...Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story,” centers on the principle that a reader cannot always trust the narrator of a story to tell the truth. The reader can listen, but must never cease to analyze in order to decipher the truth in each story. In Tim O’Brien’s short story, his narrator is naturally accepted and assumed to be the author of the story. Through this narrator, a story of personal Vietnam War experiences unfolds. Because this appears to be true stories told by O’Brien, the reader is left to assume all the tales are true encounters when in fact, O’Brien mixes truth and fiction in order to make the story believable. It is important to remember that the soldier telling the war story can only relay the facts that he remembers from the event. He may be sincere in telling the events as he remembers, but not accurate in reporting the entirety of the historical picture.. The setting is the Vietnam War; a war filled with controversy, and soldiers and civilians struggling to make sense of it all. In the story, O’Brien creates a believable setting with believable characters. He describes a setting that one would expect to find in Vietnam: rugged terrain, foxholes, jungles and muddy rivers. He also uses the giant canopy of a tree (as one would expect in this area) to tell the details of the death of his friends, Lemon and Rat. Describing the smell of the moss, the white blossoms and the lack of sunlight allowed by the tree, O’Brien creates a soothing feeling...
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...February 2, 2015 Thesis – Can two completely different stories have similarities in their setting and how the setting was used to support the story? I. Introduction – YGB and The Destructors took place during different time periods and in completely different locations. (Young Goodman Brown (YGB) – Nathanial Hawthorne published 1835, setting 17th century. The Destructors – Graham Greene published 1954 – setting mid 1950s) a. Different time period b. Different country c. Different time of day II. Why does the setting matter? d. Include character impact. e. The setting in both stories makes them believable III. Both stories rely on their settings to support the plot f. YGB – The setting creates a dark atmosphere. Allows the readier to believe there is witch craft happening and the devil is involved g. The Destructors – The setting creates a desolate location, much of a city after war time. The entire plot is based on symbolism and would not be able to occur if the town wasn’t recovering from war. The whole block was bombed, except the one house that the story is about. IV. Conclusion – both stories took place during different era’s, in different countries and had different conflicts. Similarly, the setting of each supported the plot that showcased conflicts true to the time period. Both stories were written by authors that were from the area. Both stories used the setting (place and time period) to deliver a moral...
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...Different characters have different personalities. Whether in real life or in a fictional book, all people have their own feelings, personalities or emotions. All characters from The Book Thief are believable because they all have emotions and that is why they should be considered as believable characters because emotions and feelings are what make those characters realistic. For example, Max Vandenburg, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, are believable from The Book Thief. Max with his anger and Hans and Rosa’s love toward their family are what make them especially believable. First of all, Max Vandenburg is a Jewish fist-fighter who hides in the Hubermann’s house because of what Hans owe from his father. “You find a small black room, in sits a scum. He is starving. He is afraid.” (Page 138) This part of the book explained how before Max moved into the Hubermann’s house, he used to hide in a small room waiting for his friend. It definitely showed how lonely Max was while hiding and waiting. This loneliness is a very realistic human feeling that makes Max a believable character. “In the blue corner, we have the champion of the world, The Fubhrer… and in the red corner, we have the Jewish, rat-faced challenger –Max Vandenburg.” (Page 251) Loneliness is not the only feeling Max has in the story but also the anger towards Hitler. As a Jewish who was constantly being hunted for at that time, he had furious feelings toward Hitler, the Nazi leader, which made him fantasize about being in a fight...
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...The social issue in Glass Sword is what makes the whole story. The issue is unfair division among social class. The division is so great, that it’s hard to not see it. The Silver Bloods are seen as royalty, and the Red Bloods are viewed as helpless and weak. The only differences between the two are the color of their blood, and that the Silvers have special abilities. These differences are the only reason that Reds live such hard lives. They are forced to work in horrible conditions, are discriminated against, live in slums, and are all financially unstable. They are also treated like cattle by the Silvers. They get to live glamorous lives, at the expense of the Red’s lives. So, of course, the Reds are going to be upset. They will...
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...O’Brien” (1) on the title page. If one was observant, they would have known what genre the book was from the beginning. In the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story”, the author writes “in many cases a true war story cannot be believed” (68). This is because the storytellers falsify certain elements to make the story more believable. The stories O’Brien told in his award winning book may have some dishonest facts, although, the overall plot and content is based off of a true story. The twenty year time interval is important to the stories because it shows that the experience still has a powerful impact on the author. Although numerous stories have a pernicious effect on O’Brien and his friends, he still explains them with passion and remembrance. Furthermore, the author clarifies his tales in a way that the...
