Also, because I always think images are helpful, here's one for you: a picture of Tim O'Brien as a soldier.
ASSIGNMENT: Read (or listen to) "Ambush", and then pick an interesting word from the story. Then, in a comment to this post, explain how the word you've chosen is significant to the story as a whole. Include evidence and analysis in your response.
Next, in a new paragraph, connect the same word you've chosen to a different story in the novel.
Your responses are due by 2p.m. MONDAY MAY 2nd.
The word I chose from "Ambush" is imagination.
ReplyDeleteImagination means the faculty of producing ideal creation consistent with reality, as in literature, as distinct from the power of creating illustrative or decorative imagery. This definition is from dictionary.com
I chose imagination from the short story, "Ambush" because from reading all short stories it seems that the truth sometimes gets pushed to the side. The way Tim uses imagination in this short story is, "In a way, it seemed, he was part of the morning fog, or my own imagination, but there was also the reality of what was happening in my stomach." This word stuck out to me because it reminds me of the other readings and how it gets tie together.
Imagination connects to other stories because Tim makes a fictional story about a non-fictional event. "On the Rainy River" is a fictional short story, but to me it seems very real. Tim uses his imagination and comes up with this fictional story. The "Beginning," the non-fictional short story is just boring and no fun events. "On the Rainy River," has many events and has many details, but the main idea of both of these short stories are the same.
I'm choosing the word "reality", I;m choosing it because in the story "Ambush" Tim O'Brien is retelling the story of how he killed someone and that at first he thought he had just imagined it happening, but then he realizes that the true reality was that he had really killed that man. “In a way it seemed, he was part of the morning fog, or my own imagination, but there was also the reality of what was happening in my stomach. I had already pulled the pin on the grenade.” In his mind he couldn’t believe that the situation was real, but in his stomach he had the feeling of reality to kill the man coming up the path.
ReplyDeleteThe word is significant to another story, “Speaking of Courage”. With this story the soldier that comes home, is back in body but not really fully back in his mind. Norman Bowker feels like he isn’t significant anymore. Or anything else in his life, to every other American the war was over, but for Norman the reality was that he could never come back from the war. It changed his personality, who he was, his attitude toward life, he wasn’t the same person as before the war. His version of reality was war, nothing else seemed to be real for him, he couldn't come back to the reality that the war was over and that he had survived.
A word that stands out to me in "Ambush", is the word automatic. In this story, Tim O'Brien uses the word automatic as an excuse as to why he killed the man along the trail. "I had already pulled the pin on a grenade. I had come up to a crouch. It was entirely automatic."
ReplyDeleteI feel as if this word is significant to the story as whole because it reflects how brainwashed the war made the soldiers. Everyday these soldiers are faced with knowing they could be killed at any moment. Therefore, being prepared to defend yourself at all hours of the day is extremely important. Being scared of being killed all the time eventually gets to your head, and in this case, preventing yourself from being killed becomes a reflex. This is apparent in O'Briens situation when the man crossed the path. He was so used to being scared of the chance of death, that when needed to protect himself, he killed the man.
The word automatic also relates to the story "Speaking of Courage". In that story, Norman Bowker represents this by responding to Kiowa being killed by the mud field. Although Kiowa died, Norman Bowker showed the automatic response of saving one of his own. The word automatic is shown throughout many stories.
The word "star-shaped hole" appears in "Ambush" and I think that it is significant to the story because it represents the overall goal for the soldiers. I interpreted it as being the hole where the badges are supposed to be. So far in the novel, this word has appeared several times, especially on injured combatants, which tells me that it represents something being taken from each victim. As a soldier you probably want to gain as many medals as possible and in order to do that you need to kill people. But when Tim O'Brien kills people there is this sense of guilt and second guessing every time. I think that is also represented in these "star-shaped holes." O'Brien is trying to get us to see all of the trauma soldiers endure and the guilt of killing the enemy and being skeptical is one of them. This specific word is mostly prominent in the other short story "Speaking of Courage." where it talks about Bowker trying to save Kiley and failing to get his silver star.
