Thoughts about Neilson's repetitive article

so of course by now we all hopefully realize that the things they carried is a collection os stories about the vietnam war-what happened before, during and after it- and the stories are told by O'Brian a supposed vietnam veteran. From what Neilson said in his worth while, os fun to read article, he thinks that the book is postmodern.

so why does Neilson think that the things they carried is postmodern? Vietnam, like many other wars does not fit what most would call a war, or the definition of a war...a conflict carried on by force of arms, as between nations or as between parties within a nation, as by land, sea or air. Neilson says that "the war, according to the critics, was defined by uncertainty in motivation, history, strategy, official rhetoric, media representations, identification of friend or foe." You think you understand that, well Neilson probably didn't think anyone would, so he just kept saying the same thing over and over again, just worded differently.

okay, this line caught my attention, and hopefully other people's, " the weakness of the things they carried is that O'Brien's imagination is virtually the only reality. O'Brien does not contexualize his expierences, does not provide us with any deeper meaning of the causes and consequences of war, and does not see beyond his individual expierence to document the vastly greater suffering of the Vietnamese." People didn't ask for the war to happen, US soldiers weren't asked to be thrown into battle, and the Vietnamese people weren't asked to have their homes and country destroyed or the family members to be killed.

Well to end this, I hope whomever reads this had a nice weekend, and had an enjoyabke time reading the article and finishing the book.

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The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried is a very interesting book-it is a book full of short stories,which I thought would make it confusing, but wierdly, you can see into Tim O'Brien's head; for example, his true feelings about the war, his time in the war, and well, many more things, like Martha.

Something that comes up a lot is silence. In "How To Tell a True War Story"silence is talked about. O'Brien is told a story about 6 guys going on a Listening Patrol in the mountains. They had to be in the silence for a week, after awhile they started hearing noises-they report this, well enemy movement and warrant an air strike. Even after the attack, they still hear noises. What made these men go crazy-silence? Later O'Brien asks the man, "what's the moral?" "forget it." "No, go ahead.""Hear that quiet, man?" "That quiet-just listen. There's the moral" (O'Brien 77).

The theme of silence also comes up when Rat Kiley is kill the poor baby buffalo. The buffalo did not make any noise the whole time it was being tortured.

Silence, in this book, and all this situations is a horrible thing, it is something that can be really destructive and something that is not wanted.

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Post-Modern Blog Finally-Internet Now Working, Sorry Mr. D

Okay, this first semester of of senior year is done, we are almost through, but though we are almost done, I think I will always be confused about what Postmodernism actually is.

It is the concept if not having a universal truth-not having a right or wrong way to see things. Postmodernism is about having different concepts that coexist with each other. Maus for example. Who in their right mind would ever think that the Halocaust could be dipicted in a graphic novel. Though many people would think that it being made into a graphic novel was bad, in my opinion it helped to show that stories can be shown more than one light. I think the central idea of postmodernism is the theory of naratves/meta-narratives and truth of lies. In the end, I just think postmodernism is people believing things differently. Everyone in the world is not going too wake up one day and magically think the same thing; that is what I think Postmodernism is trying to tell us, that we all have our ideas and that we shouldn't let other people try to change what we think.

Still, I think Postmodern can mean too many things to too many different people, that I can't fully wrap my mind around it. I am glad though, that I have learned about something that otherwise I would have never known existed.

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Finally able to post my opinion on Maus, my internet is finally working!

A few people have been talking about how they are not sure about this book because of the fact that it is a graphic novel, I think it being a graphic novel is perfect. I don'treally read comic books, I find they are too short and that I read them too fast, that is why I stick with novels. I usually stay away from comics, unless they are free or I am forced to read them. But I would have to say I am glad I was forced to read this one. I might not be an avid comic reader, but this is something that everyone should read. It covers aspects of history which is unusual for a comic, which makes this one different than everyother comic that I have read; which isn't that many, so there may be more of this same kind of comic.

Hmm, so what I am going to wrtie about in my essay? I will talk about Scott McCloud's artciles, I could talk about how comics can be a storytelling medium. I could analyze how Maus conveys the author's intent through comic devices that McCloud pointed out. Oh and I could also talk about Spiegelman uses animal masks at the beginning of the second chapter.

