ADOGG

Death

adogg621 — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:03:51 +0000

Tim O’Brien talks about death in different ways. In the second vignette he makes a statement about the death of a soldier’s puppy. He says, “Ted Lavender adopting an orphan puppy- feeding it from a plastic spoon and carrying it in his rucksack until the day Azar strapped it to a Claymore antipersonnel mine and squeezed the firing device.” He said that this was once of those “odd little fragments that have no beginning and no end.” (36). In the third vignette he talks about death in the slaughterhouse and he makes the comment, “my life seemed to be collapsing toward slaughter.” By associating the guesome imagery of a slaughterhouse with what his life was heading towards (war) he reveals some of his thoughts about death. He thinks this war is just a mistake because “Once people are dean, you can’t make them undead.” (41) He doesn’t think it is necessary for all these people to be “slaughtered” for this war that people were not really sure why they were fighting in the first place. In the very first vignette O’Brien tells how the soldiers tried to take the seriousness away from death. “They used hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness… and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and deystroy the reality of death itself. They kicked corpses. They cut off thumbs…” (20) The lack of emotion in the diction used describing the killing of the puppy supports the idea that these soldiers tried to deystroy the reality of death. O’Brien describes his view of death before he entered the war very gruesomely and with lots of emotion. From the difference between the way he described death during the war, and before the war you can conclude that this war made the men cold, and emotionless, or nearly so.

Comrades

adogg621 — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:56:25 +0000

Comrades: Yet another word we use without understanding the etymological significance. Tim has comrades; Henry has comrades. Check out this definition and etymology at Dictionary.com and compare that with Henry’s relationship to his comrades in the first fifteen chapters and O’Brien’s interrelationship of characters (especially in “Friends and Enemies”). Pay particular attention to the way the characters are revealed.

A comrade is defined as a person who shares one’s interests or activities; a friend or companion. In the chapters “Friends” and “Enemies” Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk supposedly “learn to trust eachother”, meaning they become friends or comrades. I don’t think they can truely be reffered to as comrades because a comrade is also defined as a friend. They had many similar interest and experiences that they could bond over, but they definitley were not both friends to eachother. The proof that they weren’t trusting is when Strunk repeatedly asks Jensen not to kill him, and Jensen kills him anyways and after his death (that the rest of the guys don’t know how he was killed) Jensen seemed to be releived of an “enormous weight”. These soldiers just bonded over common interests, they were very warped and would stab their so-called “comrades” in the back.

On the Rainy River

adogg621 — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:01:21 +0000

This chapter explores the idea of “traditional heroism”. Tim O’Brien presents starts the chapter off by saying that he is telling a story that he has “never told anyone” because it would cause “embarrassment” (39) He tells about himself being drafted into the war. At first he sticks around and gets a low-paying job at a slaughterhouse (which he really doesn’t like). The details he gives us about this job show us how he can be perceived as “weak” in a sense. According to him he was “too good for this war” because he was “too smart and compassionate”. He says, “I hated Boy Scouts. I hated camping out. I hated dirt and tents and mosquitoes. The sight of blood made me queasy and I couldn’t tolerate authority, and I didn’t know a rifle from a slingshot.” (41) In these statements, O’Brien clearly shows that this character does not fit the traditional criteria of a rough, tough “hero”. He also shows that this character is not a “hero” because he attempts to flee to Canada to escape his troubles. The author is playing with our sense of a hero. The character Tim O’Brien fails to be a hero because he didn’t do what he wanted to do, He didn’t flee to Canada. Most people would think that the heroic thing to do would be to return and join the war. The character Tim O’Brien returned and joined the war effort because he wasn’t a hero. He was ashamed and embarrassed to tell this story for so long not because it reveals how much he didn’t want to be a soldier, or how he ran away, or even how he cried. He was embarrass to tell this story because he had the chance to do what was right, and not fight a war he didn’t believe in. He knew very well that, “You can’t fix your mistakes.” (41), and in the following sentence he reveals his guilt for not being a true hero, and fleeing to Canada, “Once people are dead, you can’t make them undead.” (41). Tim O’Brien confesses, “what embarrasses me much more, and always will, is the paralysis that took my heart. A moral freeze: I couldn’t decide, I couldn’t act, I couldn’t comport myself with even a pretense of modest human dignity.” (57) An example of how he did act like a hero in some small way is when he ditched the slaughterhouse job. He “cracked” and he just left his job got his things and drove north with very little thought. He was going on “adrenaline”. That is how heroes act, they just do brave things without much thought, their mind can go on autopilot and they just do what they need to do to get what they have to get done over with. This was heroic because it was a step towards making the right choice (doing what he believed was right) and fleeing to Canada. I think courage and heroism is having the strength (emotional, psychological, or whatever) to stand up for what you believe is right, and not what everyone else believes is right. The heroes I’ve read about in books don’t really build up my definition because most of them are tragic heroes and they screw things up for themselves, (my type of hero doesn’t do that). Characters like Caesar and Oedipus and all of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are not my idea of a hero. The only book that I have read that has my definition of a true hero is The Crucible with John Proctor (the main character) speaking out against the witch hunts, and then being put to death for it.