ReplyDeleteI chose the word lost from the story, "Ambush." I believe it is important because it represents more than just it's general meaning. In the story, Tim O'Brienpoints out the life of the Vietnamese soldier is lost. Not only does it mean that the soldier is dead, which is the obvious meaning, but it also represents Tim losing a piece of himslef. It represents him losing his innocence and growing up.
ReplyDeleteAnother story this word applies to is " The Sweetheart at The Song Tra Bong." That story also has a similar set up where a person is literally lost, but also represents a greater loss than that. In the story Mary Anne joining the Greenies and running off represents the loss of inoocence and how easily it is for a person, even a woman, to lose herself in the war. Tim O'Brien writes, " But in a sense she never returned. Not entirely, not all of her," showing how even though she was literally, at a point lost in the woods, but she had also lost a piece of herself and could never return to whom she was before.
I think that forgive is a big word in this chapter. He was in a war and in war people die. And if he had not killed him than he could have killed Americans and if he had not killed him than maybe someone else would have killed him. Maybe, Maybe not. He could have just walked by.It is something that you can never tell for sure because no one will ever know what will happen if they went back and changed something they did because you can not go back in time. He was a soilder and he was supposed to kill. "sometimes I forgive myself, other times I don't." This is important because you should be able tyo because it was a war and it is a be killed or kill situation, no in betweens because the Vietmanese were going to give anything including their life to win there independence. Then again he shouldn't forgive himself, itn was not a war that he wanted to fight so if was not there in the first place this would have never happened and that person would not be dead. You can look at it both ways but he had a choice to make and can not go back and change what he but instead move on and learn from the experience.
ReplyDeleteI think that in "Ambush" an interesting word that i chose is morality. In the war, most morals disappear because you have to lie almost all of the time to get your way through the war. In "How To Tell A True War Story," Tim O'Brien talks about morals and how a true war story is not moral. In war, it is hard to always tell the truth because sometimes when negotiating or even talking to your fellow soldiers at night or when playing a game you tend to lie. Even when it comes to killing someone, some soldiers may lie to themselves that it is a good thing that they are doing when they shoot or blow up that other person when in actuality it is terrible. In the story "Ambush" it says that "I did not ponder issues of morality or politics or military duty." I think that this sort of tells us how soldiers don't necessarily think about the truth as much as they would outside of war.
ReplyDeleteComparing to other stories, the word morality relates to most. I think that one of the major stories that we have recently read "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" is a good representation and connection to the word morality. Mary Ann basically went in the opposite direction of morality because she would lie to Fossie about what she would do with the Greenies. She would say that she would not go out at night anymore, but she continued to do it anyways. I think that morality has a huge part in most of the stories in The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien.
I chose the word empty from "Ambush." The line that this word appears in says, "I leaned back and felt my mind go empty. I had already thrown the grenade before telling myself to throw it." I think that this word shows the detatchment from all emotion that soldiers experience in war. It's difficult to get attached to the enemy and htink about what you're doing. In the end Kiowa told him tha the man would've died anyway. He said that it was a good kill and O'Brien was a soldier and this was a war. Every soldier would go insane if they thought about every man they killed.
ReplyDeleteThis word also appears in "How to tell a true war story" when it explains the man brutally killing the baby water buffalo. He didn't have an thoughts going through his head. He was on a rampage of violence, and that's what war does to you.
From reading the story "Ambush", I chose the word "Fog". I chose this word because it describes this story with great detail. It shows how the vietcong just walked out of the fog, like walking out of no-where. The fog creates a false-sense of imagination. This false-sense of imagination is shown through what happens to Tim O'Brien at this moment. He thought he was seeing things when this man came out of the fog, and immediately grabbed a grenade and lobbed it towards the man. The fog can be described as a "Confusion" by Tim, as it says on page 126: "In a way, it seemed, he was part of the morning fog, or my own imagination, but there was also the reality of what was happening in my stomach."
