Then I realized Linda hadn't been introduced yet, and I felt better, but still.
The soldiers felt it too:
"There was a formality to it, like a funeral without the sadness." - p. 215
One can only be sad about things for so long.
"It's easier to cope with a kicked bucket than a corpse; if it isn't human, it doesn't matter much if it's dead. And so a VC nurse, fried by napalm, was a crispy critter. A Vietnamese baby, which lay nearby, was a roasted peanut. 'Just a crunchie munchie,' Rat Kiley said as he stepped over the body."
Aside from the fact that those are terribly disturbing euphemisms, O'Brien is pointing out what the Nazis illustrated--that it's easy to dismiss something if it's not human in our eyes.
Also, "Rat Kiley liked to spice it up with extra details." - p. 227
That means he's HYPERBOLIZING! YAAAAAAAY!
"Death sucks," page 230, is an understatement, if you ask me, and "Do I look dead?" on page 231 is a rhetorical question, I believe. Also, "Once you're alive," she'd say, "you can't ever be dead," is sort of an aphorism, and it reminds me of a moment in Harry Potter, which eloquently points out the Christian belief in the afterlife:
"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
"Harry read the words slowly, as though he would have only one chance to take in their meaning, and he read the last of them aloud.
"'The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death'..." A horrible thought came to him, and with it a kind of panic. "Isn't that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?"
"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry," said Hermione, her voice gentle. "It means... you know... living beyond death. Living after death." - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, p. 328
They have the a common moral, The Things They Carried and Harry Potter. This is why I liked this book better than The Sun Also Rises.
Haha agreed. I liked how you compared this piece of literature to another well known work such as Harry Potter. I agree with the moral you give but I don't like how O'Brien showed it. I thought the story about Linda was too random.
ReplyDeleteBut that's just me :)
It was a little random, yeah. She was never mentioned, and then she was, and they were in love, but now he's got a daughter, so clearly he married some other woman, and how must this chapter bother that woman?
ReplyDeleteI don't know. I really like O'Brien's writing, but I feel like he almost puts his writing before actual human relationships.
I don't really think he's putting his writing before his relationships; I just think he is acknowledging a difficult time from his past, as he does throughout the novel. I would also assume that his wife already knows about Linda; otherwise, I'm thinking that Timmy will be sleeping on the couch tonight...
ReplyDeleteH'heee, indeed. But that chapter about Norman that Norman didn't like-- I felt like that was too personal to have shared, almost.
ReplyDeleteGUESS WHAT, everyone!
ReplyDeleteThat quote on Harry's parents' tombstone? It was in one of the readings at Mass today =D.
1 Corinthians 15:26 "The last enemy to be destroyed is death."
I was excited. I had to write down the verse and hoped nobody was watching me.