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.
Filed by tittle at April 1st, 2008 under Uncategorized