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...believe there is a serious underlying theme that everyone has the right to be free and sometimes you have to stand up and make sacrifices to keep your freedom. Standing up for freedom is never an easy task as shown in 300 but, everyone deserves to be free. In discussing the storytelling, acting, cinematography, editing, sound, style and directing, the impact of society on the film, genre, a formalist approach to analysis, and the overall textual theme of 300 I will attempt to back up my belief. Storytelling 300’s narrative structure is the first-person point of view of Dilios, a Spartan solider under the command of King Leonidas. The film is presented in chronological order and takes place in Sparta and Thermopylae, Greece. The major conflict in the film is that the Persian army has come to Sparta and requests their submission or will kill them and enslave their women and children. King Leonidas makes the decision to stand up to the Persians but; is not allowed to go to war with the Xerxes, the Persian God-king, because the Ephors deny him the right. The Ephors are later found out to be traitors. Unfortunately, by the end the Spartans are betrayed by Ephialtes, a deformed Spartan outcast, and Xerxes orders all 300 Spartans to be killed. However, in doing so Xerxes really only unleashes the full strength of Greece as Dilios is able to rally all Greeks with his story of the brave 300. There are both internal and external conflicts present in the film. The obvious external conflict...
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...a careful look at the film for the following critique, it is clear that there is a general theme prevailing in the whole movie that, sometimes one has to make sacrifices to gain freedom. Film Critique The movie “300” finds its roots from a graphic novel named 300 also, that was written by Frank Miller in 1998. The movie is based on one of the fierce Persian Wars in 492-449 BC in a battle known as the Thermopylae Battle. This battle went down in the historical books as a war that was characterized with plenty of bravery. The Spartan King, who was known as Leonidas, was the leader of 300 Spartan warriors who engaged the Persian Army in a war, which intended to block them from going into Greece via a two-meter wide pass in the Thermopylae Mountains. In as much as the Persian Army greatly outnumbered the Spartan soldiers, they were held back for two days, and in those two days they encountered major losses, which outweighed that of the Spartan warriors by far. However, on the third day, all was lost when a traitor informed the Persian King of a Path that would lead them behind the Spartan warriors. Therefore, it remains uncertain to the viewers as to whether the Spartan army would have managed to defeat the Persian Army had the traitor kept his mouth shut. One wonders what man was King Leonidas that he chose to fight and die for his country instead of sending armies to fight. It is almost unheard of that a leader can put down...
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...were skeptical of the “true” story he was about to tell them. The story was about Mark Fossie’s girlfriend, Mary Anne, who at first arrived at Vietnam for their amusement, but then quickly grew obsessed with the elements of the wilderness. When Fossie pressured her to return to the states, Mary Anne decided to leave and escape into the jungles, describing in detail how she changed and wore a necklace made of human tongues. Kiley stopped there abruptly, which irritated Sanders as “it’s against the rules” to finish the story without an ending. Later resuming his tale and satisfying Sander’s curiosity, Kiley reminded him that the ending was not from personal experience but a speculation. In this chapter, the author had two purposes: prove how fiction and truth are often blended together...
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...Deceit is often seen as cruel and unnecessary. However, sometimes it is needed. In Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Orr is the perfect example of how deceiving someone might be necessary for survival. By using his ability, Yossarian’s tentmate Orr manages to escape the unending cycle of increasing war missions through a master plan of deception. Despite being extremely clever, Orr makes himself appear to be clueless and innocent. Fixing things around the tent and telling pointless stories, such as the crab apple tale, Orr makes himself appear to not be a threat. By drifting through the war and not making many enemies, Orr puts himself in a position of security, despite his scheming behind the scenes. Crash landing his plane makes him seem incompetent,...
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...Keairra Adams Short Story 5th Hour 05/25/2014 The Greasiest In the short story “Greasy Lake,” T. Coraghessan Boyle the setting to reflects morality and corruption of the youth, creates an appropriate atmosphere, and better develops the characters of the story. Boyle does this by focusing the story at the Greasy Lake and making the Lake as both a setting and character. Greasy Lake is the story of three friends who are portray themselves to be bad characters. Until they run into a situation where they question, just how bad they are. It can easily be identify as the changing from boys to men, in the beginning of the story the narrator and his friends were compared to nature, which can relate to the many ironic events that happen to the narrator. Some of The circumstances that the narrator in "Greasy Lake" finds himself in are the same that many young people find themselves in when fighting war. One of the many things that took place was when the narrator sees himself as a tough guy or "bad character". He believes he is invincible, There is nobody as cool as he is, or as dangerous as him and his friends are. At the middle of the story the narrator and his friends got a harsh dose of reality as The mood of nature change when he ran into a tough guys which made him realized that he wasn't really tough at all, Making him run into the lake like a little bitch. At this point the narrator is not bothered about his mom’s car because he is now safe in the lake behind trees where no...
