Sunday, July 31, 2011
Final Presentation
Well I couldn't post the video on youtube I tried for ever! Anyway... here is a link to my video! For the love of god I hope this works! Enjoy!
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Reflection on the Course
I have learned so many things in this class; it has really challenged me and my writing skills. The last essay was extremely challenging for me, I struggled with it quite a bit and I hope I did well! This is my last required English class but it will be helpful to me in the future because I plan on minoring in psychology so I will be writing quite a few papers. I also think that this class has helped in my critical thinking skills, this will be important because in life you really do have to use critical thinking every day.
I have really enjoyed the readings in this class. I have learned a lot from them, even if it hasn’t shown through as well as I had hoped in my writing! I honestly did not know that much about the Vietnam War because of its unpopularity in our country it is hardly mentioned and I didn’t make it that far in history class, so it has really given me a new look at that time in our history. The play by Sean Huze was very eye opening. I have lots of friends who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan in all branches of military. The friends I have that served in the marines have come back different people and they do not want to talk to anyone about anything that happened over there so it was material that was very close to me. I plan on working for the Veterans Administration after college and these readings have really given me a new understanding about what our veterans have gone through and I know this will help me in the future.
I think I have achieved the learning outcomes that are listed in the syllabus only time will tell. I do think that I have improved my analytical skills through out the semester. I know that it has changed the way I write and the way I read. I am looking for things that I never used to pay attention to. It has developed those skills a lot for me. Honestly the biggest challenge that I have faced in this class so far is the last essay. I wrote it over and over and over again and I still hated my paper. I couldn’t get it to where I wanted it to be and that really bugs me. I hate to turn in something that I don’t like. I hope that I am just being over critical of myself but only time will tell. I hope that it isn’t as bad as I think it is. With hiccups aside I have really enjoyed this class and I know that I have grown from taking it.
Annotated Bibliography
O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. 1st Mariner Books edition. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1990. Print.
The Things They Carried is a fiction novel by Vietnam veteran Tim O’Brien. This novel is a series of short stories that can be read alone or as a whole. It is roughly based in truth about O’Brien’s life and the time he spent in Vietnam. I very much enjoyed reading this book and I have suggested it to some of my friends to read as well.
Mintz, S. "The Vietnam War." Digital History . N.p., 2007. Web. 15 Jul 2011. <http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/modules/vietnam/index.cfm>.
This website was very helpful in my search to learn more about Vietnam and why we even took a part in that war. It was very useful to me when it came to finding specific dates and numbers associated with the war. This site was very informative considering before this class I have very limited knowledge of Vietnam. I think it is important for everyone to know the reasons for events in the past.
Howell, Deborah. "The Whole Story on Military Recruiting?." Washington Post 2004: n. pag. Web. 14 Jul 2011. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/24/AR2005122400722.html>.
This article discusses the growing problem with military recruiting. It helps confirm the suspicion lots of Americans have regarding the tactics the military uses in lower income communities. Although the article is more resent than Vietnam this has been known of the military for years and I found it important when I was writing my paper and discussing the draft. I liked this article; I think it is important that this sort of thing be brought to everyone’s attention. The draft was probably the most unbiased way to recruit soldiers in history. I think it is tragic that some people are so desperate to get out of their current situation that they would rather go fight and possibly die as an escape.
Merricks, Alvin. "Tim O'Brien, Author." Tim O'Brien. Tim O'Brien, 25 Aug 2010. Web. 15 Jul 2011. <http://www.illyria.com/tobhp.html>.
This website is Tim O’Brien’s official page. It was a reliable source of information on the author himself. It was useful in my paper for comparing situations of the characters in the book to the history of the author. I enjoyed reading over this site because it speaks not only about Tim O’Brien but about his other works as well. After reading over some of the works I might just go and buy another one of his books.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
A Passage From The Sand Storm
A passage that really stood out to me was from Sean Huze’s play The Sand Storm.