Spin

adogg621 — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 13:17:11 +0000

This chapter presents the idea of controlling reality and memory through story. The narrator (Tim O’Brien) tells us how reality and memory can be twisted by a story, and that a story is the only thing that will remain in time. He says, “Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story.” (38) The reader knows that the narrator places more importance on the story than the actual memory (reality). In this chapter, it seems like the men don’t want to remember the reality of what they experienced, so they made up stories that eventually took the place of the reality. (Deluding themselves to keep their sanity) It is clear that the men in the story had serious emotional and psychological baggage from their expieriences. Things were so mind-warping where these men were that ordinary things like “boredom” were psychologically tormenting. When the men were bored they would feel the boredom dripping inside them like “a sort of acid, and with each little droplet you’d feel the stuff eating away at your important organs.” (34) (Boredom made them crazy) The man that shacked up with a Red Cross Nurse came back because he was bored, “All that peace, man, it felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back.” (35) That man had too much ”peace” (boredom) and he just kept remembering bad things, he had to get away from that. For the men, “The bad stuff never stops happening: it lives in its own dimension, replaying itself over and over.” (34) It seems like Tim O’Brien’s message was that when people expeireince traumatic events in their lives (like the soldiers) they create their own reality through stories to keep themselves sane, they don’t want to deal with reality (like they would have to if they were bored and had alot of time to think on their hands) The stories are an outlet because after a while they will have told the stories so much that they will have altered their memory into beleiving that the story was true, but the traumas will always stay with them “in their own dimension” until they die, and then all that will be left is their war stories and not the “baggage” they carried from all of the traumas they went through.

The Things They Carried

adogg621 — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 16:33:02 +0000

1.) Five tangible things the soldiers “humped” on their trecks were, “pocket knives, heat tabs, wristwatches, dog tags, mosquito repellent…” (2) They carried alot of tangible things, and they tell the exact weight of most of the tangible things they carried. Most of the things they have were out of necessity. Five intangible things the soldiers “humped” on their trecks were, responsibility, imagination, love, shame and fear. Jimmy Cross (the leader) carried “the responsibility for the lives of his men.” (5) Jim Cross has quite an imagination, and the rest of his men probably do too because they all are at the same breaking point, they use their imagination to escape their reality, but “Imagination is a killer.” (11) and Jim Cross lost one of his men because he was daydreaming about Martha. Jim Cross carried shame for the death of Lavender and love, ”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 with him for the rest of the war.” (16) All of the men carry the fear of being seen as weak, “they were too frightened to be cowards.” (22). It says that the soldiers were certain that, “they would never be at a loss for things to carry.” (16) meaning that they will carry the “intangbles” for the rest of their lives.

2.) Some tangible things I carry are my clothes, a neclace, my shoes, my retainers, and my books for school. (those are the things I carry most often)Some intangible things that I carry are my dream (like daydreaming) and my fears, stress/worries. I carry grudges even though I’m not supposed to, and I carry guilt and regret too sometimes. I don’t think about all of the intangibles as much as the guys in the story do, I have way to many other things to do than sit their and just think all the time.

