Tim O'Brien Response

Response to Tim O’Brien

Of the many short stories from Tim O’Brien’s book “The Things They Carried”, I chose to respond to the first one. This is also called, “The Things They Carried”.  I really enjoyed reading this story because it started out talking about actual material things the soldiers carried and then towards the end “The Things They Carried” symbolized the emotions each of them carried. O’Brien’s story spoke of how to deal with the emotions they were harboring men carried things to take their thoughts somewhere else while in the middle of the war. I can imagine that if I had to deal with the stress of the possibility of losing my life on a daily basis, I would try to find ways to let my mind take me somewhere else, if even for a minute. Dreaming about family or the life that used to be would be a good way of keeping a person holding on during this traumatic situation. It is amazing that these people do not go insane from the things that they have to see. Watching people die right in front of their eyes and realizing that could just as easily have been them.

The reading of war we have been doing has given me a different understanding of the men and women that come back from war. It has always been easier for me to ignore the fact that we are in a war because the idea that there are so many people suffering depresses me. I know that is a very selfish thing for me to say. Reading these stories has just made me want to pray for these people every night.  

http://www.illyria.com/tob/tobbio.html Go here for more info on Tim O'Brien

link to picture http://naturalmedicinetreatmentalternatives.com/2009/06/04/depression-how-homeopathy-can-help.aspx

Response to Sean Huze

Response to Sean Huze
When it comes to war, I have always had mixed emotions. In some ways I think that we need it because if we didn’t fight for our country, we will lose it and our freedom along with it. On the other hand, I don’t agree with killing innocent people. Throughout war many children and people die that don’t deserve to lose their lives so early.
Reading the play, “The Sand Storm, Stories from the Front” by Sean Huze, really confused my emotions even more. I do not know anyone who has been in war, so I have never really understood the horror these men and women go through. I understand why they are there fighting for us and I know how it can benefit us. I just cannot comprehend how any person can lay fire on children and their families.
This play gave me a better understanding at how being in war can really mess with a person’s emotions. They are there to do a job and in order to stay alive they must put their emotions aside. But what makes me sad is that these people being killed are also just trying to protect themselves as well.
I imagine to keep from going crazy while fighting, a person has to make reason for the horrible things they do. In the play, CPL Waters said how he felt that since the Iraqi’s had not given his friends mercy, he need not give any mercy to them (Huze 9). How does a person reason enough with themselves to stand there and watch a man suffer and smile in victory?
I think if I had to choose to be either for or against war, I would choose to be for it. I really believe that we would not have the freedom we have today if it had not been for all the men and women who have fought for it. I just wish there were some way to keep the innocent lives out of it. I guess that is just the price of our freedom.
 
Works Cited
Image URLhttp://webspace.webring.com/people/et/trcrowder/
Huze, Sean. “The Sand Storm: Stories from the Front.” 2004.Susan Schulman Literary Agency.2004
Here is a site that gives a look at a positive to the war in Iraq

http://www.rd.com/your-america-inspiring-people-and-stories/a-friendship-beyond-the-battlefield/article30452.html

Responding to Poetry

Responding to a poem


The two poems I chose to respond to are, “Charlie Howard’s Descent”, by Mark Doty, and “Song of Napalm”, by Bruce Weigl. Both of these poems show an extreme amount of emotion and both are based off of real events.

“Charlie Howard’s Descent” is a poem based on the death of a homosexual boy in the 1980’s (Wikipedia par. 1-4). This poem reminded me a lot of the recent story of the girl who committed suicide because of the kids that teased her and made her feel like an outcast. These kinds of stories anger me. Because this boy was gay, he was teased and eventually killed because “he could not meet the town’s demands” (Doty, line 17-18); others could not accept him for who he was. Many people would say it is a sin to be a homosexual, but isn’t it a sin to judge one of God’s children. In the poem it says, “What could he do, live with one hand tied behind his back” (Doty lines 12-14); He obviously was more feminine than other men. I am a Christian myself and of course, like many other’s I still have unanswered questions. One of them being, If God makes all of his children, why would he make some of them with both male and female parts, and then say that being homosexual is wrong. I believe this would be a good poem for all teenagers to read.

“Songs of Napalm” is a poem based on a soldier’s memories in Viet Nam (weigl, Bio, par. 3). This poem is interesting in that if you’ve never seen things through a soldier’s eyes, you can never fully understand the true intensity of the things they have witnessed. This soldier gives us (the readers) a very an inside look at the effects the war had on him. I think the most powerful part of his poem is when Weigl says, “ I try to imagine she runs down the road and wings beat inside her until she rises above the stinking jungle and her pain eases, and your pain, and mine, but the lie swings back again”(lines 30-34). This part really made me feel his pain and his longing to just put these horrible memories to rest. He wants so badly to be able to live in the moment with his wife but these images in his head will not let him.

Both of these poems were written very well in the sense that in reading it a person can almost feel the pain these people were feeling. In my opinion, these poems are the best kind of poetry because they are real and heart-felt.

References
Mark Doty “Charlie Howard’s Descent.” Angelfire 1987. 9 September 2010. Web. http://www.angelfire.com/ca4/strawberry/descent.html
Bruce Weigl “Song of Napalm.”Poetry foundation. 1999. 9 September 2010. Web. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html
Charlie Howard (MurderVictim)Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 1984. 9 September 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Howard_(murder_victim)
Website for this image http://mslinder.wikispaces.com/poetryexplication





Here is a link that gives more info on the kid Charlie from Mark Doty's poem

Response to Sam Hammil’s “The Necessity to Speak” Essay

Sam Hammil’s essay is one that definitely caught my attention. He goes into explicit detail the penalty this world pays for not speaking their mind. He states that in not talking, we are all accountable for the wrongdoing of humankind. All parents should read this essay. I am a mother of two children and in his writings; he discusses quite often the consequences of not talking to your children.
In Hammil’s essay he writes that as human beings, “we go on living our sheltered lives” because “we can’t bear very much reality” (par 2). I would have to agree with this. I personally am not one that likes to hear about the awful things of the world. It scares me. In a very selfish way, I would rather go on living and not knowing the bad details. I say it is selfish because Hammil is right in saying that we all are “personally responsible for the deaths we buy and sell” (par 2). We are all choosing to ignore the fact that we just might have a say in what happens in our world.
In not teaching our children the reality of the world, we are not preparing them for the what-ifs. For example: What if my daughter is ever in a situation where she is raped, this situation could go one of two ways; She does not say anything for fear of being embarrassed or for fear of her attacker and the attacker continues to do the same thing to other women. On the other hand, I tell her when she is old enough to understand not be afraid to talk in these situations, because in talking maybe she can prevent it happening to someone else. My question to all of this though, is at what age do I decide to confront her with the possibilities that life can bring upon her? In telling her the reality of the world, am I taking away a piece of her childhood?
We should talk about sex and violence and when we see wrongdoing, we should speak up! As adults our responsibility is to speak our mind when something is not right. I do believe “In the language of violence, every speech is a solipsism and silence a conspirator” (par31). If I see that my neighbor’s husband is beating her, and I say nothing, I am just as much to blame as her abuser. We do not want to be in the middle though for fear of harming ourselves. Maybe letting go of that fear may save someone’s life someday.
In summation, we all may fear the unknown of speaking our mind, but if we choose not to, we are all at fault for what happens around us.

References
Sam Hammil, “The Necessity to Speak.” A Poet’s Work: The Other Side of Poetry. Seattle, Wa: Broken Moon, 1990

Here is a link that gives more info about the author Sam Hammil http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=2883