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...Goodman Brown has many aspects that correlate with Romanticism. The story does a good job of foreshadowing and connecting deeper meanings to its core. But it does an even better job of fleshing out its characters and leading the audience to the right place. Romanticism occurs in the forms of emotion, individualism, and overall imagination which all refer to Romanticism’s tradition. Emotion is a very necessary plot device in this story and furthers its essence into Romanticism. Expressing emotion is very useful but also very difficult especially when one tries to show not tell the reader. Nathaniel Hawthorne conveys these emotions through words with connotations that fit the scene. This works effectively throughout the story examples...
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...during his career have been War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, and all for a very good reason: they’re relatable. Believe it or not, many of Wells works use reading techniques and themes to form a personal connection with his readers. Of these two novels, The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, three themes stand out most prominently: fear, science and technology, and sacrifice for the good of the whole. A brief summary of the novels is as follows: Throughout the first opening pages of The Time Machine, we learn about a group of men who gather every Thursday in the presence of a man we only know by the name of the “Time Traveler.” The unnamed group of men discuss a wide array of topics and issues of the 19th century. As we read deeper into the contents of the book, we learn about the Time Traveler's interest in the subject of time...
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...American Realism The Civil War tore the country apart. Once America was reunited in 1865, there was a lot of healing that needed to take place to correct the wounds Americans had suffered at the hands of their kin. In these years there were still a lot of questions to answer and still a lot of truth to be found out about the nation itself. The questions of the place of African-Americans, white Americans, political Americans and every other kind of American out there was a source for constant frustration and violence. This is the background and the huge dust storm that American Realism rose out of. Prior to the Civil War, America was knee deep in the Romantic Movement which included writers such as Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, Poe and Whitman. Their writings focused on the puritan aspects of their ancestors or of the dark romance and psychological perspectives writers such as Poe and Melville used. However, after the war, this movement began to fade and Realism increased as the choice reading of the people. This was due to multiple events and changes in culture that led to Americans looking for something better to relate to. The first event was the end of the Civil War. The Civil War showed the violent intentions men had towards each other and also showed the vulnerability of men and the nation and how ungodly man actually was. However, Realism did not begin immediately after the Civil War but rather took off in the 1880’s. So what happened in the 1880’s then? The 1880’s...
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...So, I’m going to have to do to this one what I did to the first one, and again, I fully acknowledge the Plinkett reviews as a source for me to draw from. The big difference here is that while I was more than willing to give a little leeway to The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones gets no such love. Plain and simple: this movie was terrible. The Direction First and foremost, we need to remember one big thing about the first 3 movies: only one was directed by George Lucas. The other 2 were done by directors Lucas respected (Kershner and Marquand). These movies are 100% Lucas and, in the case of Clones, he elected to direct a movie that was nearly entirely filmed against a green screen. This allowed him to do filming of characters against a blank canvas while allowing him to basically design whatever world he wanted around them. Green screens had long been used for special effects and matte fills, but hadn’t been used this heavily at this time. While Episode II wasn’t a full “digital backlot” film, there were tons and tons of shots that had actors doing their thing with nothing around them but green cloth. The upside here is that digital backlots can save a lot of money in film production since you don’t have to build sets that are either very complicated (aka “expensive”) or utterly impossible. The downside is that if your director isn’t, you know… an actor’s director, the actors all end up like they’re acting in front of a bunch of green cloth because they have nothing...
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...Frank Vargas Professor Beverly Whitson English 52 24 March 2014 The Era We Live In What’s one of the worst parts about living life? It can be not being able to find that one true love in life, or even living with regret in your heart. I always hear conversations about people being together with a person they don’t love, or people talking about something they wish they could have done when they had the chance, but were too concerned about another factor in their lives, now having to live life full of regrets. Like Gil Pender says, “That’s just the era we line in…” In the 2011 film, Midnight In Paris, written and directed by Woody Allen, tells the story of Gil Pender’s, played by Owen Wilson, longing for self-fulfillment and his love for historical 1920’s Paris, France. The film also stars veteran actress, Rachael McAdams, playing Gil’s significant other, Inez. The film starts off with Gil and Inez, two engaged Americans in modern Paris having a little vacation. On a lonesome late night stroll, Gil finds himself lost in the backstreets of Paris and sees an old car from the 20’s drive up to him with open doors. Ready for an adventure in Paris he decides to get into the vehicle. Little does he know that he just stepped into a time portal transporting Gil back to the wonderful times of 1920’s Paris. Confused and full of awe, he assures himself that, “He was born too late.” While trying to figure out where he is, he runs into another young American couple, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald...
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