Lesson 36

adogg621 — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:26:16 +0000

Lesson 36
THE FIRST READING
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.
This poem is about a young man courting a young woman. The poet uses envoy in this poem because the man asks the rose to go and talk to this woman for him. There isn’t a lot revealed about the speaker, other than the fact that he really likes this lady. The woman he likes is modest, and we know this because the narrator says, “And not blush so to be admired” We know he is speaking to a rose because in the first line of the poem he says, “Go lovely Rose”

2.) Paraphrase each of the four stanzas.
I am sending you (the rose) to the woman I love who won’t decide whether or not she loves me. Your beauty will show her how beautiful I think she is. Tell this modest lady that if you had bloomed in a desert, no one would have ever discovered your beauty. Beauty that can’t be seen is worthless. So ask her to show herself and let herself be wanted, instead of being embarrassed about it. Then die so she understands that the beauty of a woman and a rose doesn’t last very long.

3.) I’m not really sure how to describe the meter or it’s “substitutions”, I don’t understand how you can have a certain type of meter and then substitute whatever you want into it, and even if I did understand that I couldn’t tell which type it was in this poem. I think that the rhyme scheme and stanza form help reveal the author’s message the best. The rhyme scheme is ababb for all four stanzas and each of the four stanzas consists of one sentence alone. The similar rhyme scheme and the similar format of all the stanzas make the tone of the author the same with each statement. In every stanza he is telling the rose what to do, “Go” (1), “Tell her” (6), “Bid her” (13) “Then die” (16).

THE SECOND READING
1.) Consider first Herbert’s us of metaphor and personification. In each case, what two unlike things are being compared, and what do they have in common?
The use of personification and metaphor are important to the understanding of this poem. The first metaphor compares the day to the marriage of the earth and sky in lines 1 and 2. The other metaphor is at the end of the poem, it compares a timber to the soul of a virtuous person, implying that when all others fall around it, it will remain glorious. In the second line of the poem the dew is personified as a weeping person that is crying because the day is going to end. The another example of personification in this poem is when the rose is personified as being able to make a man wipe his eye. The final example of personification compares spring to a box of perfumes but it doesn’t last very long.

2.) How is the poem structured, and how does this structure supports its meaning? Consider parallelism, order, and the turn in the poem.
The poem is four stanzas long and each stanza is one sentence long. There are three different personified subjects in each in their own stanza. They are all “sweet” but they also all die, no matter how long they can survive. The last stanza presents the exception, the “virtuous soul” doesn’t die, and it is very sweet indeed.

3.) How does the prosody reinforce the poem’s meaning?
The prosody of the poem enhances its meaning because of the structures of the stanzas. The first 3 stanza are all similar because they all share similar rhyming sounds at the end of their lines. The last stanza has two completely different rhyming sounds at the end of each line, and that helps emphasize that the virtuous soul will never die like the other three sweet things (day, rose, spring) that all “must die”

Lesson 29

adogg621 — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 13:13:26 +0000

Lesson 29.) 1.) Describe the subtle changes in setting and analyze how these shifts reveal Eve’s fall from grace.The subtle changes in setting reveal Eve’s fall from grace. In the initial setting she is innocently picking fruit in the garden. Then when Satan tries to temp her (as the snake) The setting is described as a “dark path” to the “Blasphemous Tree” as Eve starts to make bad decisions when she tastes the forbidden fruit. Then she is kicked out of the garden because she ate the fruit. And at the end she is partying with the devil. As each image of the setting becomes more evil, and impure, Eve is doing the same. 2.) How does the poem’s diction contribute to the tone and meaning? Consider the use of adjectives, verbs and participles. Look for patterns, contrasts and surprising juxtapositions of words. The poem’s diction contributes to its tone and meaning. There are basically two contrasting ideas, innocence and evil. These contrast between these two ideas is pointed out by the use of diction. Eve is the one who is “wading” “picking” “wondering” “kneeling” “listening” “crying” and “haunting”. The devil is the one who is “whispering” “tumbling” “telling” “rated” and hated” Eve is associated with “sweet” and the color “white” which create a tone of innocence. Satan is associated with the color “silver” and speaks in a “low” whisper which creates a dark mysterious tone about him. 3.) Consider the poet’s use of figurative language. How does the choice of comparisons influence tone and meaning?The poet uses figurative language when he compares the cobra to a mouse. Like the mouse, the snake appeared to be harmless, but he sweetly persuaded Eve to do evil deeds with his soft tone. 4.) Describe the meter, line length, and pattern of enjambment. What does the rhythm contribute to the mood of the poem?I do not know what type of meter this is, and I cannot tell what the pattern of enjambment is, so I have no idea how they contribute to the mood of the poem, I thought that the diction, use of figurative language and tone contributed to the mood of the poem because they were the only devices I noticed.

