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"Spin"

            I'm going to write this as I'm reading just to make things yummy. The tone of the first sentence was very casual and welcoming, but it was interesting to find another contradictive (is this a word?) moment in Tim O'Brien's writing. He begins with mentioning how the war had it's sweet moments, but recalls a time when his fried Azar gave chocolate to a little boy that had a plastic leg. "War's a bitch," Azar said sadly. "Some poor fucker ran out of ammo." That moment felt very far from sweet. O' Brien's gets even darker within the next few paragraphs. The reader can feel a strong bitterness in O'Brien's tone when he's talking about how structured and peaceful a game of checkers is compared to war's chaos. When he talks about how traumatic events always replay in his head, you're heart can’t help but to sink a little. I write these words comfortably in my room to break down another man's work and analyze it, but he writes his words all while reliving the horrible events he's experienced. He's seen death right in front of him in a way that most of us haven’t. We can never truly understand his plight. What was really interesting in this paragraph was how he mentioned he's 43 years old, the war has been over for a while now and how he's a writer now. Obviously O' Brien was a vet and became a writer, but while reading The Things They Carried, the reader is constantly absorbed in O'Brien's unique writing style that bends fiction and non-fiction. He is playing the protagonist, but all these fictional stories have to be coming from some true events that are stuck in the back of O'Brien's mind. Ok I just talked a lot about the first two pages. Since it’s getting late I’m going to stop writing here and read the rest in bed as well as On the Rainy River. I really suck at due dates.

Hi Vince.