O’Brien employs different strategies for dealing with the very difficult subject. Discuss O’Brien’s technique from at least three different vignettes. As always pair text with commentary.
Seeing as how I had no idea what the word vignettes meant, I had to look it up.
Oh and I’m not sure if I’m answering this right, I’m not sure if it’s the authors writing techniques, or the characters way of dealing. I’m just going to go with the characters dealing…
vi·gnetteAudio Help (vĭn-yět’) Pronunciation Key
n. 1. A decorative design placed at the beginning or end of a book or chapter of a book or along the border of a page. 2. An unbordered picture, often a portrait, that shades off into the surrounding color at the edges. 3. a. A short, usually descriptive literary sketch. b. A short scene or incident, as from a movie.
So I’m assuming the definition is 3b.
Death vignette 1:
Curt Lemon- Curt Lemon and Rat Kiley were good friends, always joking around and playing. When he accidentally stepped on a mine while playing yellow mother Rat Kiley was hurt, it was his friend. He wrote his sister to tell her about him and how wonderful he was, and she never wrote back. He was hurt. He wanted someone/thing else to hurt, which is why he started torturing the baby water buffalo, so something would hurt, as he did. O’Brien wrote “It wasn’t to kill; it was to hurt.” And “The rest of us stood in a ragged circle around the baby buffalo. For a time no one spoke. We had witnessed something essential, something brand-new and profound, a piece of the world so startling there was not yet a name for it.” This describes Rat’s way of dealing with death, none the less, a death of his friend.
Death vignette 2:
Curt Lemon; Part 2-After Curt Lemon was blown up, they obviously had to collect his parts and get rid of him. O’Brien remembers his part of the Curt Lemon story and said “This one wakes me up.” As Dave Jensen and O’Brien were taking parts out of the tree Dave Jensen was singing “Lemon Tree” as stated: “But what wakes me up twenty years later is Dave Jensen singing “Lemon Tree” as we threw down the parts.” This was his way of trying to make that task a little less awkward, his way of dealing.
Death vignette 3:
Ted Lavender- Lieutenant Jimmy Cross was quite preoccupied the day that Ted was killed. He was ridding himself of Martha, burning her letters and pictures. “He felt shame. He hated himself. He had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead, and this was something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of the war.” Cross dealt by crying, by feeling guilt, carrying it, experiencing it. “One thing for sure, he said. The lietenant’s in some deep hurt. I mean that crying jag-the way he was carrying on-it wasn’t fake or anything, it was real heavy-duty hurt. The man cares.”
Compare the definition of Comrades with O’Brien’s interrelationship of characters in “Friends and Enemies”. Pay particular attention to the way the characters are revealed.
A person who shares one’s interests or activities; a friend or companion.
often Comrade A fellow member of a group, especially a fellow member of the Communist Party.
The word comrade I wouldn’t go as far as to use it for Jensen and Strunk, until maybe the very end of Strunks life. Even after they were “Square” they didn’t share interests that were mentioned, they simply had eachothers backs. What I find silly about the enemies part of their story is the fact that they even did that. My father was in the Viet Nam war, he was the only survivor out of his group of 10. I know he misses them all and were what he considered “friends” with all of them. You would think that when you’re in a constant life or death situation you would make the best of it and befriend whoever you can(thats on your side), because you never know how many more people you will be meeting.
How do our main characters stack up against the traditional norms? What is your definition of courage and heroism? What other experiences or literary works have worked to build this definition for you? How do O’Brien and Crane achieve their goals? What literary spin are they putting on the ball of words to get us to swing? Be sure use quotes from the text and commentary to support your ideas.
My definition of courage is doing something that you may not want to do, that is good for other people. Heroism to me is doing something that required a lot of courage. You would belive that a hero would go to war, with plenty of courage on his back, suck it up, and fight for your country. I don’t really have any heroic experiences to help build this definition for me. O’Brien discussed how he was thinking of fleeing to Canada, to get out of the war. They depict him as a hero, but hero’s shouldn’t have that type of cowardice. I can understand being discouraged and being a hero, but not wanting to fight because you don’t know anything about the war doesn’t seem right to me. When O’Brien says “Would you cry, as I did?” it forces us to be put into his situation. We wouldn’t fully understand how he felt unless that happened to us, which at that point, while were saying now go fight for your country regardless, there is a great chance that we would rather flee as well.
“Spin” explores the idea of controlling reality and memory through story. Write a blog entry explaining how this is explored in this chapter. Be sure to explain concepts using detail and commentary.