5.) Describe the use of repetition and rhyme. Look for patterns. What does the repetition contribute to the mood of the poem?

There are many repeating rhymes within this poem, and even within each stanza. There is repetition of the words/phrases, “bells and grass”, “Eva”, “wondering ” “listening” The repetition of words like these helps point out what happened to Eve, she was deceived, (the wondering and listening help point this out) The parallel structure of stanza seven and eight is shown through the birds questioning “How” three times, and The devil toasting to “Eva” twice. (the parallel is that they are repeated more than once at the end of each stanza, not that they are repeated the same amount of times)

Lesson 28

adogg621 — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:51:23 +0000

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 does she suggest at the end?
-This poem has 3 stanzas of equal length (eight lines each) with alternating rhyme (ababcdcd) The occasion of the poem is the speaker is explaining why she does not want to be with whoever wants to be with her. She says she doesn’t want to be with him because they can’t no the truth about each other’s pasts, “For I cannot know your past, And of mine what can you know?” (7-8) Her other reason is because there is no way to tell if there will still be love in the future, “Fades the image from the glass And the fortune is not told.” (15-16). She suggests that they should just be “the friends they were” (21).
2.) Analyze the effect on meaning of such devices as syntax, repetition, parallelism, and paradox.
– The repetition of promise, Lines 4 & 6 paradox through repetition and parallel structure. 7, 8 – syntax implies it is the same for both of them. Paradox –“nothing more…” Repetition is used in the first two lines of the play to make the reader understand how seriously she takes a promise. Lines 1 and 2 read, “Promise me no promises, So will I not promise you;” The emphasis is always on promise, and on herself and her suitor (This establishes that a commitment between the two of them would be binding, and she doesn’t want him to promise her anything that she can’t promise him because that is unfair) Syntax is used in lines 7 and 8 to make the meaning of what the speaker says clearer. Lines 7 and 8 read, “For I cannot know of you past, And of mine what can you know?” The emphasis is on the word “know” and she clearly states that she knows nothing of his, and by asking him what can he “know” about hers , she implies that she I quite sure he knows, and has no way of surely knowing about hers ever. (placing know at the end of the question drives the message home). The parallel structure of line 4 and 6 relate the two subjects. Line 4 reads, “Never false and never true” while line 6 reads, “Free to come as free to go”. Both of these lines suggests that either choice is okay with her. They can either keep their false sense of freedom, or a true sense of freedom, and they can either leave each other or stay friends. (she has no particular preference) Line 22 presents the paradox of their relationships. She implies that their friendship will be “nothing more, but nothing less;” which means that their relationship as it stands will not improve its weaknesses, and it wont end because of this awkward rejection.
3.) Analyze the effect on meaning of the imagery and figurative language.
- The meaning of the imagery and figurative language in this poem helps us understand the speakers wariness of marriage and commitment. Line 5 presents us with the imagery of gambling, it reads “Let us hold the die uncast “ this statement implies that marrying him is a gamble because there is no way to tell what you are going to get. Lines 15 reinforces the idea that marrying him is a gamble because as “the image from the glass fades” their pasts will be less clear to themselves and even more so to each other (you can’t be honest about something if you don’t really remember it)  (all that stuff is figurative language I think) The imagery in lines 11-12 implies that the speaker is cold towards her suitor, they read“I, so cold may once have seen sunlight, once have felt the sun”. This imagery makes us picture the bright warm sun and feel happy, as the speaker is implying she once was. From all of these devices in the poem we can gather that she doesn’t want to take the chance with love again because she already felt it before with someone else and hasn’t gotten over it because she is still blocking out other’s “sunlight” and She believes it is possible that her suitor could have experienced something of a similar nature because both their pasts are “unknown” (the fact that she knows hers and is sure he knows nothing of hers points out that he should fear her past as she probably should his)