“I searched my soul for how I felt about the death that I brought that day. Searched for some sort of human feeling of regret or compassion. Searched and searched and came up with nothing…Maybe the only casualties weren’t the ones lying dead on the streets of Nasirya. Maybe some of us are walking dead, soulless shells of the men we were.” (Huze 17)
This play is about the Iraqi war as told from a marine’s point of view. This quote is very important to the whole story because every monologue in this play describes things that a civilian couldn’t even fathom going through once let alone every day. So many of the characters in this play discuss how they feel empty inside, or how they feel nothing. They zone out to do horrible things. They are told not to ever tell their stories. (Huze 1) The feelings of emptiness are coping mechanisms that help them get through and make it home alive. If we don’t let them share their stories then how can they ever let what happened go? These soldiers will never be the same as they once were. When they return home to their loved ones they may look like the same person but they will never be who they were before they experienced the war. The only people who really understand them are other marines. Unless you actually experience it for yourself you will never understand. This play is a glimpse of what it is like to be a marine in a time of war. When I read this, I read in horror of the things that were described. Yet, the soldiers telling the stories felt nothing. I think this is an eye opening experience because we send these boys over there and get back something that we do not understand. We make them into killers and look at them with horror like they are monsters if we find out what they have been part of. What we need to remember is that we have made these monsters. We can not ever judge them, they need to tell these stories. They need to know that we understand what they have done. This play is a play that everyone should see or read to truly support our troops. It is beat into a marines head that if they see a counselor or a psychiatrist that they are weak and less of a man. This passage screams to me that this marine needs help! He sounds like he is in a perpetual state of shock and does not know how to deal with it. The experiences in this play are the kind of experiences that are the cause of PTSD in so many veterans. They are not supposed to tell anyone about their feelings but we have to change their minds. This play is about what we need to talk about no matter how unpleasant it may be for the sake of our soldiers.
“I searched my soul for how I felt about the death that I brought that day. Searched for some sort of human feeling of regret or compassion. Searched and searched and came up with nothing…Maybe the only casualties weren’t the ones lying dead on the streets of Nasirya. Maybe some of us are walking dead, soulless shells of the men we were.” (Huze 17)
This play is about the Iraqi war as told from a marine’s point of view. This quote is very important to the whole story because every monologue in this play describes things that a civilian couldn’t even fathom going through once let alone every day. So many of the characters in this play discuss how they feel empty inside, or how they feel nothing. They zone out to do horrible things. They are told not to ever tell their stories. (Huze 1) The feelings of emptiness are coping mechanisms that help them get through and make it home alive. If we don’t let them share their stories then how can they ever let what happened go? These soldiers will never be the same as they once were. When they return home to their loved ones they may look like the same person but they will never be who they were before they experienced the war. The only people who really understand them are other marines. Unless you actually experience it for yourself you will never understand. This play is a glimpse of what it is like to be a marine in a time of war. When I read this, I read in horror of the things that were described. Yet, the soldiers telling the stories felt nothing. I think this is an eye opening experience because we send these boys over there and get back something that we do not understand. We make them into killers and look at them with horror like they are monsters if we find out what they have been part of. What we need to remember is that we have made these monsters. We can not ever judge them, they need to tell these stories. They need to know that we understand what they have done. This play is a play that everyone should see or read to truly support our troops. It is beat into a marines head that if they see a counselor or a psychiatrist that they are weak and less of a man. This passage screams to me that this marine needs help! He sounds like he is in a perpetual state of shock and does not know how to deal with it. The experiences in this play are the kind of experiences that are the cause of PTSD in so many veterans. They are not supposed to tell anyone about their feelings but we have to change their minds. This play is about what we need to talk about no matter how unpleasant it may be for the sake of our soldiers.
Works Cited
Huze, Sean. The Sand Storm Stories From The Front. New York, NY: Susan Schulman Literary Agency, 2004. Print. 
