Conclusion of The Things They Carried

With the second half of his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien follows the same short-story structure of the first of the novel.  The novel continues to sway from the traditional novel formula of story telling and completely lacks a central story arch that is followed throughout the book.  In this way, The Things They Carried differs from traditional war novels, avoiding stories of missions and victories and defeats.  Instead, the novel continues to focus on the almost random memories the soldiers had of the war.  In doing this, O'Brien continues to comment on the power of story telling and creates a novel that rings true on an emotional level instead of a factual one.

One of the main points O'Brien makes in his novel is that it is the experience and emotions that should be portrayed in stories, not the factual and historically accurate information.  This is clearly shown in the chapter "Field Trip" when the character O'Brien takes his daughter Kathleen to the mud field that O'Brien's best friend was killed in.  When reaching the site, neither O'Brien nor Kathleen were deeply affected by the scene.  Kathleen, while attempting to remain interested and respectful, was bored by the plain, smelly field.  O'Brien, expecting to relive the emotions he felt the day of Kiowa's death, was disappointed by the reality of the field.  To O'Brien, the memory of the field brought upon him great sadness due to the death of his best friend.  The memory also brought him back to a time that he was no longer a part of, the world of war.  But no, being present standing in front of the field, O'Brien feels strangely disconnected.  The field, not as O'Brien remembered it, is now location of merely historical, not emotional, significance.  Like the rest of the world, the field has moved on from the war.  It no longer has the craters from the bombs or the salt from the sweat and tears of the men in it.  Time has worn away the marks of war, leaving nothing but memories to prove that the events happened at all.  In this way, O'Brien is demonstrating that memories and stories are the only true connection to the past.  While historical facts and evidence can bring us closer to the events of the past, they cannot instill within us the emotions that went along with the events.  This is why the act of story telling is so powerful.  Through stories, we revive the past and bring the emotions of the past to the present.

In a way, stories that we tell are merely manifestations of the emotions that we remember from the past.  Memories, unlike the landscape of the mud field, are save from the corrosion of time and live on with each story told.  These stories continue to carry the emotions of the past and are passed on, allowing the past to continue living in the future.

"A Poet to His Beloved", by William Butler Yeats

In his poem "A  Poet to His Beloved", William Butler Yeats lyrically declares his love to a woman.  The poem instills deep personal and emotional feelings in its verses.  The poem suggests feelings of both passion and respect rather than lust between the two, implying the seriousness of their relationship.

Yeats begins the poem with showing his respect rather than lust.  In the first line of the poem, "reverent hands" (Yeats line 1) connote feelings of respect that the speaker feels for the woman.  The image of open hands being held up is symbolic as a sign of offering and sacrifice.  The speaker, in this poem, is offering up part of his soul to the woman as a sign of love.  What he holds in his hands is even more telling of this.  In his hands, the speaker holds "the books of [his] numberless dreams" (line 2).  The fact that there are "books" of dreams and that the dreams are "numberless" suggests that the speaker is deeply infatuated with the woman.

Yeats then goes to describe the woman.  The first description the speaker gives of the woman is that she is "white" (line 3).  The color white connotes purity and innocence.  The woman can then be seen as a representation of the speaker's innocence, change the poem to a message to one's wistful youth rather than that of love.  The color white can also connote feelings of intense, blinding emotion.  In this way, the woman can be seen as an almost a subject of worship as the speaker offers his soul for the experience of this emotion.  The woman is also described as being "worn" by "passion" (line 3).  This effect of passion suggests that the passion between the two is strenuous and their relationship is not only intense but also taxing.

Yeats then moves away from the personal descriptions to create an extended metaphor of the relationship between the speaker and the woman.  The tides seen in the passage "wears the dove-gray sands" (line 4).  Doves, as symbols of peace and purity, are described as gray in this line.  This graying of the doves suggests a tarnished purity and faded glory that is no longer there.  This idea of faded glory is also seen in the tides as they "wear" (line 4) away the sands.  This line instills a feeling of nostalgic endearment of the woman by the speaker.

