Rat And Lemon example essay topic

In the Massachusetts Review: 'Speaking of Courage'. In The Quarterly: 'In the Field'; 'Style'; 'Spin'; and 'The Man I Killed'. Observations: . Repetition of themes: . truth: 'I remember Mitchell Sanders smiling as he told the story. Most of it made up... but even so it gave me a quick truth-goose. '.

Living up to expectations back home: Martha, family, parents. 'Norman Bowker... whispering... If I could have one wish... I'd wish for my dad to write me a letter and say it's okay if I don't win any medals. '. Symbolic images of Vietnam: Characters Tim O'Brien Note: The author is Tim O'Brien, but the character Tim in the stories is, to a large extent, a fictitious compilation and not necessarily an accurate autobiographical representation.

Speaking generally but including himself:' They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing - these were the intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight... They carried shameful memories. The carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained... They carried their reputations... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.

' From 'On Rainy River': 'I was a coward. I went to war. ' About Kiowa's death: From 'In the Field': 'they'd been close buddies, the tightest... he'd been showing Kiowa a picture of his girlfriend. He remembered switching on his flashlight... and then the field exploded all around them.

From 'Field Trip': 'This little field... had swallowed so much. My best friend. My pride. My belief in myself as a man of some small dignity and courage. About Rat: 'I was shot twice... Thank god for Rat Kiley.

Every so often, maybe four times altogether, he trotted back to check me out. Which took courage. It was a wild fight... 's earch for self understanding:' The human life is all one thing, like a blade tracing loops on the ice: a little kid, a twenty-three-year-old infantry sergeant, a middle-aged writer knowing guilt and sorrow. ' 'I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the air and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross Platoon leader Carries love for and fotos of Martha'a good-luck pebble... precisely where the land touched the water at high tide... a separate-but-together quality " compass, maps, code-books, binoculars... a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men " after Lavender dies he shows a great 'capacity for grief' and shoulders the blame for any deaths in his troop; he carries 'heavy-duty hurt' and he gives up his obsession for Martha, burning her fotos, in order to concentrate more fully on the safety of his men. 'No more fantasies... he would show strength, distancing himself.

' Curt Lemon From How to tell a true war story: Rat and Lemon 'goofing' around with a smoke grenade and Lemon steps on a mine and is blown to pieces. ' A handsome kid, really. Sharp grey eyes, lean and narrow-waisted, and when he died it was almost beautiful the way the sunlight came around him and lifted him up and sucked him high into a tree full of moss and vines and white blossoms. ' Rat writes a letter about Lemon: 'a little crazy'; 'a real soldier's soldier'; 'stainless steel balls'; 'a real daredevil, because he liked the challenge of it... just man against gook.

' Rat tells the Halloween story: ' the dude paints up his body all different colours and puts on this weird mask and hikes over to a ville and goes trick-or-treating almost stark naked, just boots and balls and an M-16'O'Brien is less sentimental about Lemon: 'he had an opinion of himself that was too high for his own good. Or maybe it was the reverse... a low opinion that he kept trying to erase. ' Henry Dobbins Machine gunner As a big man, therefore a machine gunner, Henry Dobbins carried the M -60, which weighed 23 pounds unloaded, but which was always loaded. In addition... 10 and 15 pounds of ammunition draped in belts across his chest and shoulders Carried extra rations - has a sweet tooth especially for 'canned peaches in heavy syrup over pound cake' and tropical chocolate bar Carried 'Black Flag insecticide " From Stockings - carried his 'girlfriend's panty hose around his neck as a comforter'. It was believed to have magical properties because he was never hit - not even a scratch.

When his girlfriend dumps him his response is 'No sweat... I still love her. The magic doesn't go away. ' At which everyone was relieved. He was 'a good man and a superb soldier... but the ironies went beyond him. ' Dave Jensen Practiced field hygiene and carried toothbrush, dental floss and soap 3 pairs of socks and Dr Scholls footpowdernight sight vitamins high in carotene and earplugsrabbit's foot and empty sandbags that could be filled at night for extra protection story - beat Strunk to a pulp and broke Strunk's nose after Strunk stole his jackknife.

- Strunk was choppered to the rear, but when he came back there was 'a silent tension between them that made Jensen take special precautions. ' The strain becomes too much and Jenson goes crazy with a sense of impotent rage, blowing off a couple of rounds of ammo into the air and yelling Strunk's name. The issue finally becomes resolved when Jensen decides to make things 'square' with Strunk by breaking his own nose. To which Strunk response is 'The man's crazy... I stole his fucking jackknife. ' Ted Lavender 'who was scared' carries tranquilizers and dope to make the war 'mellow " carried 'an exceptional burden, more than 20 pounds of ammunition, plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and toilet paper and tranquilizers and all the rest plus the unweighed fear.