"Los Angeles Production 2005 Marquis Poster." seanhuze.com. Web. 8 Jul 2011. </stageplays/the-sand-storm>.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Sam Hamill and Carolyn Forche
Both of these articles relate a lot to what I wrote about last week. Hamill discusses how we tend to forget about prisoners once they are incarcerated. This appied very well to Jimmy Santiago Baca’s poem “Immigrants in Our Own Land,” I like that he feels that not only should we care what happens to the victim but also what happens to the perpetrator. He also addresses that most soldiers don’t talk about what they have experienced in war and why it is important to know what they are feeling to prevent the same events from repeating. When he was talking about this it made me think of the other poem that I wrote about in my paper, Kevin C. Powers poem, “Letter Composed During a Lull in Fighting.” This poem gives us a soldier’s perspective on war and that is the most important perspective we can get. Both of these articles discuss how Poetry of Witness is essential to help give a first hand testimony of what someone goes through in extenuating circumstances. Both of these writers agree that poems express the raw emotions that go with these life experiences and the fact that poetry can’t be summed up in two categories. Honestly after reading both of these articles I agree with both of them. There was really nothing that stood out in my mind that I really disagreed with. The part of both of these articles that really stood out in my mind is the story of the Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti. This story has really affected me and it is one that I won’t soon forget. After all of the reading we have done on Poetry of Witness it has really changed how I look at poetry as a whole. There is so much more than meets the eye.Saturday, June 25, 2011
Response to Two Poems
For this assignment I chose the poems “Immigrants in Our Own Land” by Jimmy Santiago Baca and “Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting” by Kevin C. Powers. The reason I chose “Immigrants in Our Own Land” is because I have seen so many of my friends and people I grew up with enter the prison system and struggle to stay out and clean. In this poem the speaker talks about his experiences in prison and his hopes for change, “Our expectations are high: in the old world, / they talked about rehabilitation, / about being able to finish school, / and learning an extra good trade.” (Baca lines 20-23) It is an escape from what he doesn’t want anymore. So many times I have heard this story from people I know when they enter the system. They are going to get their GED inside and learn a skill and everything will be better when they make it out. It rarely works out this way, I have seen many of my friends go in and out of the prison system multiple times and in extreme cases I have seen them come out as someone I don’t even know or recognize. The experience destroys the person that I knew and loved. I pray for my friends that all of them make it out and stay out. I am tired of seeing strangers, shells of the people I once knew. This is why this poem really struck a cord with me. 
The other poem that I have considered is “Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting.” This one hit home for me because I have many loved ones who have been to Iraq and Afghanistan and have some who are still fighting. This poem sounds like letters I have received. These friends talk about what they miss and it is always the littlest things that they miss the most. The speaker is talking to the woman he loves; he compares this love to the love of things that someone who is not in war would take for granted. “I tell her I love her like not killing / or ten minutes of sleep / beneath the low rooftop wall / on which my rifle rests. (Powers lines 1-4) These things are huge for him, when I would send care packages the things that my friends would ask for were the most mundane little things. I would always think, really? That is what you want me to send you? I really think that this poem is talking about how pointless things like war are once you realize the importance of the things that you take for granted the most.
Works Cited
Baca, Jimmy Santiago “Immigrants in Our Own Land” Poetryfoundation.org. Poetry Foundation, 2011. Web. 22 June 2011.
Powers, Kevin C. “ Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting” Poetryfoundation.org. Poetry Foundation, 2011. Web. 22 June 2011.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Summary V. Analysis
The difference between summary and analysis can be foggy at times but there are important differences between the two that every writer should be aware of. Summarizing is much like the book reports that you used to do in elementary school. You basically describe what the story is about and there is no way to argue about the plot of a book. Analytical writing is different because you focus on what can be interpreted about certain aspects of the novel. Like the Cinderella example that Mrs. Cline used in the lecture. My example is a short story by Chuck Palahniuk called “Negative Reinforcement.” In this short story the narrator is describing a woman he knows on a bus. He describes everything about her as if he has already witnessed all of it before. Then it turns out that it is not the woman he knew. It reads as if the narrator once was in love with the woman he knew but, he is describing all of her negative attributes to remind him that she treated him horribly. If I was going to write about this story in an analytical way I could argue that the things that the narrator describes are all the things that he loved about this woman. Or I could state that I believe the narrator is in fact a woman, I could also say that the narrator was never the boyfriend/girlfriend of the woman he describes. All of these “arguments” are open to interpretation by the reader. When you write an analytical essay you have to have a thesis about a specific part of whatever it is that you are writing about you can’t be vague. It is always a good idea to use the argumentative skills that you have acquired in previous English classes to help you learn how to write a good analytical paper. I may not be very articulate in describing the differences that are important but I hope this is helpful to anyone that reads this!
Image Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/acousticskyy/3593767188/
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