WEDNESDAY'S TEST: PART I (Passage analysis) and PART II (Interpretive essay):

PART I.  Passage Analysis.

For this segment of Wednesday’s test you’ll see two excerpts from the book, and you’ll be asked to write a literary analysis of either one.  Successful essays will put the chosen passage into context in The Things They Carried and then discuss details of Tim O’Brien’s writing style and the effects he achieves with language on behalf of his ideas.

To be successful with this, write about the way O’Brien’s use of tone and other literary devices contributes to larger themes in The Things They Carried.

Sample Passage:

      The road curved west, where the sun had now dipped low.  He figured it was close to five o’clock – twenty after, he guessed.  The war had taught him to tell time without clocks, and even at night, waking from sleep, he could usually place it within ten minutes either way.  What he should do, he thought, is to stop at Sally’s house and impress her with this new time-telling trick of his.  They’d talk for a while, catching up on things, and then he’d say, “Well, better hit the road, it’s five thirty-four,” and she’d glance at her wristwatch and say, “Hey! How’d you do that?” and he’d give a casual shrug and tell her it was just one of those things you pick up.  He’d keep it light.  He wouldn’t say anything about anything.  “How’s it being married?” he might ask, and he’d nod at whatever she answered with, and he would not say a word about how he’d almost won the Silver Star for valor.

 Sample Essay in response to this passage.

To “keep it light” appears to be Tim O’Brien’s tone in this passage.  The airy lightness of these words – excerpted from the chapter where Norman Bowker drives around the lake in his car – acts as a counterweight to the enormous emotional weight that Norman carries within himself.

The dialogue is friendly and cordial (“Hey, how’s it being married?”), and the sentences move in a predictable and orderly direction.  The innocent-sounding episode is one of several scenarios that play out in Norman’s mind as he circles the lake.

Subtle alliteration guides the longer sentences.  In the following example, O’Brien reinforces his ominously superficial tone by returning to the letter ‘w’:  “The war had taught him to tell time without clocks, and even at night, waking from sleep, he could usually place it within ten minutes either way.”  The ‘w’ doesn’t signify anything in and of itself, but it serves as a gentle guide for reading the sentence, discreetly congealing the reader’s sense of the “time-telling trick” Norman intends to play on Sally.

The breezy simplicity of Tim O’Brien’s outward tone cuts against the sad interior of Norman’s traumatized heart and mind.  The tragic and violent death of Kiowa still haunts Norman.  No amount of lakeside small talk can diminish the pain that still haunts him five years after the Vietnam War has ended.  The vain thought that he will somehow please Sally, an old girlfriend, ultimately contributes to our sense that Norman is lost; for Sally is a happily married woman, not a dating prospect.  Norman’s inner hopes and thoughts are bleak, not breezy.

Part II -- Interpretive Essay

You'll see three of these prompts on Wednesday, and you'll be asked to write one (1) of the three.  With that in mind, you'd do well to prepare four -- that way, you'll have at least one well-prepared essay sitting in front of you as the test begins.  (It's fine to bring one page of typed or handwritten notes into Wednesday's test.)

1.    How, according to Tim O’Brien, does someone “tell a true war story”?  What is ironic or double-edged about the phrase “a true war story” in the context of The Things They Carried?  Choose one  story from the second half of the book and clearly explain how this story lives up to O’Brien’s standard of telling “a true war story” – in its events and its deliberate blurring of truth and fiction, but especially in the emotions it evokes.

2.     Discuss the idea of “Notes,” both as it pertains to “Speaking of Courage,” and as the idea of “notes” is developed metaphorically.  What kinds of notes appear in “Notes”?  How does this chapter contribute to the overall meaning of the book? 

3.     Discuss the way guilt affects the lives of Norman Bowker and Rat Kiley.  In what ways is guilt a motivating factor in their behavior?  What makes shame or guilt so difficult?  In what way does guilt provoke each man to make emotional decisions instead of well-reasoned decisions? How does storytelling help to relieve some of Norman’s and Rat’s guilt?

4.     Paradox is central to The Things They Carried.  Write about one of the following paradoxical relationships in the book, making specific references to events and ideas:  war and beauty; the fourteen-year old orphan who dances when her family is killed; enemies among friends; war heroes and shame or embarrassment.  Explain what your chosen paradox seems to signify to Tim O’Brien.

5.     O’Brien ends the book with “The Lives of the Dead.”  Referring to this and at least two other stories (chapters) in The Things They Carried as examples, explain what O’Brien means by this phrase.  In what sense do dead people come alive in The Things They Carried? 

6.     At one point Tim O’Brien says that his writing is “not therapy”; however, at the end of the book he writes about the life-saving quality of stories.  Discuss the theme of art and healing in The Things They Carried.