Death Perception
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·gnette Audio 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.”
Filed by tittle at April 8th, 2008 under Uncategorized