ReplyDeleteThe word ambush connects to the other stories, such as in "Speaking of Courage" when the American soldiers were ambushed by mortars and gun fire when they were sleeping in the sewage fields, and this is also when Kiowa was killed, and sunk into the raw sewage. This word also connects to the other stories. In fact, the word ambush has to do with the entire Vietnam War because this is what the vietnamese did to the American Soldiers, when they were not on the look out, and not seeing where the Vietcong were.
In the story "Ambush" the one word that stood out to me the most was Complicated. I think this word describes not only the way O'Brien felt telling his story about killing the man and also the way he feels on trying to tell his daughter he didn't kill anyone. Its hard to tell a young girl especially your daughter the truth about the past its hard to explain anything to something small and i believe complicated explained this whole situation perfectly.
ReplyDeleteIn the story "Sweatheart of the song tra bong" this word definitely ties in. When you think about how she was going from a nice sweet innocent girl you definitely don't think she is going to change the way she did which makes things even more complicated for the people who know her and also the people who don't know her as well but see the person that she is becoming during war.
In the story "Ambush" the word that stuck out to me the most was freeze. This is because the that was the thought that was going through his head as he threw the grenade at the enemy soldier. He described it as if someone had taken a picture right when Tim threw the grenade. It also describes how the soldier felt when he saw the grenade at his feet. It says that he dropped his weapon and stood there as it exploded on him.
ReplyDeleteAnother story that this word relates to is "On the Rainy River". Freeze relates to this story because O'Brien is stuck on the boat trying to decide whether or not to run to Canada or go back to his country and fight in the war. The word in the context allows the characters to express there feelings toward the certain topic that they are stuck on and helps to truly find out why people are making there decisions.
I chose the word "remember" from Ambush. I took special notice of "remember" because Tim O'brien remembers his kill in the story due to his guilt. O'brien felt guilty about the man he killed on the foggy trail because he wasn't exactly a threat. The idea of "what if" he hadn't killed him haunted O'brien. Remembering this memory is likely a sort of self punishment to remind himself. Also, for him to write the story suggests that, for his guilt he wants to share the story. Guilt hurts worse alone. In addition, "Later, I remember, Kiowa tried to tell me that the man would've died anyway" (O'brien 127) also shows that Kiowa tries to calm O'brien's conscience by justifying the war and inevitable death.
ReplyDeleteFor another story, the word "Remember" relates to Speaking of Courage. Norman Bowker has a similar experience in which he let go of a friend in a war zone and, in a way, contributed to his death. Driving around his town's lake numerous times while recalling the event fostered his guilt. At the end, he symbolically recreated his guilt when he waded into the mud and water, without a friend. "The truth... is I let the guy go" (O'brien 147) said Bowker. His guilt is also constantly shown through his nonstop desire to tell others about what happened even though he is reluctant. He wants to share what happened, which is why he wrote the story.
WOW! I'm very impressed with your responses thus far! You are all making very SMART connections here! Y'all just made my day!!
ReplyDeleteA word that stuck out to me from "Ambush" is "forgive". O'Brien wrote, "Sometimes I forgive myself and sometimes I don't." This story emphasizes the regret a soldier has to live with after war. To deal with regret, they have to forgive themselves. O'Brien described being a different person in war, where you act before you think sometimes. These actions need to be forgiven for one to move on in life and get past the war. It is proven hard to forgive oneself for killing another human being, which is one of the reasons that O'Brien is having a hard time moving on from the war and why he still thinks about it when he is alone.