Lesson 35

adogg621 — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:54:05 +0000

1.) What imagery does Shapiro use in the first three lines to evoke sound and sight? How do these images become increasingly significant in the context of the entire poem?Shapiro uses color and sound imagery in the first three lines to evoke images within the reader. The “quick soft silver bell beating, beating, And down the dark one ruby flare Pulsing out red light like an artery,” (1-3) The ruby flare/ red light is supposed to be the lights on an ambulance that we can see from a distance. The thought of a soft, steady slow beating, and the reference to pulsing artery, make us imagine someone who is slowly breathing their last breaths, waiting for an ambulance. The images created in these first three lines become significant in the rest of the poem because the imagery is repeated (mostly the red death imagery 2.) On a literal level, what contextual significance do the following words and phrases have: mangled (line9) “tolls once” (line11) “terrible cargo” (line12) “rocking, slightly rocking” (line13) deranged and composed (lines 15 and 16) ?The word mangled describes the dead bodies, which makes us picture this scene more dramatically. The phrase, “tolls once” is a reference to the funeral bells ringing. The phrase “terrible cargo” refers to the dead bodies in an insensitive way. (they are cargo, not victims? à heartless) The phrase, “Rocking, slightly rocking” phrase is making a reference to rocking a baby. 3.) Analyze the metaphors in line 3, 8, 22,and 29-30. What pattern do they create and why is it appropriate to the poem? Line 3 reads, “Pulsing out red light like an artery” Line 18 reads, “One with a bucket douches ponds of blood”. Line 22 reads, “Our throats were tight as tourniquets” Line 29 -30 read, “But we remain, touching a wound That opens to our richest horror.” All of these lines contain metaphors referencing the incident to blood, (very gruesome) In line 3 the ambulance light is compared to an artery (they carry lots of blood). In line 18 a guy is mopping huge amounts of blood (ponds) off the street into the gutter. Line 22 makes you feel sick reading it, thinking of your throat with those little clenching devices on it (sick!) Lines 29-30 talk about how we can’t just leave things alone and let them heal, we keep messing with them and make them worse (our wounds). 4.) What is added to the theme of the poem by the metaphors in lines 20-21 and the similie in 24-27?Line 20-21 read, “One hangs lanterns on the wrecks that cling, Empty husks of locusts, to iron poles.” This metaphor adds the idea that the cars and our bodies were just earthly casings like the shell of the “locusts” that is shed and left on the trees. Lines 24-27 read, “Our feet were bound with splints, but now, Line convalescents intimate and gauche, We speak through sickly smiles and warn With the stubborn say of common sense,” This metaphor compares the witnesses of the accident to convalescents (or hospitalized inmates) They are shocked by the inappropriate “grim jokes” and “sickly smiles” that they are putting forth in this time.

Lesson 34

adogg621 — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:51:29 +0000

1.) Describe the form called rime royal: meter, rhyme scheme, stanza form. The rime royal stanza consists of seven lines, usually in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is a-b-a-b-b-c-c. 2.) What is the structure of this poem? How do the imager and argument of each stanza develop and intensify the appeal?This poem is four stanzas long. The first three are all the same length, the fourth one is only five lines instead of seven. All of the stanzas talk about how he wants money, or how his purse is “light” I have no clue what type of imagery all his words were supposed to provoke because he misspelled half of them anyways ( and I don’t know if they were left like that on purpose to show that he was poor/uneducated or what…) The one piece of imagery that I can understand is in the second stanza in lines 9-11, “That I of you the blissful soun may here, Or see youre colour, lik the sonne bright, That of yellownesse hadde nevere peere.” (in these lines he is picturing golden coins) 3.) In exploring the extended metaphor of the poem, consider how diction accounts for the humor of Chaucer’s parody.

An extended metaphor is one that is carried through the entirety of a literary work ( like the metaphor of Lenny to an animal in the book Of Mice And Men) The extended metaphor in this poem is comparing money to a woman of power. Through out the poem she is referred to as “my lady dere” (2) “myn hertes steere” (12), “Queen of confort” (13) “my lives light, And saviour” (15-16). The choice of words he uses to describe his “woman” adds to the humor of this parody because he is treating his “purse” so nicely and politely, like he would a lady.

4.) How does the envoy continue the tine of the poem even as it addresses a specific person?An envoy is a conventionalized stanza at the close of a poem, which is addressed to a prince or patron, it may provide a summary or simply serve to dispatch the poem. The envoy at the end of this poem to Prince Henry IV continues the tone of the poem even as it addresses a specific person because he addresses him the same way and wants the same thing from him. The narrator addresses him by praising him, “conquerour” (22) and telling him that he can fix his problem of being poor, “ye that mowen alle oure harmes amende” (25