Swarm!

Ack! Nothing like coming home to find ants crawling around the house. Of course, from the ant point of view, I'm sure there's nothing like the vacuum coming to suck you up; all beings in this house are equally shocked. Well, not equally, I guess. I'm still here. 
Anyway, on to today's class and some homework. We spent the whole class on The Things They Carried. Some topics we covered include: points of view; Jimmy Cross and the savior motif; the use of vignettes to recreate memory and the chaos of Vietnam; the non-linear plot line and the lack of clear chronology, which also replicates memory and the disorder of the Vietnam experience. In addition, I spent much of the class reading "On the Rainy River" out loud - sorry if that was just too long - it was much shorter in my head last night - anyway, the emerging themes in this chapter / story include the shame / embarrassment that drove Tim O'Brien to war: "I was a coward. I went to war." Note too, the irony that he saw war as the cowardly choice. Another theme is the immorality of the Vietnam War and O'Brien's view of the war as unjust and inexplicable. He refers to it as "Certain blood shed for uncertain reasons." Of course, another emerging theme, which is really layered throughout the entire work is the notion of truth versus reality and how to capture the truth, recreate the truth, or embellish the truth to make a story true. Is it more true if it's not true? In war is there really a single truth? 
Anyway, you should be reading the novel. I would advise you to read up to page 110 for Thursday and then up to page 154 for Monday. Of course, you can adjust that schedule as long as you reach the final goal of finishing the novel late next week. But, it is much easier to read 25 pages a day or so than 100 pages in one go. 
Research Project: By next class you should definitely have read your two essays assigned last week. You should come with a research question based on those two essays. Note, Aliya had to read a third essay to come up with a good research question - try to think of a topic that is not too general and could actually be answered in a 5-10 page paper. In the library, you will need to find seven sources you could use to write a paper to answer your research question. 
Whew! That's a lot. There's work everywhere. Kind of like those ants! 
Must go exterminate. 
See you Thursday!