“Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a life-time ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That’s what stories are for. Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.”

In How to Tell a True War Story, when Bob Kiley loses his best friend, he writes a letter to his friend’s sister telling her stories of how great her brother was. She never writes back. O’Brien goes on to talk about Bob “Rat” Kiley’s best friend, Curt Lemon; its these stories that make Curt real and make his death that much more significant to us. In the vignette named The Lives of the Dead he writes,

“…Curt Lemon had gone trick-or-treating on Halloween. A dark, spooky night, and so Lemon put on a ghost mask and painted up his body all different colors and crept across the pady to a sleeping village- almost stark naked, the story went, just boots and balls and an M-16- and in the dark Lemon went from hootch to hootch- ringing doorbells, he called it- and a few hours later, when he slipped back into the perimeter, he had a whole sackful of goodies to share with his pals…”

More than this though, the story of a man’s death may tell you something meaningful.

“Right away, Lemon and Rat Kiley started goofing… A nature hike, they thought, not even a war- so they went off into the shade of some giant trees- they were giggling and calling each other yellow mother and playing a silly game they’d invented”… “In the mountains that day, I watched Lemon turn sideways. He laughed and said something to Rat Kiley. Then he took a peculiar half step, moving from shade into bright sunlight, and the booby-trapped 105 round blew him into a tree. The parts were just hanging there, so Dave Jenson and i were ordered to shinny up and peel him off… The gore was horrible, and stays with me. But what wakes me up twenty years later is Dave Jenson singing “Lemon Tree” as we threw down the parts.”

In war, you’re surrounded by death. So much death that it makes you cope in strange ways, sometimes ways you never thought humanly possible. Some soldiers make death less personal through humor, just as Dave Jenson did in the previous quote. For others though, like O’Brien, no amount of humor can take death and make it something its not.

“The place was deserted- no people, no animals-and the only confirmed kill was an old man who lay face-up near a pigpen at the center of the village. His right arm was gone. At his face there were already many flies and gnats
Dave Jenson went over and shook the old man’s hand, “How-dee-doo,” he said. One by one the others did it too…
“Be polite now, Go introduce yourself. Nothing to be afraid of, just a nice old man. Show a little respect for your elders.” Dave Jenson said.”

Despite his comrades urgings, O’Brien could not bring himself to make a mockery of this old man. He was once alive, a real person, and now he was dead.

” One afternoon he began firing his weapon into the air, yelling Strunk’s name, just firing and yelling, and it didn’t stop until he’d rattled off an entire magazine of ammunition…
But that wasn’t the bizzare part.
Because late that same night he borrowed a pistol, gripped it by the barrel, and used it like a hammer to break his own nose.”

The chapter concludes with Jensen confronting Strunk, asking him if this act made them even.

What I believe is truly bizzare is the way in which this incident cause a bond between the two. As O’Brien writes in Friends,

“Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk did not become instant buddies, but they learned to trust each other. Over the next month they often teamed on ambushes. They covered each other on patrol, shared a fox hole, took turns pulling guard at night. In late August the made a pact that if one of htem should ever get totally f***** up- wheelchair wond- they other guy would automatically find a way to end it…”

Its ironic that two people, seemily mortal enemies, are able to become such close comrades. It does show how the etymology of the word links the old definition to the modern.

“I remember staring at the old man, then at my hands, then at Canada… I could’ve jumped and started swimming for my life… I couldn’t decide, I couldn’t act, I couldn’t compose myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity… I would not be brave. The old image of myself as a hero, as a man of conscience and courage, all that was just a threadbare pipe dream…“

Traditionally, he would have been considered heroic for choosing to go to war, but from his point of view it was the opposite. Because he chose not to follow his gut instinct, because he chose not to escape the draft, he saw himself as a failure. The reason being, he simply did not believe in the motive behind the war. He thought his life was more important than the cause. He may very well have been right. He stated in page 44,

“There were occasions, I believed, when a nation was justified in using military force to achieve its ends, to stop a Hitler or some comparable evil, and i told myself that in such circumstances i would’ve willingly marched off to the battle. The problem though, was that a draft board did not let you choose your war.“

Furthermore he explains, “Beyond all this, or at the very center, was the raw fact of terror. I did not want to die. Not ever. But certainly not then, not there, not in a wrong war.”

