English Notes January 26, 2016

Review of M*A*S*H “Yankee Doodle Doctor”

  1. Primary dilemma: creating a realistic documentary about war.

Wounded soldier is asked to smile for the camera—he is hurt. Director wants a good movie, more action in the operating room, not a movie that is necessarily realistic. They movie would be used as propaganda to glorify war.

  1. Satire to make fun of the original documentary. The final lines Hawkeye delivers are even more powerful in contrast. Funny scenes: Radar’s glasses, posing in boxers, Hawkeye’s eyebrows (looks like Groucho Marx).
  2. Portrayal of war:

Unpredictability, waiting is perilous since death could be around the corner, M*A*S*H uses comedy to get at the truth. The Things They Carried uses dark humor. Both deal with death—death becomes normalized. O’Brien creates slow motion with the action of the plot.

  1. Hawkeye tells people the things that they don’t want to hear. He is taking care of wounded soldiers, but doesn’t want to glorify it. Doing the right thing can mean operating outside the rules (giving the young soldier the Purple Heart medal).

“The Man I Killed” Reading and Review

  • From prior chapters we know that Tim O’Brien killed a man in the war.
  • Description of dead body—star shaped hole In his eye, a butterfly on his chin, neck open to spinal cord, bloody, seemed scholarly, wrists of a child, wore ammunition
  • O’Brien believed that the man he killed was part of a family who struggled for independence in My Khe. He may have listened to stories about victories defending the land from the French.

this background story about the man he killed is created/speculated

giving this man a backstory humanizes the experience

  • Body was small and frail.
  • There was nothing O’Brien could do—he recalls the dead body, star shaped hole in his eye.
  • Kiowa asks O’Brien if he would like to trade places with the dead man. He is justifying O’Brien’s actions and the actions of war. He wants O’Brien to stop staring and to go rest.
  • About the dead soldier: “Even as a boy growing up in the village of My Khe, he had often worried about this…He had no stomach for violence.” However, he fought in the war out of shame—he didn’t want to disgrace his family (connect this to O’Brien in the chapter “On the Rainy River”).
  • Kiowa reminds O’Brien to “Stop starring.”
  • O’Brien repeats what the dead body looked like after the grenade was thrown.
  • Killed man—a scholar, small wrists like a child’s, fell in love with a girl at university, wore a gold ring on his middle finger, knew that war would finally take him.
  • Kiowa—says the man was “killed” the minute he stepped on the trail. He tells the others to pull it together and gives O’Brien a 5 minute warning. Kiowa covered the body with a poncho and told O’Brien he was sorry. He wants O’Brien to talk about it. (Consider how hard it is to talk about this. O’Brien can’t believe what just happened.)
  • At the end of the story Kiowa urges Tim to talk about what happened. In the last paragraph, he talks, but repeats the same information about what the man he killed looked like.

Discussion of the writing style:

Note the repetition—Tim re-examines what he has done, he refuses to talk, everyone else has moved on, he is in shock.

Repetition emphasizes the psychological impact.

Star-shaped hole, constellation of possibilities—stars emphasize fate, destiny, dreams.

Parallel between Tim O’Brien (the character) and the man he killed.

“Ambush”

This story explains what happened BEFORE “The Man I Killed”

  • Narrator’s nine-year-old daughter asked if he had ever killed anyone in war. Narrator tells her “of course not”
  • Daughter knows her father is in war and that he keeps writing stories—he must have killed someone.
  • He writes pretending she’s a grown-up to tell her what happened. She is right—the reason he writes stories is because he killed someone in war.

Man he killed:

  • Short, slender, 20
  • Narrator feared him on the trail
  • Threw a grenade that exploded at his feet and killed him
  • Narrator recalls ambush site outside My Khe. Platoon was on the trail for 5 hours and nothing happened.
  • There were 3 grenades lined up for quick throwing.
  • Young man came out of the fog. Had a weapon and ammo, but seemed at ease. Narrator pulled the pin automatically. He crouched, kept his head low, had no thoughts about killing.
  • Narrator didn’t think—just threw the grenade
  • Young man fell on his back—sandals had been blown off. One eye was shut and his other had a huge star-shaped hole.
  • Narrator comments that it wasn’t a matter of live or die—he wasn’t in danger when he threw the grenade. He couldn’t stop and think—he’s trained to kill.
  • Sometimes the narrator can forgive himself/sometimes he can’t—he sometimes looks up and sees the young man step out of the morning fog (daydream)

Consider:

Killing becomes automatic.

Effects of killing—narrator still daydreams about the man he killed

Similarities between Tim O’Brien and the killed man—both young, scared, at war out of duty/shame, both educated (Tim could go to Harvard for grad school and the killed man was a mathematics student), killed man was weak and almost feminine looking

“Style”

  • Hamlet was burned down and there was a 14-year-old girl who danced (there was no reason for dancing)
  • Dancing girl twirled on her toes—men can’t understand why she is dancing
  • Dancing girl’s family was dead
  • Dancing girl—danced sideways, backwards, hands on ears, dreamy look
  • Azar said “Well, I don’t get it.”
  • That night, however, Azar mocked the girl’s dancing. Dobbins lifted him high and asked him if he wanted to be dumped in a well. Dobbins said “dance right.”