The things they carried blog prompt 3

1.)  I think that the alter personality created at war is vital in sustaining your sanity and maintaining your composure, as well as not compromising your morals by transforming them and bending them.  I think that soldiers in The Things They Carried know each other less than in a real war.  I think that in a real war people would strive to know the soldier they are fighting alongside.  I do not think that a soldier can carry over their personality from home onto the battlefield.  They just do not combine on every level.  Creating a separate new personality is required because they are being reborn in a sense into a new world.  Through adaptation these soldiers become new people. 

2.) I think that O'Brien had a couple of messages he was trying to portray when he introduced Fossie's girlfriend Marry Anne into the story.  First, I think he was trying to depict that there were no rules out in Vietnam and anything goes.  Secondly, I think she represented the transformation of an individual in Vietnam, specifically the loss of innocence for soldiers there.  This is shown by how she first arrives and is very lady like and worldly.  Her clothing is city made, she wears make up, and talks daintily.  As time goes on she begins to change and become more hardened and curious.  She stops dressing as formally, she goes on nightly outings with Green Beret's, and becomes cold and callous towards Fossie.  Things permanently change and she will never recover from that just as soldiers cannot recover from what they become in Vietnam.

3.)  I believe that O'Brien was telling stories about the things that actually happened to him with falsified details, characters, events.  I think that he did this in order to make us feel what he actually felt as well as his men.  If O'Brien were to just say that one of his buddies was sad that would give the reader many different ideas and levels onto which the sadness would be based.  However, if O'Brien said that this buddy cried for days straight, burned his bed to ashes, and then hung himself we would understand the amount of grief he had even though this story was not true.  The disadvantage is that someone realizes that these stories are not true and so they disregard their content.  The advantage is of course that the readers understand how the soldiers are feeling in detail.  I think that because the stories seem so real it does not take away from the novel but adds to it because I can understand how the men feel.

Questions:

1.) What is the significance of the water buffalo and puppy being killed?

2.) What do you think will happen to Fossie after the war?

3.) How do you feel about Luetentant Cross's leading ability?

4.) Why was Norman Bowker so preoccupied with retrieving the picture of his girlfriend from the swamp?

5.) Who was really to blame for Kiowa's death?