Hmm...I can also write about why Spiegelman decided to have his father's story a graphic novel. The halocaust was a huge tragedy and the fact that he made it a comic shows something about the man behind the comic, but what exactly? I would also like to talk about the different types of animals Spiegelman makes people. I might also talk about how Art abuses his fathers' willingness to talk about the Halocaust. Art creates the tension that he believes his father is a source of because he is constantly asking for his father's story about what happened to him during the Halocaust.

I think I will also talk about the theme of luck withing the graphic novel. Vladek is a "survivor of the Halocaust because of all the luck he had during it; this luck he encountered affected him because he felt bad that he survived while many others did not.

Well I rambled for awhile, I hope I can fit this all in one essay.

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The answer to all the questions, well not really, but I do try, =)

Why "must the system be first?" Shouldn't the people how made the system, well people in general be first? I do agree with Carr, the human brain has become "an outdated computer that needs a faster processor." So much information is thrown at people throughout a normal day that it is hard to even remember what someone told you that morning. Have you heard that people only remember the first thing they are told in a day? (Or something like that) That is why there are commercials, we need a break to have our brains register what we just watched. Vonnegut made a good decision by making the chapters of his book Cat's Cradle so short-he wanted to keep the masses interested and not have them give up on his book because they couldn't concentrate. Google has not helped us. It gives people information right away, I know this may sound like a nice thing, but people do not go out and search for information on their own now. And how do we know if the information given by Google is correct? It is easy to change info by just hacking someone's site.

Taylor wanted "the gradual substitution of science for the rule of thumb thoughout the mechnic arts." His concpet would bring about "a utpoia of perfect efficiency." So science can make everything perfect? Taylor must have been crazy. How can something that can cause so much harm towards the human race, humanity, the planet, the universe help create a perfect utopia. A perfect Utopia should not/would not include science in general.

So I went off a little. So I agree with Carr, the human race has a short attention span that is/was caused by the advancements of technology and Google has helped this along by having this technology andinformation right at someone's fingertips.

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Philosophy Now

One of the main things that stuck out was the article in general. The entire last paragraph of the article remnded me so much of Brave New World-when john asks the Deltas if they "like being babies?..mewling and puking." Will or has this rapid growth of information and technology actually suspended the human race from achieving anything or has it advanced it?

Another thing that popped out to me from the article and video was how much information is being created. That we need to absorb more and more knowledge/information to get ahead/survive this world is distrubing. The concept of being able to make more room in one's brain to store more information is just crazy; we are not computers! We have become reliable on computers for such easy tasks.

Also, another main thing that I may have mentioned, but already forgot to talk about is how computers have taken over out lives. Well I have talked about it, but here is more. How many of us have a myspace, facebook, twitter(which is the wierdest of them all), or any other networking? How many times do you go on the internet? WE ARE ON THE INTERNET TO TALK ABOUT HOW THE "ADVANCEMENT" OF TECHNOLOGY HAD TAKEN OVER OUR LIVES. I think that the concept of a computer being smarter than the average human brain (what exactly is average?) is creepy. HAS ANYBODY EVER SEEN THE TERMINATOR MOVIES?! I think that technology has helped us, we have achieved so much because of it, but where is it leading to? Will we rely on technology for everything in a few years? Look how much stuff has advanced in the last 10 years, 5 years, heck 1 year! What will happen if we continue to rely on something that may eventually be smater than us?

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Cat's Cradle Chs. 1-7

Cat's Cradle clearly has postmodernism ideas in it. Vonnegut's writing style shows the characters craziness with his random hops from topic to topic.

Bokonism is a major factor of the book that seems to have postmocdernist ideas. How can a religion that outwardly states that it is false, that there is no truth to it an have followers. Bokonists know that what they believe in is made up of lies, yet they can not help but live/follow its rules. This reflects the idea of the postmodern idea of holding two contradictive thoughts at once.

Felix Hoeniker and John definitly bleed postmodernism. Felix is clearly indiffernet to any morals that the rest of us seem to have. For example when the topic of sin comes up, Felix replies "what is sin?" To judge right from wrong, one must be able to have some type of morals, but Felix does not have this. Postmodernism has a notion that there is no such thing as absolute truth; this goes with Felix's negation towards any morals.

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