It is a tad bit difficult to write on these chapters because they are so short and varied, but here it goes. The stockings chapter is so sympathetic. The stockings are his only constant physical reminder of home that gave him the strength to keep going. He may have been "like America itself", strong and stoic, but even he needed a little bit of hope to keep going.
Church was a chapter that struck me in a completely different way: actually in two opposing ways. The idea of soldiers in a monastery, no matter how small and poor, deeply offends a part of me. I'm not quite sure why. I am agnostic, so usually religious sentiments are lost on me. Something about war, which is the worst aspects of mankind, seeping into a place of quiet purity and contemplation is deeply sacrilegious to me. I whole-heartedly agree with Kiowa. You shouldn't mess with sacred spaces. On a completely different note, the chapter oddly reminds me of my father. He was a soldier in Vietnam when he was my age, but he also later traveled to India and stayed in Hindu Himalayan monasteries. I have always known him as a very spiritual person,so the combination is eerie.
The Man I Killed was a very strange chapter. I am a little bit confused about the point of view because it appears as though Tim O'Brien is the speaker the most of the time, but another unknown narrator is focused on the perspective of the man, which O'Brien couldn't have possibly known. The story itself is so sad and so graphic. I feel like the man is almost like Piggy from Lord of the Flies. He is so empathetic because he is apparently smart and sensitive but these qualities end up getting him killed by a cruel, unfair world. It is nice that his side was shown too, making him just as human and as real as Tim. Ambush goes more in depth to Tim's guilt. It must be horrible to know you are responsible for someone else's death. (Oh and just by the way, the way that Tim lies his daughter about his past to comfort her is the same way that the hypothetical girlfriend of a soldier in our class discussion would lie about infidelity to comfort the soldier. Sometimes even falsehoods give people the hope and security that they need. Just sayin'.)
I don't quite understand the Style chapter, but there is something beautiful about that little girl. Even though it is not the tradition reaction to the death of her family, her dance shows a strange sort of grace. Dobbins reaction to Azar was also quite beautiful, and almost made the immense amount of death even more tragic.
If you're offended by military officers in a church then religious sentiment is not lost on you, right?
ReplyDelete"The Man I Killed" is unusual and the confusion increases later on in the novel. It's almost like O'Brien gives the man a story to humanize him. This is what fiction does after all.
Someone else suggested that the "dance" of the girl maybe some kind of mourning ritual. It could also be an expression of grief that is incomprehensible to Azar.