He was dead weight. ' 'The poor bastard just flat-fuck fell. Boom. Down... Like cement. ' Killed April 16 during tunnel ops Mitchell Sanders RTO 'As RTO, Mitchell Sanders carried the PRC-25 radio, a killer, 26 pounds with its battery " carries brass knuckles, yo-yo, always looking for the moral or the meaning behind the event or story thinks of himself as a ladies man - carries condoms and 'a set of starched tiger fatigues for special occassions' Norman Bowker 'otherwise a very gentle person, carried a thumb that had been presented to him as a gift by Mitchell Sanders... it had be cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen. ' 'carried a diary' - link this to story 'Notes' and Bowker's distress at not being able to communicate the truth of his war experiences hangs himself because no-one was able to listen to his experiences (not even Tim O'B) and he was so emotionally disabled by the Vietnam experience that he could no longer fit into 'mainstream life'.

Rat Kiley medic 'carried a canvas satchel filled with morphine and plasma and malaria tablets and surgical tape and comic books and all the things a medic must carry, including M&Ms for especially bad wounds, for a total weight of nearly 20 pounds. Always looking for the joke Flipped when Lemon died: tore a water buffalo to pieces Is one of the strongest in the group until a tour of night life:' the long night marches turned their minds upside down... you'd swear you were walking through some kind of soft black protoplasm " Rat sees crazy images of other people just as body parts and worries about the bugs - keeps scratching open insect bites'I'll be lying out there in the dark and nobody " ll find me except the bugs... I can see it - the goddamn bugs chewing tunnels through me. ' Then 'He took off his boots and socks, laid out his medical kit, doped himself up, and put a round through his foot.

' Gets sent to Japan to recover. Kiowa Devout Baptist Carries 'his grandfather's feathered hatchet,' ; his 'grandmother's distrust of the white man'; his father's 'New Testament'; a 'pair of moccasins for silence " Died in shit field because Tim used his torch to show him a picture of his girlfriend Billie which made the whole troop 'targets' for mortar fire. Also links with Norman's story who failed to pull Kiowa out from under the shit field because of the 'stink' Lee Strunk Carries a slingshot because ammo is never a problem Tanning lotion Did tunnel duty on April 16 when Lavender died - usually tunnels were booby traps and they would expect Strunk to be in danger, not Lavender Enemies at first with Dave Jensen but they 'learned to trust each other' Makes a pact 'that if one of them would get totally fucked up - a wheelchair wound - the other guy would automatically find a way to end it. ' It seemed quite serious to everyone in the troop In October when Lee steps on a rigged mortar and his right leg is blown away below the knee he loses his cool.

Lee pleads with Jensen not to kill him. Jensen promises not to kill him (I guess he loses his courage to keep to the pact too) and they wait for the dust off chopper to take him to the rear hospital. 'Later we heard that Strunk died somewhere over Chu Lai, which seemed to relieve Jensen of an enormous weight. ' Azar A crazy guy - reflects the kind of soldier that Curt Lemon was Goes overboard in talk about events and in practical jokes e.g. ties Ted Lavender's puppy to an antipersonnel mine and blows it up: "What's everybody so upset about - I'm just a boy " Tim enlists his help to scare Bob by Jorgensen as an act of revenge, but Azar takes over - call it a 'character flaw' but I like to 'finish the job " Azar is one of the few truly unsympathetic characters in the book. He appears infrequently, but when he does, he is invariably mean-spirited and cruel. At the end of "In the Field", however, Azar apologizes for jokes made about Kiowa...

'A field of elephant grass... bowing under the stir of a helicopter's blades, the grass dark and servile, bending low, but then rising again when the chopper went away. When is war justifiable? : '... Vietnam seemed to me wrong. Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons' '...

I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law. ' 'when a nation goes to war it must have reasonable confidence in the justice and imperative of its cause. You can't fix your mistakes. Once people are dead, you can't make them undead. '. Repetition of events as they happened to characters - often referred to briefly when the main focus of the story is on a different aspect of the war, but later revealed in all its gory detail in a story devoted to revealing what happened to that particular character - Curt Lemon is repeated, Kiowa, and Ted Lavender.