The chapter “Spin” in The Things They Carried is about perception, point of view, and how it its changed person to person. The narrator is telling HIS story of the war, and it is all his own. The narrator says “on occasions the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put a fancy spin on it, you could make it dance.” This is a spin, and ironically in turn uses the chapter title. You could even put a spin on this spin. He describes someone he met that greatly influenced him and affected him, but this could be completely different to someone else. He tells his story and relives some tales with one of his friends. Some things they would choose to forget, and others you can’t help but to always remeber.
In the first part of The Things They Carried it talks about how they carry both tangible and intangible things. It said “the things they carried were largely determined by necesity.” It also said “what they carried varied by mission.” They carried the things that they needed to survive, wether it be guns, ammunition, kool-aid, coke, or tranquilizers. They also carried sentiments, such as “love” letters, or a pebble. Anything to remind them of a good place, a good feeling. This was especially important due to the fact that they were so far from home, and rarely got to see their loved ones. With these good feelings they also carried sadness, and grief for when people die. This is an intangible, and so is terror and longing. They reffered to it as “emotional baggage”. Back to tangible things, these were grenades, guns, pocket knives, some food rations.
Now onto the things I would carry. Intangibles, that would be a lot of love, sadness, and fear. I don’t think anywhere in there would be any anger. I would carry some doughnuts for food maybe, and some kool-aid too. I would probably carry any letters someone gave me, as memoribelia. Water is a big necessity.
1. The speaker is a man who is trying date a woman, whom he calls rose.
2. Go and tell the wasteful girl that she seemed sweet and fair. Tell her shes young and (something). Looks arent worth much, but she trys hard to be desired. Everything dies, they don’t live long but are sweet and fair.
3. The rhyme scheme for the poem is ababb. Lines 1 and 3 are shorter then the other lines, half, to be exact. Each stanza is one sentance.
1. Day is compared to earth and sky in the first metaphor. In the personification, the rose is described as being extremely bright, to the point of tears. These are alike in the fact that both of these deal with the use of light.
2. The poems rhyme scheme is ababcbcbdbdbdede. The ending lpart to the sentaces or stanzas are all revolving death and dying exept for the last.
Hopkins’s short lyric shares some elements with the sonnet, but it is a nonce form, invented for this poem only. Hopkkins’ idiosyncratic meter, which he dubbed “sprung rhythm”, uses accent marks over certain syllables. What is the dominant meter and line length? What is the rhyme scheme? Describe the poem’s structure. (Hint: The anomaly in the rhyme scheme is the key).
- The rhyme scheme is aabbccdddeeffgg. The structure is similar to that of a sonnett but there is one extra line in the “second” stanza.
What is the effect of the frequent use of alliteration in the poem? Combined with assonance and consonance, what mood does this device create?
- The mood generated is not that of a happy one. some examples of alliteration are “by and by”, “spare a sigh”, “leafmeal lie” and “worlds of wanwood”. The effect of this is also repetative.
Comment on the effect created by such unusual diction as Goldengrove and unleaving (line 2), fresh (line 4), wanwood and leafmeal (line 8), springs (line 11), and blight (line 14.) How do the connotations of these words create the poem’s mood?
- These words, the unusal diction, is very descriptive. Goldengrove describes the place perfectly. Fresh describes the sight… etc. These words create the poems mood by the meanings of the words being associated with death..mold and decay. These create a down and not happy mood.
The Oven Bird
Analyze the poet’s use of figurative language. How does it suggest the theme of the poem?
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Frost’s poem, like Hopkins’s, borrows from the sonnet form. What is its meter, rhyme scheme, and structure?
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Paraphrase the three messages of the oven bird, then analyze the meaning of the word fall as it encapsulates the theme of the poem.
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Paraphrase the last four lines of the poem. How does the oven bird symbolize the human condition?
1. Describe a villanelle by explicating the stanza pattern and the rhyme scheme of this poem. How many different end rhymes are in the poem? How many times is each sound repeated? Which words are repeated exactly at the ends of lines, in what pattern? How does the last stanza use the rhyming words? Why is this appropriate at the end of the poem?
- A villanelle is “A fixed form borrowed from early French poetry with nineteen lines (five stanzas of three lines, a last stanza of four lines) of any length or meter and two rhymes only, aba, employed in a set pattern. Line 1 is repeated as lines 6, 12, and 18. Line 3 is repeated as lines 9, 15, and 19.” This conforms exactly to a villanelle because there are only two end rhymes, starting with hello and fine. Hello is repeated from line 1, and into line 6, 12, and 18 only, as know is in lines 3, 9, 15, and 19. The last stanza uses the two end rhymes in a way to summarize what the whole poem was about.
2. Isolationg the b rhymes (middle line of each tercet) gives us this list: fine, wine, nine, line, pine, sign. What is the significance of each of these words to the whole poem?