In this sense, the "numberless dreams" (line 7) that the speaker brings the white woman can be seen as memories of a time gone by.  The poem, then, reminisces the feelings of passion and the "fire" (line 6) of lust that is now replaced by deep respect.

The Power of Storytelling

In his novel The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien expounds the power of storytelling through the series of stories of the characters revolving around their experiences with the Vietnam War.  To him, stories are meant to link the past to the present, and he does this with great efficiency with his characters while simultaneously demonstrating his view on the purpose of storytelling through the character O'Brien.  O'Brien uses the novel to demonstrate the power of storytelling by evoking the emotions of history instead of factual information.

One thing O'Brien seems to repeatedly do in his novel is creating an ambiguity between the fact and fiction.  To start off, he names the narrator after himself and all other character after men that he knew from his history in the Vietnam War.  However, the novel itself is a fiction, forcing us as readers to wonder about the truth in the stories.  A point that O'Brien tries to make with this is that the truth does not actually matter.  In O'Brien's view, the purpose of a story is not to relay historical information as factually accurate as possible, but to incite the emotion of the past and bring them to the present.  A message O'Brien tries to send to us is that war is unlike anything else.  The truth of war, when presented to an audience unfamiliar with its reality, is impossible to understand and while the facts might be understood, the emotions that war invokes in the soldiers can never be realized.  In this sense, the truth gets in the way of the reality.  With this novel, O'Brien prioritizes the effects the war has on the soldiers instead of the details of the war itself.

In doing this, O'Brien puts great weight in the power of the story.  To him, a story allows an audience to experience the past in a most visceral way as it is not the events of the past, but the raw emotions that is experienced.  He strives to portray the stark reality of war.  He avoids talks of honor, and valor because those things do not belong in war.  Honor and valor are instruments of the reality back home and are worthless in the world that was Vietnam.  In war, men are not driven by heroic ideals, but rather the fear of shame.  O'Brien portrays that soldiers kill and die because they are simply too afraid to not.  They are afraid of being seen as if they aren't willing to kill and die, as it is shameful and embarrassing.  In war, the idea of bravery and cowardice seem to reverse.  Also in the same vein, O'Brien strikes down the the idea that war is constant chaos of destruction and death, with never-ending battles and danger.  In reality, war is not just the adrenaline rushes of combat.  War is also the boring weeks of nothing but walking through the wet jungles of Vietnam.  War is also the tedium that sometimes proves to be too much to handle, resulting in games of catch with  grenades.  War changes its victims in a way that is impossible for someone outside of it to fully comprehend.

Meeting with the Ghost

The conversation Hamlet has with the ghost is one of the most important events of the second act of the play. After he follows the ghost deep into the woods, Hamlet speaks with the ghost.  The ghost claims to be the soul of the late king Hamlet.  The ghost tells Hamlet of Claudius' betrayal and murder.  This meeting marks an important transition as it provides Hamlet with the motive for his actions in the following acts as well as change Hamlet's state of being.

Hamlet's meeting with the ghost can be seen as almost an internal epiphany he has by himself.  Hamlet chases the ghost into the woods.  A dark forest suggests the unknown and transitional period as well as the subconscious.  By rushing after the ghost, Hamlet is in fact rushing deeper into his own mind to garner the inner motives that he himself has in regards to Claudius and Gertrude.  This idea is also supported by the fact that Hamlet shares a name with his father, and in turn, the ghost.  This shared name makes the conversation Hamlet has with the ghost seem like a conversation with himself.  If this is true, this meeting is an epiphany that Hamlet has which changes the way he thinks about his father's death and marks the start of his revenge.  These ideas were always within Hamlet, but it was the manifestation of the ghost that pushed him towards action.

A ghost, as a symbol of disorder and the unnatural in Elizabethan, could represent the chaos within Hamlet and the rest of Denmark. Before and after the meeting with the ghost, the motif of disorder and entropy can be seen in many places.  The untimely death of King Hamlet and the unnatural marriage of Claudius and Gertrude both suggest disorder that is widespread throughout all of Denmark.  The appearance of the ghost then, could symbolize the internal chaos that is within Hamlet due to the death of his father and the remarriage of his mother.  This chaos is then manifested as a ghost as it spreads throughout all of Denmark, first through its nightly appearance to the guards, and then in its conversation with Hamlet.

