English NotesOctober 3, 2013
“Spin”
- Spin--give (a news story or other information) a particular interpretation, esp. a favorable one.
- Romanticize things from your viewpoint/distort the truth in your favor
- During wartime, spin happens to show a positive/negative view on war
Details from the chapter:
- Narrator remembers a boy with a plastic leg, asked for chocolate, hops away, Azar commenting that someone must have run out of ammo to kill him
- Mitchell Sanders—lice covered and sent a note saying FREE to his draft board in Ohio
- Checkers, unlike war, has a clear winner/loser and rules
- Narrator is 43, a writer
- He recalls Kiowa, Curt Lemon—“The bad stuff never stops happening: it lives in its own dimension, replaying itself over and over.”
- Narrator recalls Ted Lavender, high on tranquilizers calling the war “a nice mellow war today”
- Recalls Poppa-san, old Vietnamese man—he knew the safe spots. For five days no one got hurt.
- Some days at war were boring “boredom dripping inside you like a leaky faucet”
- 43 and the narrator isstill writing about war—“But the thing about remembering is that you don’t forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the interception of past and present.”
- Happy peace story—solder goes AWOL and falls in love with a nurse. However, the solder finds, “All that peace, man, it felt so good it hurt. I want to hurt it back.”
- Memories: Norman Bowker watching the stars, wanting his dad to write a letter saying it’s ok if he doesn’t win metals, Kiowa teaching a rain dance, Ted Lavender adopting an orphan puppy, the ages of the soldiers (19-20), the chopper (helicopter) leaving, throwing a grenade.
- “Stories are for joining the past to the future.”
- “…there is nothing to remember except the story.”
Review Questions
- “Sometimes things could almost get sweet.”war is anything but sweet, sweet interaction between the boy getting chocolate from the soldier
- Checkers you can see your enemy, no hiding, winner and loser, you know the score, rules
- Poppa-san scene—he helped guide the soldiers, tears when leaving, life and death is always at stake, positive interaction between Vietnamese man and soldiers—they trust poppa-san with their lives
- “aggressively boring”—one minute you can relax, the next you can be line of fire (must be cautions, vigilant, at all times)
- “I feel guilty sometimes”—stories created from memories, memories keep returning, imagination gets added, memory gets transformed completely in a story
- “quick peace story”—soldier spends time with nurse and may feel guilty going AWOL, or may miss being at war with his platoon—he has a responsibility to go back to them
- Norman Bowker—wants his dad to write him a letter telling him it is ok if he doesn’t win medals. Glorification of war—winning medals, impressing parents, not doing something for yourself. This is a life/death situation—not one to worry about bringing home medals to impress parents.
- Puppy—shows Azar is inconsiderate for killing the puppy, the puppy (like the young men) is fragile, life during war isn’t sacred, Azar’s character has lost all sense of the importance of life
- Tim O’Brien—threw a grenade at a man, was told he “had to”
- Tim is in shock, traumatized at the end of the chapter. When memories are erased, the stories will always be there. “Stories are for joining the past to the future.”
“…there is nothing to remember except the story.”