From 77237cfedc4abee6233b948cf750fe81eef87fe2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Holden Rohrer Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 00:48:48 -0400 Subject: the 45 minute version of the lives of the dead --- jones-la/tttc-dead.tex | 68 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 68 insertions(+) create mode 100644 jones-la/tttc-dead.tex diff --git a/jones-la/tttc-dead.tex b/jones-la/tttc-dead.tex new file mode 100644 index 0000000..bb9d22c --- /dev/null +++ b/jones-la/tttc-dead.tex @@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ +\input mla8 + +\numberfirstpage +\name{Holden} \last{Rohrer} +\prof{Jones} +\clas{AP Lang} + +\header +\title{Rhetorical Essay on {\it The Things They Carried}} +% Rhetorical Analysis in __ minutes + +Tim O'Brien's {\it The Things They Carried} is only topically about the +Vietnam War. Throughout the book, he often tells stories directly, but +will afterwards analyze it through the lens of why he wrote that or will +tell a story while at the same time delivering a series of philosophical +messages and questions about his own storytelling, from his own and the +reader's point of view, and about how this bleeds into other components +of his life. O'Brien uses fanciful language to emphasize that ``unreal'' +stories and dreams and ideas are philosophically equal to ``real'' +experience. + +This excerpt follows that pattern to connect the material and the +immaterial. O'Brien describes his dreamlike state as a ``spell of +memory and imagination'' with what would be impossible qualities in the +material world like ``no brain tumors and no funeral homes.'' This mist +of thought is meant to make this place seem magical because O'Brien is +trying to convince the reader that this imaginative trance and by +equivocation stories in general are a sort of window past the horror +that is war and the human condition. + +But O'Brien doesn't imply that all stories are tonally fanciful like +his with Linda. Because even those in this book aren't; his war stories +about Lemon and Lavender are sense horrific and a type of pointless +that O'Brien talks about in {\it How to Tell a True War Story}. He does +imply that, at their core, every story has this wonderful ability. In +the true story that's never happened, where a group of soldiers are on +patrol, one jumps on a grenade, but they all die anyway, O'Brien's +telling has a fanciful, ridiculous humor to it. O'Brien says that this +story is true because it explains the emotions that he and his comrades +experienced. + +The idea that the emotional core of a story matters most is a central +theme here because it means that a story can exist with equal value +regardless of its source. And O'Brien uses ridiculousness and +impossibility to achieve this end: bringing someone back after death or +calling a dead Vietnamese child a ``crispy peanut'' are ridiculous, but +their binding to reality---to the war or to O'Brien's life require the +reader to recognize that these stories are just as valid regardless of +which parts of Kiley's tale of the Sweetheart on the Song Tra Bong +really happened. + +%% 32:35. + +This last chapter provides the most examples of wondrous language +because the story is itself wonderful. O'Brien describes his love with +her as deep and adult-like and talks about the great swells of emotion +he felt when he was around her. The experiences he has in his dreams, +like the birthday party with a grandiose cake, and the ``thrill and +mystery'' he feels about seeing her in his dreams, lead the reader to +a conclusion that follows from the immaterial being philosophically +real: wonder and fancy are very much parts of ``real'' life. The war +stories where the men cope with the dead by playing it up as if the +people were objects or as if they were still alive are extensions of +this fancy. O'Brien uses fancy to compel the reader into believing that +the immaterial and material are the same because its allure is so +powerful. %%44:55 + +\bye -- cgit