Following the meeting with the ghost, Hamlet uses the chaos as a guise in order to follow through with his motives.  He acts insane so his actions are dismissed as he pries on Polonius and Claudius.  The meeting with the ghost pushes Hamlet out of grief and into the false insanity he uses to plot against Claudius.  After this point, Hamlet changes from the grieving man we saw in Act 1 into the deceiving and plotting man we see in Act 3.  This new Hamlet is trying to restore order and balance in Denmark.  The fact that he uses his appearance of insanity and madness to further his cause of order again shows the theme of illusion and reality seen in the play.

Invisible Man- Prologue

Invisible Man begins with the narrator introducing us to the concept of "invisibility".  He characterizes this invisibility as not one of physical nature, but metaphorical, as he seems almost like a "phantom" to those around him.  This "invisibility" represents the narrator's feeling of transparency and insignificance as he is unable to make a a visible or tangible impact in the world.  

The only actual event that occurs in the prologue is the narrator's conflict with the blonde man in the middle of the night.  The narrator beats the man to near his death before he realizes that the man is blind.  Like the invisibility mentioned at the start of the prologue, this blindness is also not physical, but rather metaphorical. The blonde man, like all of society, is "blind" in the sense that they are unable to see the narrator or any other blacks for anything besides their skin color.  This blindness is then not a physical disability, but a social predisposition that causes the isolation the narrator feels with the rest of society.

To the narrator, his invisibility and the blindness of others can be seen as almost an advantage.  He is able to do things and avoid repercussions as he is often overlooked.  He thinks it is his invisiblity that allowed him to avoid being punished for his assault of the blonde man or for stealing electricity.  It is almost as if his invisibility and society's blindness removes him from society and puts him on another level of existence, whether that level is above or below the rest of the world remains unknown.  Nevertheless, his isolation from society is clearly represented in the prologue as he introduces his living quarters.  He lives physically isolated and below a building full of whites.  In a physical sense, he is below society; however, his lack of blindness and ability to see the true reality of the world puts him above society in the plane of knowledge.

The basement that the narrator lives in may be the most important part of the prologue.  The idea of an abandoned basement resembles an isolated and antiquated world, forgotten in time.  When he is in his basement, he is separate from the rest of the world.  His obsession with light is incredibly revealing of how the narrator views himself.  Light connotes vision, knowledge.  The huge number of lights in his basement represents his propensity for knowledge as he is on a higher plane of reality.  However, it could also represent his struggle to define himself in a world that is unable to see him.  In this sense, his invisibility is actually a restraint that prevents the narrator from existing in the real world.  He is invisible, in that case, not only to society, but also to himself.

Hamlet: Is vs Seems

A theme in the first act of Hamlet is the contrast between seeming and being.  Shakespeare uses the two states of existence to describe the duplicity of the characters of the play.  We are introduced to Denmark following the funeral of the late King Hamlet and the wedding of Gertrude and King Claudius.  Following these events, Denmark is put in a peculiar state as the importance of appearance becomes a central point in the story.

The contrast between seeming and being can be seen most prominently in the state of Denmark itself. We are introduced to the country at first by the speech Claudius gives in scene ii.  In scene ii, Denmark seems to be in perfect order as the royal family is strong and all business is taken care of.  Under this appearance, however, the country is in disarray.  Following King Hamlet's death, Prince Hamlet, the rightful heir to the throne, does not become King.  In the Elizabethan period, an interruption in the line of succession would be considered sinful as Kings are seen as divine protectors of the country, with their lineage blessed by god to rule.  The fact that Claudius is instead king hints at the country's instability, although it may seem Denmark has a strong king.  Secondly, the royal family seems to be perfectly fine as the King and Queen are happily married and are respected by the people.  In the Elizabethan period, however, Gertrude's marriage to Claudius, her late husband's brother, is considered incestuous and also sinful.  This contrasts with the appearance of stability in their relationship and further shows the contrast between Denmark's seemingly stable government and the chaotic reality of the play.