Here we see a dilemma that many faced during the Vietnam War. A moral split. Many felt disconnected from the motive fueling this war and therefore wanted nothing to do with it, unless it involved extracting all military aid from the area. Who’s to say whether Tim O’Brien was a hero for going to war, or a coward for desiring a way out?

In this section of the story, O’Brien aims to twist the mood of the story. He wants us to feel torn for him; to be against his deployment to Vietnam, to feel his entrapment. O’Brien does this by appealing to our emotions as well as human logic.He describes the moral struggle he faces with such detail, that we can almost feel the shear force of his affliction. He expounds in pages 44 -46,

“I feared the war, yes, but i also feared exile… I feared losing the respect of my parents. I feared the law. I feared ridicule and censure…it was a war to stop the Communists, plain and simple, and you were a treasonous (pansy) is you had second thoughts about killing or dying for plain and simple reasons.”

Furthermore, his image aside, he argues,

“I was drafted to fight a war I hated…Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law…America was divided on these and a thousand other issues… and smart men in pinstripes could not agree even on the most fundamental matters of public policy. The only certainty that summer was moral confusion. It was my view then, and still is, that you don’t make war without knowing why.”

These facts alone tug at our logic. Why go to a war when you don’t even know what you’re truly fighting for? Through his commentary Tim fundamentally states that the war he’s been drafted into is futile. As history played out, we know that this war indeed made no progress to halt communism, and so did O’Brien. This endorses his argument as valid and causes us to feel empathetic towards his situation.

Courage is defined as the ability to face your fears with bravery, confidence and a resolution of spirit. Heroism is conducting one’s self with courage and bravery. In some aspect, O’Brien’s decision was heroic. His decision and the commentary surrounding it manifests within the reader a solid compassion for him. Figures of his past flash before his eyes: himself, his family, his friends which morphed into figures of his future and grew to include a conglomerate of historical figure such as Abe Lincoln and LBJ, and various people he knew or would know throughout his life. He paints a picture of these people, some lining the Canadian shore and some lining American, all calling out to him.

“It was as if there were an audience to my life, the swirl of faces along the river, and in my head i could hear people screaming at me. Traitor! they yelled. Turncoat! (Pansy!) I felt myself blush. I couldn’t tolerate it. I couldn’t endure the mockery, or the disgrace, or the patriotic ridicule. Even in my imagination the shore was just twenty yards away, I couldn’t make myself brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that’s all it was.
And right then i submitted.
I would go to war- I would kill and maybe die- because i was embarrassed not to.
That was the sad thing. And so i sat in the bow of the boat and cried.”

Although O’Brien convinces himself he is a coward. I believe he is too hard on himself; after all it takes courage to go to war as well as to avoid it. But then again, that’s the mood O’Brien strives to create.

Stories have a unique way of controlling the appearance of reality and memory because they are often told from one person’s point of view.  In this way one can leave out, add, or “spin” occurrences that mold a story to his liking. Tim O’Bryan uses this technique throughout The Things They Carried, and speaks of it in the section of the book appropriately named, Spin. 

O’brien states in this chapter, “On occasion the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put a fancy spin on it, you could make it dance.”

He continues by speaking of two soldiers who would find entertainment in a game of checkers. He stated, “You knew where you stood. You knew the score… There was a winner and a loser. There were rules.” This implies the war was not like this game of checkers at all; but unpredictable and indefinite.

 Later he speaks fondly of a poppa-san who led their team through the jungle and kept them from being obliterated. The tone of this paragraph is light hearted and nostalgic as he remembers his experiance with this old, disabled man and the bond the team created with him. It’s ironic because in reality it was a serious adventure in which anyone of them could have been blown to pieces or shot down at any moment. This aspect is brought into the story comically through the rhyme on of the soldiers, Rat Kiely created, “Step out of line, hit a mine; follow a dink, you’re in the pink.”

1. safety pins
2. trip flares
3. razor blades
4. chewing tobacco
5. 2-gallon plastic water containers

Intangible.

1. memory
2. pain
3. ghosts
4. fear
5. hope

“What do you carry?” List and explain what you hump around life, both tangible and intangible.