ReplyDeleteThis relates to the story "On the Rainy River" because Fossie needs to forgive himself for having Mary Ann come to the war. Although he does not say it,I can imagine that he regrets this choice of his because the war is what changed his and Mary Ann's relationship. To survive through war, one needs to be able to forgive themselves otherwise they will continue to dwell on their "mistakes". This transfers to everyday life as well, and shows that people need to forgive themselves and rather than worrying, just learn from their past experiences.
I'd like to choose the word "always" from this chapter. He says this when he is talking about how the man he killed would have simply passed by him, and that killing the man was not in any way necessary. O'Brien says that "it was always be that way," meaning that the fact that he killed a man for no reason will always be stuck in his head, eating away at his concions. This can be realated to the story as a whole because I feel like this is most of war tends to be. It seems as though everything that happens in all of these stories "always" stays with the soldiers, forever. It seems that every single soldier has trouble forgetting the reality of what they did, and what was done to them.
ReplyDelete"Speaking of Courage" very much reminds me of this word. This is because in this part of the story, Norman Bowker cannot forgive himself for the death of Kiowa. He blames himself, even though it was not completely his fault. He never lets go. He will "always" blame himself for this, he will "always" think it was his fault, and most importantly, he will "always" carry this horrible burden with him.
The word I pulled out from the story is "pretend". In Ambush, Tim O'brien lies to his daughter when he tells her he did not kill anyone in the war. He is pretending to be someone he is not. Later in the story, Tim talks about how Kiowa tried to convince him that the man would have died anyway. Kiowa told Tim to ask himself "what the dead man would've done if things were reversed." In the story, it seems like Kiowa is trying to justify killing and whatever else goes on in the war. The soldiers try to pretend that what they are doing is justifiable just to make themselves feel better because they don't really have much of a choice.
ReplyDeleteWe see this similar "pretending" in the story "Love" as well. In the beginning, as a way of pretending that what happened in the war was not so terrible, the men drink Gin. As soon as they start drinking Gin,their view of the war changes. "Not much later we were laughing about some of the craziness that used to go on."
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ReplyDeleteThe word I chose from the story "Ambush" was invisible. I think that reflects not only this story but the whole book because to the soldiers, everything they have back at home is invisible until they get home. The only thing that they can see is the present, and even that is sometimes invisible. There are booby traps everywhere, hidden - invisible.
ReplyDeleteThe word invisible also relates to "The things they carried". Everything around these soldiers is invisible except what they brought with them. The only visible thing they have, is the things they carry, not their thoughts or emotions, just the tangible items. When it lists everything that each person brought, it shows exactly who that person is, and this is the exact opposite idea as in Ambush. "The things they Carried" does relate to the word invisible though, because I think by showing what is visible at the beginning of the book, you can see through out the rest of the book, what was actually invisible, such as characters inner feelings and thoughts.
In the story "ambush" the word that stood out for me was automatic. This word is used when Tim first sees the man moving down the trail. He says that he does everything automatically, without thinking. I think that that idea of doing everything automatically without thinking connects well with many of the other stories. The military trained these men to react to every situation without having to think about what they are really doing. This allows them to do things that they look back on and are ashamed or disappointed in.
ReplyDeleteIn "the things they carried" all of the characters have things that they keep with them for reasons we don't really know. Specifically the captain who as soon as patrol is over begins reading letters from the girl back home. He does that automatically without thinking about why. He just knows it makes him feel better so he does it.
Being able to do these things automatically without thinking is what the military wants their soldiers to be able to do. But it can also be bad in the long run for the mental health of the soldiers.
I the story “Ambush”, the word I chose was forgive. Forgiveness has a great significance in this story. O'Brien describes his situation with the grenades and how one was ready to go off, the pin already was removed from the weapon. Once O'Brien threw the grenade towards an opposing soldier, who was not an immediate harm to O'Brien, the grenade blew up. O'Brien had and still has trouble forgiving himself about that incident. He wonders if he is forgiven and at times forgives himself, but it its too hard for him to know that he killed someone who may have not needed to die.
