From 77237cfedc4abee6233b948cf750fe81eef87fe2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Holden Rohrer <hr@hrhr.dev>
Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 00:48:48 -0400
Subject: the 45 minute version of the lives of the dead

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+\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 