      There are many things i carry in life, both tangible and intangible. Sometimes i carry car keys, a clutch, or a bottle of water. In my wallet is usually a little cash, some gift cards, my licence, and a few movie stubs and receipts. I almost always carry my cellphone. This alone allows me to carry contact information, conversations, music, and photographs accessible at the touch of a button. Most importantly, I carry my mind.

      On a figurative level, I carry much more. My mind holds many memories and past experiences; good and bad. I bear emotions based on these experiences: some evoke happiness, nostalgia, and love. Other times i feel sadness, grief, or pain- even guilt, and often fear. I also posses a faith in God that give me strength to carry all these things, no matter how blissful,  melancholy, or arduous the burden. I am sustained by the Holy Spirit. I carry the knowledge of relationships, and belonging. With that responsibility to bear the weight of another and everything they hold. I carry pride. I carry insecurity. I carry opinions, i carry knowledge. And so much more…

1. What is the occasion of the poem? What literary device does the poet employ? Describe what you know of the speaker, the listener and the “she” referred to in the poem.
   The speaker is a young man pining for a woman. He uses personification of the rose, which he commands to go to the girl and tell of his love for her.
2. Paraphrase each of the four stanzas. Go lovely Rose and tell the girl that continually turns me down; That she now knows that I think she is as fair and sweet as she thinks you are (rose). With your beauty, tell this young, shy girl that if you had bloomed in a desert no one would be able to appreciate you. Beauty that can not be seen is of little worth. Ask her to come out of hiding, allow herself to be desired and not to be embarrassed when admired. Then die so she will realize that rare, lovely things do not last forever.
3. Describe the prosody, including stanza form, rhyme, meter, and notable metrical substitutions (spondees), as well as the structure of the poem. How do these choices help to reinforce the poem’s content?

The rhyme scheme of the poem is ababb. The spondees deliver orders to the rose, “go lovely”, “tell her”, “tell her”, “then die”. The structure of the poem is one long command to deliver a message. Each stanza is one sentence and delivers one separate command; there are four in total. They are, “Go” tell her I admire her beauty. “Tell her” that her beauty would be wasted if she continues to hide. “Tell her” to reveal herself. “Then die” so she would understand the urgency of my request.

Virtue George Herbert

1. Consider first Hebert’s use of metaphor and personification. In each case, what two unlike things are being compared, and what do they have in common?
First he compares a day to the marriage of the earth and sky. It is personified as cool and bright. The dew is personified as one who weeps for dusk and the death of daytime.
A rose is personified as so brilliant that it brings tears to the eyes of its observer. Spring is compared to flowers and a box of sweets, but as the other things in the poem short lived.
Lastly, a “sweet and virtuous soul” is compared to seasoned timber, which never parishes even when the souls of the world have “turned to coal”.

2. How is the poem structured, and how does this structure support its meaning? Consider parallelism, order and the turn in the poem.
The first three stanzas speak of objects are not eternal; that die. These three personified objects are spring, day, and rose. This emphasizes the last stanza as it states the one exception. Though all four things in the poem are “sweet”, the virtuous soul is the only thing that is immortal, even when all the world has died.

3. How does the prosody reinforce the poem’s meaning?
The first three stanzas provide examples of things that must die. Each ends with an almost identical line, “For thou/ And though/ And all must die.”

The similarities among these stanzas make the difference in the last stanza more apparent. It begins with Only, which signifies the turning point of the poem. There are two new rhymes and a new idea suggested and the last line does not end with die, but lives.

