They keep in contact till Sonny comes out of jail, and Sonny goes to live with his brother and his family. Through the story, there is a usage of flashbacks from their past, consisting of memories from their childhood, to Sonny and his brother leaving home, to their parents death, and many more events. In the end of the story, Sonny brings his brother to a club that he plays at, which is where they finally understand each other through Sonny’s music  and his brother finally listening and feeling it.

These events that were shown in the story through flashbacks had minor characters incorporated into them, and they had huge effects on Sonny and his brother’s lives. These characters include their parents, uncle, and the narrator’s wife, Isabel. The minor characters each had their own individual effects on Sonny and his brother and had affected them in ways they did not know or understand.

A very prominent example that had influenced Sonny and his brother in an almost hidden, but still very important way, are their parents. In a flashback, their mother had told Sonny’s brother a story about his father and uncle, who neither of them had known existed before the mother spoke of it. The uncle had been killed by some drunk white men driving, and their father had never been the same after that. She told Sonny’s brother because she was scared for Sonny. She told him, “‘You got to hold on to your brother… and don’t let him fall, no matter what it looks like is happening to him and no matter how evil you gets with him. You going to be evil with him many a time. But don’t you forget what I told you, you hear?’” (Baldwin). This had been a memory that the brother had recalled, and this had been a huge reason for him essentially writing to Sonny when he was in jail, and creating the whole plot for the story.

Isabel also had a big effect on both Sonny and his brother throughout the story. Before Sonny left town, her and her family had let Sonny stay with them. They had a piano, and Sonny would practice everyday. Isabel wrote Sonny’s brother while he stayed there saying “how it was nice that Sonny was so serious about his music and how, as soon as he came in from school, or wherever he had been when he was supposed to be at school, he went straight to that piano and stayed there until suppertime” (Baldwin). This had been the reason for Sonny living his dream as a musician later in his life. He was able to practice on their piano which had helped him learn and eventually play in jazz groups like he wanted.

In Sonny’s Blues, Sonny and his brother are able to represent two very different sides of the African-American experience in Harlem. Their lives have many different impacts from multiple events and people that help shape them into who they are, which is able to give a real depiction of living in Harlem in the time of struggle and recession. This is not only true for people in Harlem but, in a broader sense, it is able to be connected with anyone at anytime. People are affected by what surrounds them, whether it is people or their acts or events, they are impacted and changed in some way.

Broken with the Rhythms

In response to Jazz
We were rare and lonely spirits, listening to the forever known music

Careful with our steps and waiting for a miracle to finally come around

Earth’s breath was wrapping us and our dreams, tightening and strangling

Broken, bruised, yet still going on with no hate for them

As long as we had the music, we were able to continue on

Our home sweet home was a journey ahead

The hushed tones and rhythms kept our hips swaying and our souls alive

Bodies bending, writhing, turning, twisting

We were caged, but free in our minds

With the beat of the music and dear sweet melodies

The lovely noise surrounding

Taking our bodies and minds to a new world
Our entire selves free in the movement and sway and bend
Out there we were hurt and judged, but not here
This was a safe haven
This was home