- The b rhymes tell us a story of life when you meet someone. I wouldn’t of known exactly what each word ment without looking in the back of the book, but now that I have I understand that “fine” is a word used when you first meet someone, as if they were asking “how are you”, and “wine” is a possible drink you would share as you were getting to know each other. “Nine” is later in the night showing their night slowly coming to an end, “line” is as if a line in a story, or a relationship rather. “Pine” is grieving for a long time, as if the relationship ended? And “the cold white sign” shows the end of it. I belive thats what they were getting at.
3. Incremental repetition tends to augment meaning and accumulate significance. What variations in meaning are present in the following groups of repetitions and what is their effect?
line 1: same.Hello,
line 6: same, Hello,
line 12: same, Hello.
line 18: end. Hello,
line 3: Good-bye at the end.
line 9: Good-bye. In the end
line 15: Good-bye is the end
line 19: Good-bye is the only
line 3: every story we know
line 9: this is a story we know
line 15: every story we know
line 19: We know, we know.
- I’m not going to lie, I am completely clueless as to how to answer this question, or what it even really means. One thing im going to guess upon is that the last lines of the sets, the “end. Hello,Good-bye is the only, We know, we know.” sounds very much like a closing, as if finality, maybe she knows that everything comes to an end? Thats about all i got out of that though, except for the repetition for effect to reiterate that every story is the same. You meet someone “Hello” eventually there is a “Good-bye”.
1. As the title tells us, this poem is written in a form called a sestina, first used by a French troubadour in the twelfth century. In describing the prosody of Alvarez’s poem, you will be describing a sestina. Hint: Instead of looking for a rhyme scheme, look for a pattern in the repetition of the last word of each line. The last three lines of a poem are called the envoy.
- Sestina’s have six stanza’s that consist of six lines, and an envoy at the end. The six words at the end of the stanza’s are “nombre, closed, English, Spanish, say” and “words”. They are all repeated in each stanza at the ends, but in different orders. The orders of the stanza’s are as follows:
Stanza 1-abcdef
Stanza 2-faebdc
Stanza 3-cfdabe
Stanza 4-efbfad
Stanza 5-deacfb
Stanza 6-bdfeca
The envoy has all of those words in them, the ending words of the envoy go :bfb?
2. In the first stanza, what is the effect of personification and allusion? What is the Spanish counterpart to each? Sum up the meaning of the stanza.
- The effect of the personification of English being the “snow, blonde, blue-eyed, gum chewing” automatically shows her conflict with the English language by being stero-typical. She refers to the national anthem when she talks about the light coming through the persianas. She also translates words from Spanish to english, and there is one first word she can’t.
3. What mood or feelings are evoked in stanza two? How does language create this mood?
- The use of names with Spanish sounds, and the use of words like “warm” and “soothing” help to creat the mood of peace and safety. As if she was in a Spanish speaking area, where she doesn’t feel alien. Also the words like “sun, earth, sky, and moon” create a very peaceful setting.
4. What do we learn in stanzas two and three about the difference between names and vocabulary words? How does the example of the plant called the morivivir help illustrate this gap? What does the metaphor of the genii in the bottle tell us about the nature of language?
- We learn that names do not tell us much at all. They simple put a title to something, and don’t necessarily describe much. Saying something such as “whose leaves closed when we kids poked them” better describes the word with the name.
5. In stanzas four and five, why does the speaker invoke Gladys and Rosario from her childhood? How is her childhood sensitivity to words inextricably bound to Spanish, her first language? What is significant about the allusion to Adam, the first man?
- She involves Gladys and Rosario because they were obviously important in her life. She shows great sensitivity to her first language, Spanish. The significance of the first man, Adam is that he was one of her first teachers.
1. In what ways does this poem conform to a common sonnet form? What variations are notable, and what is their effect?
-A common sonnet is in the form of abab cdcd efef gg. This poem is in the form of abba cddc gg. The couplet at the end is supposed to rhyme, even though I don’t see any rhyme in it. This variation is called an italian sonnet.
2. Describe Donne’s use of apostrophe and personoification. How do these devices enhance our experience of the poem?
- Donne describes death as proud, “mighty and dreadful”. He refers to death with the words “thee” and “thou”; in addtion death is capitalized, making it be a proper noun, giving it a personal value. The use of apostrophe and personification make us think that when they are talking to death telling him not to be proud that you are talking to a humanly figure.
3. Paraphrase each of the sonnet’s three quatrains, preserving the clauses but simplifying the syntax. Do the same for the paradoxical couplet. Retain the apostrophe and personifification.
-Death do not be proud even though have called you powerful and fear you, you are not. You cannot kill me or the people that you think you can over power. We get pleasure from rest and sleep, but we get more pleasure from you. Soon our good men will go die. You are fate’s slave, and all good men will get sick or poisioned. The charm will make us sleep, then after a short sleep we will be awake forever, and death will die.