1. Describe the form and structure of the poem. What is the occasion of the poem? What two reasons does the speaker give for refusing to promise a committed love? What compromise does she suggest at the end?
   The poem is written in iambic pentameter with alternating rhyme. In the poem the speaker tells her lover why she will not exchange vows with him. Her reasons are they do not know each other’s pasts and have uncertain futures. She suggests instead that they remain friends.
2. Analyze the effect on meaning of such devices as syntax, repetition, parallelism, and paradox.
   Promises and promise are repeated in the title and first few lines of the poem as well as in the third stanza. This endorses the speakers point of view. Throughout the poem words are repeated within lines such as “never false and never true” and “free to come and free to go.” The first is a paradox, the second a manifesto which suggests that the person the speaker is addressing has the liberty to do either. Syntax is a factor in lines 7 & 8 when the speaker states, “For I cannot know your past/ And of mine what can you know?” suggesting that what is true for her also applies for him. Parallelism is present in the beginning of the third stanza with the repetition of promise previously noted. This suggests that either of them might regret the vow if they go through with it.
3. Analyze the effect on meaning of the imagery and figurative language.
   In line five the speaker states, “let us hold the die uncast” implying she would rather stay only friends and not take the chance of not liking the outcome of taking their relationship further. In lines 9 and 10 warm refers to her lover’s past relationships and cold refers to her current feeling towards this man. Sun and sunlight refer to love she once felt.

 2. On a literal level, what contextual significance do the following words and phrases have: mangled (line 9), “tolls once” (line 11), “terrible cargo” (line 12), “rocking, slightly rocking” (line 13), deranged and composed (lines 15 and 16)?
In line 9, mangled refers to the disheveled bodies from the accident. “Tolls once” refers to the sound of the ambulance as it leaves the scene. The “terrible cargo” is most likely the person inside the ambulance, struggling to survive. The ambulance then leaves almost in slow motion, “Rocking, slightly rocking”. The speaker says, “we are deranged, walking” describing his state of mind in response to the possible injuries or deaths he just witnessed. Contrarily, the cops  are “composed” just as they are supposed to be in these situations, and partially because they have become numb to instances such as this.

3. Analyze the metaphors in lines 3, 18, 22, 29-30. What pattern do they create and why is it appropriate to the poem?
The metaphor in line 3, “Pulsing out red light like and artery” describes the light of the ambulance coming closer through the dark; though as it references blood pulsing out through an artery, you think of injuries from the accident that it is racing towards. In line 18 the metaphor, “One with a bucket douches ponds of blood” refers to the police man washing away the exaggerated ponds of blood from the accident. Line 22 produces the metaphor, “Our throats were tight as tourniquets” comparing the feeling one gets when emotional to a tourniquet used to keep one from bleeding to death. Lastly Shapiro writes, “But we remain, touching a wound/ That opens to our richest horror.” Here the wound is a reference to the loss he and others experienced just a few minutes ago and richest horror the same; the sudden, seemly alterable, unnecessary death of a loved one. Because of this, they are unwilling to leave the scene, as if somehow by staying there a piece of what they have lost may be preserved- if only through the emotions that resurface over and over at the sight of the scene. The pattern created weaves death more tightly into the poem. It suggests bleeding to death and the dismay of the event.

4. What is added to the theme of the poem by the metaphors in lines 20-21 and the simile in 24-27?
The metaphor in lines 20-21 reads, “One hangs lanterns on the wrecks that cling,/ Empty husks of locusts, to iron poles.” Here Shapiro explains that the wrecks of the cars that cling to empty poles are similar to the husks of locusts; those once inside the cars have left this body with their death and passed on, just as locust larva emerge from cocoons once matured. This follows the belief of many basic religions, that once dead your soul leaves your body and moves on. The simile in lines 24-27,
“Like convalescents intimate and gauche
We speak through sickly smiles and warn
With stubborn saw of common sense,
The grim joke and the banal resolution.”
This comparison relates the witnesses to hospital patients, intimate due to their common experiences. Smiles are “sickly” due to the emotional trauma that makes them act as victims of the wreck as well. Their behavior is “gauche” as they tell inappropriate jokes to lighten the atmosphere. Their conversation is “banal” with the resolution to drive more safely. This event has materialized a fear of their own mortality and leads to the unspoken unanswerable questions.

1. Describe the form called rime royal: meter, rhyme scheme, stanza form.
The form of poetry known as rime royal, or rhyme royal consists of 7 lines in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme as follows: ababbcc. Each stanza may be as tercet and two couplets or a quatrain and a tercet.