 The next and most easily spotted occurrence of the contrast between appearance and reality is with Shakespeare's first long speech in front of the court in scene ii.  Gertrude, after seeing Hamlet still dressed in full black, tells him to stop seeming so depressed.  This provoke's Hamlet's first speech.  In the speech, Hamlet contrasts seeming and being and states the he does not only appear to be in grieve, but is.  Unlike the rest of Denmark, Hamlet remains in grieve of his father's death and fully expresses his grieve through his clothes and actions.  This is the where Shakespeare introduces the idea of appearance and reality in the play. Hamlet's speech emphasizes the contrast between him and the rest of Denmark, specifically Gertrude and Claudius.  We begin to question Gertrude's true motives as to whether she only appears to love Claudius in order to protect Denmark and Hamlet, or she actually does love Claudius and is in fact, an "incestuous beast".

This dichotomy between appearance and reality raised in Act 1 causes us to question almost every aspect of the play.  This universal possibility of a facade that characters put on forces us to analyze the play from multiple different possibilities, making multiple different interpretations possible. 

"The Forge, by Seamus Heaney"

"The Forge"
by Seamus Heaney

All I know is a door into the dark,

Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;

Inside, the hammered anvil's short-pitched ring,

The unpredictable fantail of sparks

Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.

The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,

Horned as a unicorn, at one end square,

Set there immoveable: an altar

Where he expends himself in shape and music.

Sometimes, leather aproned, hairs in his nose,

He leans out on the jamb, recalls a clatter

Of hoofs where traffic is flashing in rows;

Then grunts and goes in, with a slam and a flick

To beat real iron out, to work the bellows

In the poem "The Forge", Seamus Heaney vividly depicts the work of a blacksmith to reveal the unpredictability of art through visual and auditory imagery.  

Heaney begins the poem with uncertainty and mysteriousness.  The "dark" (Heaney 1) that is mentioned in the opening line implies that the "door" leads to the unknown.  Heaney then contrasts the outside world and the forge.  In the outside world, "old axles and iron hoops" rust.  This rust shows that time has rendered these objects obsolete.  They are but useless artifacts of the past.  Inside the forge, however, the "hammered" (3) anvil still "rings" (3).  The word "hammered" suggests that the anvil has been used often and is also a relic of the past; however, the "short-pitched ring" that emits from the anvil suggests that the anvil is still used.  This contrast between the outside world and the forge as well as the mysteriousness of the forge shows that although an artist's creations might diminish overtime, the source of his artistry remains.

Heaney then continues to add onto the mysteriousness of the forge.  The poem rarely mentions the blacksmith or the operator of the forge, but focuses on the anvil as the source of creation.  The anvil is the "centre" (5) of the forge and acts as "an altar" where the blacksmith "expends himself" to create.  It is almost as though the anvil uses the blacksmith as a medium through which it expresses itself in the form of "shape and music" while chipping away at the blacksmith little by little.  As the blacksmith creates, "unpredictable fantail of sparks" (4) fly about with each swing of his hammer.  Heaney uses the unpredictability and ephemeral nature of sparks to illustrate the lack of control the blacksmith has over his creations.  

The poem's final lines introduces the blacksmith.  The blacksmith's recollection combines images of two differing time periods, the "clatter/ Of hoofs" and "traffic flashing in rows".  This anachronistic comparison shows the changing times that the blacksmith has seen.  The contrast of the changing world with the lack of change inside the forge further adds to the lack of control the blacksmith has on his creation.  Even though the outside world is rapidly changing, the blacksmith is tethered to the forge and continues to work the anvil even though the "old axles" and "iron hoops" he creates are useless in the world.  

The lack of control the blacksmith has and the changing time adds to the power of the forge.  Like an "altar", the anvil keeps the blacksmith working religiously.  The blacksmith has no control over what he creates.  Even though the blacksmith is aware of the changing world outside of the forge, he continues to create useless artifacts and working the forge.