Wednesday, January 29, 2020
In Tim OBrien Essay Example for Free
In Tim OBrien Essay In Tim O’Brien’s â€Å"How to Tell a True War Story,†the author tries to humanize war by letting the reader know how absolutely difficult telling a war story is. He does this by giving many unsolicited pieces of advice about how to tell a true war story, but many of them directly contradict each other or do not make sense when compared side-by-side. In giving these pieces of advice, he is also telling war stories that either do or do not fit his own criteria. And yet, he humanizes the people involved in fighting this war by giving the reader these lessons. One great example of this is when he tells the story of Rat Kiley and Lemmons. O’Brien begins by telling the reader that â€Å"a true war story is never moral†(O’Brien). He continues with, â€Å"If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie†(O’Brien). Then he tells us first the story of Rat Kiley writing this letter to the sister of his best friend who died. Kiley pours his heart out to this woman and she never writers back, and he has a derogatory comment about the sister. This certainly is not uplifting, but Rat Kiley has been humanized. The reader can somewhat imagine writing this letter and understands what it would take to write a letter like this, and then to have it unacknowledged. While O’Brien tells us almost nothing directly of the character of Rat Kiley, the reader learns mounds of information about his character nonetheless. O’Brien continues on to tell us about the death of Lemmons, and then he explains that even his own telling of the story is subjective. What he thinks he saw versus what might have actually happened are two different things. We didn’t know Lemmons, but again, we feel like we know something of his character from hearing this story. O’Brien is able to provide such beautiful or not so beautiful characterizations of these men without really telling the reader anything. But these men are humanized for us. They are not statistics in a war; they are real men. Another lesson O’Brien teaches is that â€Å"In a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes the cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. †He tells us that true war stories do not generalize but they make us feel it in our stomachs. We can’t generalize to something simple like â€Å"War is hell. †He then tells us another story of Rat Kiley when he slowly slaughters the water buffalo. The reader is horrified, but also at some level understands why Rat Kiley did this. The water buffalo becomes a symbol of the breakdown during war itself. The incredible need for violence and retribution is strong. It is a horribly sad story of the slaughter of an animal. But based on what we already know about just what Rat Kiley has been through, we understand him on some gut level. War is hell, but it is also mystery and beauty. â€Å"Though it’s odd, you’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead. †The reader can understand this and understand the characters better because of it. These men are not monsters; they are just men. They are fighting a terrible war and are forced to do terrible things, but they are human. â€Å"At the hour of dusk you sit at your foxhole and look out on a wide river turning pinkish red, and at the mountains beyond, and although in the morning you must cross the river and go into the mountains and do terrible things and maybe, die, even so, you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not†(O’Brien). This passage describes all men in war, and even though Rat Kiley has done terrible things, we understand a little bit about what he must be thinking. We understand how these men value their lives even more because of war. In O’Brien’s unique way, these men are truly humanized. By providing the reader with various instructions throughout the story about what a true war story isn’t and what a true war story is, these men are deeply humanized. The reader understands from Tim O’Brien that war is never as simple as it seems, and neither are the men who fight the war. He tells us horrible stories about these men, and yet, these stories help us to understand the men better. With the commentary O’Brien provides about how to write a true war story, the reader understands so many things. We understand that these â€Å"true†war stories may not even actually be true in the most common sense of the word. We understand that, no matter what, they are never simple. The lessons are never clear. They are not pretty, and if they are, they are not true. In other words, the characters of war are as complex as the reasons we fight wars. While it would be nice to have a tidy moral, there are none. At the bottom of it all are human lives. These men are not heroes and they are not monsters.
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Stop Literary Censorship Essay -- Argumentative Persuasive Essays
Stop Literary Censorship     Censorship is becoming more and more common all over the world today. The online Encarta Encyclopedia defines censorship as, "supervision and control of the information and ideas that are circulated among the people within a society. In modern times, censorship refers to the examination of books...for the purpose of altering or suppressing parts thought to be objectionable or offensive." Henry Reichman from the Education World website defines it as, "the removal, suppression, or restricted circulation of literary, artistic, or educational materials . . . on the grounds that these are morally or otherwise objectionable in light of the standards applied by the censor" (Cromwell). Definitions aside, great literature is being banned by many people for a number of reasons and shouldn't be.          The First Amendment to the Constitution states that: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances (Daniels 9-10). This means freedom. . .freedom for whatever reasons, but it's freedom. People are trying to take the freedom of choosing, choosing what books we each want to read, away.          Stephen Gottlieb states that, "censors tend to fall into three groups: 1) Parents who hear about or see material that troubles them; 2) Community members or parents who react to a book without having read it; and 3) Local, state, and national organizations, some of which have specific lists of titles which they consider objectionable." Encarta En... ...ry         2002. http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr031.shtml. Daniels, Walter M., ed. The Censorship of Books. New York: The H.W. Wilson        Company, 1954. Dunne, Diane. "Challenges are Widespread." Education World. 20 February 2002.         http://www.educationworld.com/a_admin/admin157.shtml. ENCARTA Encyclopedia. 18 February 2002.        http://encarta.msn.com/index/conciseindex/1F/01f74000.htm?z=1. Gottlieb, Stephen S. "The Right to Read: Censorship in the School Library." 10 February         2002. http://www.indiana.edu/~eric_rec/ieo/digests/d53.html. Staples, Suzanne Fisher. "What Johnny Can't Read: Censorship in American Libraries."        Jersey City State College. 20 February 2002.        http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/winter96/pubCONN.html.