ReplyDeleteThis word can also be related to the story “The Man I Killed”. This story, I believe is a continuation of the ambush scene in “Ambush”. O'Brien described how the dead man looks, he thinks about the dead man. O'Brien “puts himself in the dead man's shoes”, he tries to imagine how the dead solider lived, about his family, his life. I could be said that O'Brien suffered the loss of that soldier by meditating on the no longer presence of that human being laying on the ground with a star-shaped hole in one eye. O'Brien wonders of he will be forgiven for the death of that soldier. Many soldiers feel this when they are at war and/or when they return home from war. Many must ask: “was it right to kill that man? Should he have died? Did he choose to become a soldier, or was he forced to? What kind of person was he? A father? A loving son?”. All these questions may arise and many soldiers may wonder if they are forgiven and if they could ever forgive themselves for the people they killed.
In the story "Ambush" the word that stood out to me was "killed." The big idea of this story is how Tim O'brien killed a man for the first time in war and he compared the man to himself throughout the story. The fact that he killed the man really made him realize the reality of war and what was actually going on. Repeatedly he explains the life and characteristics of the man that he killed because it affected him so much.
ReplyDeleteI compared this word in story to that of "How to Tell a True War Story" in this story he talks about how war isn't moral and how innocent people are killed and that is the "truth" of war. This story made me think more about "How to Tell a True War Story."
I found that the word "pretend" had a great deal of significance in the story. In the story "Ambush", O'Brien shows us that we have to sometimes pretend that a bad thing we did didn't actually happen. There are things that he wanted to forget, but because it was during the Vietnam war, some things you can't forget. He wanted to pretend that things were normal, and that once the war was over everyone would go back to how they were and they wouldn't have to think about the war ever again. Even with his daughter, he needs to pretend that she's a grown up in order to tell her the truth about killing a man in Vietnam. "Someday, I hope, she'll ask again. But here I want to pretend she's a grown-up." This man had a life before the war, but since he was killed, he would never go back to that same life again. O'Brien pretends what it would have been like if he hadn't killed him, and how he would have carried on with his life and had just continued walking on the trail.
ReplyDeleteSometimes we have to pretend that things are less impossible and less dangerous than they are. Many of the young men didn't want to go to war, and in that, they had to pretend that what they were getting themselves into was going to work itself out. Unfortunately, this was a mirage that many soldiers had to face once they got to Vietnam.
I compared this story to "Speaking of Courage". In this story Norman Bowker is at his home town back in the states, but he isn't all there. The war is over to everyone else, but he can't forget what went on back in Nam. He was trying to pretend that things would go back to normal, that he would have a normal life again, but in "Notes" it was confirmed that living a life without war didn't give him the drive that he needed.
I feel that pretending things aren't as bad as they could be hurts us a lot more than when we face the truth, no matter how harsh. It's like we have to pretend things are easy to get ourselves into dangerous situations like a war. We have to kid ourselves into it, or else we can't face the truth when it's all over.
For the chapter Ambush, I have chosen the word difficult. I chose this word because it describes Tim O'Brien's situation of killing someone to be difficult. The way he reacts to killing someone makes it diffucult for him to handle, he ois constantly thinking of that person he killed and gets into way to much detail about the dead person.
ReplyDeleteI relate this quote to thew story The Man I Killed, because both stories describe situations in which O'Brien has killed somebody, and the way he deals with these situations, he makes it too hard on himself, creating a difficult situation, which is why thats the word i chose.
In the chapter Ambush i chose the word "shape-up". I think that word sums up just how bad it is to witness war. When you kill somebody, who is your "enemy" you may think your going to enjoy it, but will you really? Tim O'Brien didn't believe in war and killing somebody ruined him to the point where he couldn't speak to anyone.
ReplyDeleteThis chapter and word is just like the chapter The Man i killed. He describes everything that is happening to the dead guy in both chapters and really feels down on him self.