Journal Reaction Part 2
The Things They Carried
After finishing this book, I am inspired to adjust the way I write to closer look like O’Brien’s. He writes with such vitality, with such a life force, that events previously foreign to bystanders come alive. Each event breaths with unique rhythm and volume, and the readers eagerly consume it. After admitting my reaction to O’Brien’s writing style, I am now interested in examining my opinion of war.
I am convinced that each human is born with this gut instinct that screams of the immorality of war. Born innocent to the world, a child looks encouraged towards his neighbor. As the Bible teaches to “love thy neighbor as yourself” so a person newly born into this world respects his neighbor. How unnatural it would be if an infant devised a scheme to destroy a play mate that refused to share a toy. However, children are undeniably quite capable of manipulation. In Bill Cosby’s stand up comedy, he does a skit where a child climbs to the top of the refrigerator, grabs a forbidden cookie, and then, as the adult enters the room, says “I got you a cookie Mommy”. Thus, are adults similarly driven, that they will deceive to get what they want? One passage in particular stands out to me in The Things They Carried:
War is hell, but that’s not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.
Evidently war is full of a multitude of ironies. For example, what is worse: idly standing by and letting people die at the hand of a dictator, or intruding into the matters of another country and determining the future of its citizens? What is more just: freedom to determine one’s own destiny, which means no interruption by other nations; or gaining freedom even if it means the invasion of countries such as America?
I suspect, in the near future, our nation has a lot of deciding to do. What does freedom mean to us? What does death mean? Is the loss of one life a justifiable cause for the loss of another? O’Brien means not to answer these questions but to raise them, challenging readers like me to do some serious soul searching on behalf of this nation.

Journal Reaction Part 1
Slaughter-House-Five
As soon as I began reading this book I saw undeniable similarities to Tim O’Brien’s novel. Kurt Vonnegut begins by discussing the truth of his novel, saying that some of it is true and some of it is not true. Vonnegut uses lies to reach the truth, similar to other writers. That’s the beauty of fiction: the words used are inaccurate, but they paint accurate pictures.
Vonnegut uses time travel throughout this novel, not only as a means to transport his reader through the chronology of Billy Pilgrims’ life, but as a means to discuss different theories. For example, the residents of Tralfamadore have different ideas about the consistency of time. They view time as already determined, like a string of spaghetti or Christmas lights. To them time is tangible, unable to be manipulated, stunted, or changed. It simply is. I find this theory fascinating. Billy Pilgrim uses the Tralfamadorians concept of time to cope with his own life. For a reader like myself, I view these time travel theories as a literary move. I think it’s a genius method: use time travel not only as a way to move a character from place to place, but as a way to interest the reader.