Monday, January 13, 2020
A Psychological/ Profile Report Essay
This paper makes use of profiling questions and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test in order to create a profile or psychological report. The subject of this profile report is a person with whom the interviewer feels comfortable with, specifically, a person whom he knows well. The interviewee’s responses to the profiling questions will be analyzed and compared against the interviewer’s knowledge of the interviewee’s behavior and personality. This is not a clinical report and it should not be used for assessing psychopathology or recommending any kind of psychological treatment for the interviewee. Instead, the objective of this interview is merely to know the interviewer better. Since the interview was not conducted by a professional psychologist, inferences found in this report must be viewed with skepticism. Demographic Information: The subject of this report is a twenty-six year old female, a single mom who works as a home-based web content writer for a year now. Prior to pregnancy and her home-based job, she used to an investigative writer for an intellectual property (IP) rights firm. She also worked as a magazine in a lifestyle magazine before. Her baby is now almost a year old and she lives with her sister. In accordance to the confidentiality precept of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, the identity of the interviewee will be kept private. To refer to the interviewee, the name â€Å"Fray†will be used in this report. (Myers, I. et al, 1998) Responses to the profiling questions Does the interviewee remember information more accurately if he/she observes the behavior being performed or does he/she prefer to read how the behavior is performed? Fray prefers to read how the behavior is performed. Simply said, she wants to interpret actions and behaviors in accordance to her past experiences and knowledge. She uses her general understanding of societal interactions in her attempts to interpret or understand the way people interact with her or the way other people respond to their environment. Furthermore, she thinks that actions must be viewed in a cause and effect pattern. For her, everything happens for a reason and the way people behave is probably a product of how the society interacted with them. The interviewer agrees with Fray’s responses. She has observed that Fray often likes to make insinuations on other people based on how they talk and act in public. Q2: Does the interviewee prefer studying in a library, or at home where there are background noises and some distractions? Fray opts to study at home but she noted that the preference is merely because she feels more inclined to study when she is alone inside her room. She also notes that she can tolerate the presence of background noises and some distractions which are typical in her home setting. In addition to that, she pointed out that she might also prefer to study in a library, provided that the place is not teeming with hushed but busy people who keep on walking around. The interviewer notes that the fact that Fray prefers a surrounding that’s solemn is probably part of the reason why she also prefers to work at home.
Sunday, January 5, 2020
The The Modern Temper - 1124 Words
The beginning of the â€Å"Roaring 20’s†requires a complex understanding of the forces in the United States and how it created a self-conscious break with the past and a search for new forms of expression and politics. Dumenil in her book â€Å"The Modern Temper†identifies and defines how modernism came about in the United States. Her thesis stipulated that through the rapid industrialization of the United States following the footsteps of WWI; the mass migration from Eastern Europe and the South to the industrial belt of the Midwest; and the expansion of urbanization (4) lead to the rise of modernism. Dumenil asserts throughout her book that the rejection that changing values and behavior contributed to the shaping or a more pluralistic†¦show more content†¦The industrial capacity of the United States quickly recovered while rural America lingered in a post-war depression. However, with the rise of business the rise of consumerism became the norm. This was lightly or poorly covered in my opinion since it would expand the role of the traditional values of the rural or older values against the newer values of industrialization and leisure. Dumenil next covers the emerging consumer culture with the reinvention of work and its implications on the American society as well as the influence of more aptly the lack of influence of the labor unions. At the heart of this new consumerism was the rise of the automobile industry in the northern Midwestern industrial belt. Dumenil makes a faulty assertion that the Black migration to the Northern industrial belt were for these relatively high paying jobs. They were not; they were for the service industry in those cities. Dumenil fails to cover the white migration out of the Appalachia’s (Hillbilly Highway) to the industrial belt. This is a critical error in her thesis since in her later chapters she covers the expansion of the KKK and its role in the 1920s. The Appalachian migration now expanded rolls of KKK in new areas that were previously not covered. In addition to her failure of mentioning the role of the Appalachian migration; was its impact in the northern labor unions. These individuals were less willing to unionize than the
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