2. What is the structure of the poem? How do the imagery and argument of each stanza develop and intensify the appeal?
The poem is based on the speaker’s plea for sustenance. In the first stanza he notes the light weight of his purse, and appeals to his lady for some money so he doesn’t starve. In the next stanza the speaker flatters his lady and declares his allegiance to her. He tells her, “ye be my life, ye be myn hertes steere.” He then again asks again for aid, else he must die. In the third stanza he calls her his “saviour” and begs her, if she can not fill his purse, to at least help him escape his creditors.

3. In exploring the extended metaphor of the poem, consider how diction accounts for the humor of Chaucer’s parody.
Chaucer relates his purse to his love, speaking ambiguously about them throughout the poem. He flatters her and builds her image. He calls her “my lady dere,” “My life,” “myn hertes steere,” ” Queene of confort and of good compaignye,” and “my lives light/ And savior.”

4. How does the envoy continue the tone of the poem even as it addresses a specific person?
The envoy continues the tone of the poem with similar diction and theme. Chaucer again requests something of one higher rank than he after some flattery. He calls Henry IV, “O conquerour of Brutus Albioun,” and endorsese that he is not a tyrant by stating, “which that by line and free eleccioun/ Been verray king, this song to you i sende:” He then makes a request that the king does not forget his need.

Spring and Fall Gerard Manley Hopkins

1. Hopkins’s short lyric shares some elements with the sonnet, but it
is a nonce form, invented for this poem only. Hopkins’ 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.
Okay, i feel like i need to analyze what this question even means before i can answer it. That’s probably not a good sign. Okay. The poem has about 4 accents per line and each line has about 8 syllables, making a the meter iambic tetrameter. The poem consists of mainly of rhyming couplets, however lines 7,8, and9 break this pattern as all three end in rhyme. The first eight lines ask a question and set the story, line 9 is the turning point with “And Yet”, which is followed by the resolution (lines 10-15)

2. 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 created by these devices is one of sorrow. They slow the tempo down and give the poem a dreary feel. In line 8, “worlds of wanwood” and “leafmeal lie” provide three repetitions of consonant and two of assonance. Other examples occur in lines 1-2, “grieve/gold”; line 11, “sorrow’s/springs”; line 13, “heart heard,” “ghost guessed”; line 9, “will/weep/why” and so on.

3. 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?
“Goldengrove” refers to a grove full of golden autumn leaves. I discovered that “unleaving” is an original word that Hopkin’s has coined to describe the process the trees undergo during the fall. “fresh” is associated with the young thoughts of the child that Hopkin’s addresses the this line to. “wanwood” suggests a pale color, like death, and “leafmeal” relates to rotting leaves, also associated with death. “Springs” on line 11 has a double meaning; springs as in nature, and the source of the child’s tears. “Blight” is associated with disease and death. The connotations of these words create a sorrowful and mourning tone.

4. Analyze the poet’s use of figurative language. How does it suggest
the theme of the poem?
The theme of the poem is that the awareness and tragedy of death to a child will become rationalized when the child matures. The “heart” in line 5 symbolizes human emotion, while the “mind” and “ghost” in line 5 represent experience. This figurative language expresses the theme that, somehow we tend to brush death aside in our adulthood; that after a child matures, he loses his awareness of this tragedy.

The Oven Bird Robert Frost

1. Frost’s poem, like Hopkins’s, borrows from the sonnet form. What is
its meter, rhyme scheme, and structure?
The meter is iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of aabcbdcdeefgfg. The first ten lines determine the subject of the poem. “He says” is repeated at the beginning of lines 4,6, and 10, which tell’s us about the birds song. In the last four lines, the resolution is written.

2. Paraphrase the three messages of the oven bird, then analyze the
meaning of the word fall as it encapsulates the theme of the poem.
The birds song says that the leaves are old. The birds song says that the fall of petals from the blossoms of fruit trees on sunny days of late spring, and that fall is coming. The birds song says that the dust of roads built by man covers everything, especially beautiful things.

3. Paraphrase the last four lines of the poem. How does the oven bird
symbolize the human condition?

In the last four lines of the poem, the speaker tells us that the oven bird would cease to sing if he did not have anything to share with us; it is the meaning of his song that drives him forward. It symbolizes the human condition in the phrase, “what to make of a diminished thing.” stating that humans often make a big deal out of something diminished; it would not seem diminished if not for human emotion.