The Things They Carried

                               http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/in_pictures_the_vietnam_war_/html/2.stm

“The things they carried” by Tim O’Brien is about men in the Vietnam War. The narrator, Tim O'Brien,  describes what all the men carry, or in his words “hump”. Most of the things are typical things that you would probably suspect them to carry but varying from person to person some of the things that they carry are on a more personal level. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries a rock that a girl, named Martha, who he met in college, gave to him.  He also carries two photographs of her.  Lietenant Cross is in love with Martha and he struggles with the fact that she does not love him back. Cross becomes so obsessed with the thought of Martha that he loses focus of his first priority, protecting his troops.  Ted Lavender gets shot after going to the bathroom and Cross blames himself. At first Lieutenant Cross still cannot stop thinking about Martha, she was still enveloping his mind, but after awhile he starts becoming depressed and he feels more and more responsible for Lavenders death.  He eventually comes to the conclusion that “his obligation was not to be loved but to lead” (O’Brien 26.) He burned the photographs of Martha and her letters and he came up with numerous ways to get rid of the rock. Cross was on a new path and it didn’t involve love.

http://www.illyria.com/tob/tobbio.html

Is There Such Thing as Justifiable Suicide?

                                                     http://www.jackierobinson.ymca.org/yblog/executive-decisions/2010/9/11/test.html

Wislawa Syzmborska wrote “Photograph from September 11^th.”  This poem brought back emotions for me because I can vividly remember being in 7^th grade and the entire school was quiet and cold. The hallways were dead and not one person was lingering. Everyone was glued to the television watching the twin towers crumble to the ground. It was the most god awful site I had ever seen and the image of people- not just people but everyday hard working adults-like my parents- were jumping from the buildings. Symborska wrote about the people jumping from the towers; she gives almost a peaceful description of the circumstance and one that I wish I had thought of while watching these people fall to their deaths.  She writes “The photograph halted them in life, and now keeps them/ above the earth toward the earth”(Symborska lines 4-6.) 

I also reacted strongly to “Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting” by Kevin C. Powers. For me, death is something that I have been struggling with for the past few years. I think about it more and more as I get older and it becomes more significant in my life. I think the fact that death can be so far out of your control and the fact that you don’t know what happens after life, that it can become a scary thought.  This poem, I think, is about a man that was in a war and ultimately couldn’t bare the thoughts of what had gone on during the war and wanted to take his own life. He was writing a suicide note to a woman he loved and in this instance this person did have control over life and death.  To think that he is choosing death because of events that happened during the war saddens me.  In my mind, I feel he must have had to do some pretty unpleasant things to people in order to consider taking his own life. I couldn’t even fathom taking my own life, although I couldn’t fathom taking another’s.

I am very opposed to suicide but in both poems “Photograph from September 11^th” and “Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting” suicide may become justifiable. The difference between the poems is the people in the world trade centers were probably going to die no matter what and the more peaceful way, for them, was to jump rather than to burn to death so is that really suicide? In my eyes, no, I guess just the image of those people jumping will never leave my head, it’s like what Sam Hamill said in his piece “The Necessity to Speak”, “we cannot bear very much reality” and in this instance I cannot handle this much reality (Hamill 1.)  In Powers poem suicide may be considered less justifiable but more so compared to a person who is depressed because his wife divorced him and wants to take his life. I know it is a hard thought to think about for people who have been in the war but in this incident the person might have the chance to be helped. If they can find the strength to reach out maybe they can be saved.

http://www.save.org/

Deception of Words

http://www.washingtonpoets.org/lifetime_award.php

Sam Hamill, the writer of “The Necessity to Speak”, has many thoughts of what poetry is and what the writer is. Hamill’s life experiences seem to take presentence in his opinions of poetry. He repeatedly stated “We can’t bear very much reality.” I know there are a number of corrupt things that happen in this world that if we, as united states citizens, knew about all of it, it would scare us. Hamill says, “A true poet, someone once said, is often faced with the default task of telling people what they already know and do not want to hear.” It’s true, we all know that everyday there are rapes, murders, robberies, domestic violence. But if we were to think about that daily it would scare us...it would put limits on our lives and we don’t want limits.

            In Sam Hamill’s piece he quotes Gary Snyder saying “What the writer invents is its own reality.” The writer can portray themselves to be good, even when they are not. Hamill says “The writer is the good man with the belt wrapped around his fist.” The writer is the one who is manipulating the words, creating the world that we are entering.  The writer has the opportunity to make us, as the reader, sympathize or empathize with them even if they are immoral or corrupt. They can make us turn on the people who, in the real world would be considered the “good guy”. The thought of that seems deceitful, it makes me feel naïve, or susceptible to lies. Just because a man “with the belt wrapped around his fist” presents his words in a certain way to make him look decorous, that means he is now good? He now has control over our minds? Have we blocked out the actual vision of the belt wrapped around his wrist? Hopefully, if it is presented to us in words,  we will be able to decipher the difference between the firefighter who works hard and supports his family in order to have control over his life and the man who beats his wife and children in order to have the control in his.
http://www.thedrunkenboat.com/hamillview.htm