What as a culture and as citizens do we owe these people?

I remembered a Somali proverb which says “The hero of someone is the warlord of another” as American citizens these soldiers are our dignity and without them no one would’ve enjoyed the peace that we have today. To other countries they may call them whatever they like but our existence depends on them and a nation without a strong army is not capable of playing an important role and that is the role our veterans play in our being. They should be respected as fathers and provide them everything they may need.

Secondary Research

My paper for The Things They Carried focuses on death and the many different ways the soldiers experienced death. Death is something that is very personal and significant. It changes who you are and the people around you. Not only did these Vietnam soldiers experience death from those who are near and dear to them, but they contributed to death in the war. This is a very conflicting idea to fathom, and it's something that has proven to haunt thee soldier for their entire lifetime.

This is an article from NPR, discussing the process of death and how soldiers typically cope with this. The article has a header that states "No Time To Mourn." I never really thought about how the soldiers are trained to treat death as a procedure. Typically, we take months to get over a death, depending on the individual. Death is something that is more complicated and foreign than it seems. These soldiers have to continue fighting with the loss and confusion lingering in the back of their minds.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18376657

Links to Medal of Honor story and veterans themes

No one wrote comments when I posted this before, but I think it's important to connect our reading to our lives.  So let's do this as a blog homework for this weekend.  Here's the post again:

It is very hard to read about characters like Norman Bowker, Lt. Jimmy Cross, and Tim O’Brien and not wonder about the issues war veterans face today, with so many struggling in the return to civilian life.  

We have to question: 

• What as a culture and as citizens do we owe these people?  
• How can we understand their stories and challenges?  
• How can we learn from them and support them?  
• Is the system set up for their success or failure?  
• What can we do to support or criticize that system?  Do we need to do both?  
• How can we relate or connect on a person level?

None of these questions will be answered deeply without inquiry and listening.  That's the start.

Here are some links.  Let's connect our readings to this world!

Here's the link to some stories and videos about Clint Romesha, who just was awarded our nation's Medal of Honor.  (Yes, the same award that the popular point-and-shoot video game is named after.) 

Please read and listen to these links.

 http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/11/politics/medal-of-honor/index.html?iref=allsearch

http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/11/clint-romesha-on-the-medal-of-honor-its-not-about-me-it-was-everybody-that-day-up-at-cop-keating/?iref=allsearch

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2013/02/07/intv-tapper-romesha-soldiers-left-behind.cnn

 http://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/romesha/battlescape.html

Clint Romesha

Secondary Research

                In my secondary research I decided to look into why humans share stories in the first place. I believe that this will give me a better idea into the goal of a storyteller, and what they are trying to prove or evoke. I was able o find an article written by Jonah Berger, in a journal from the Association for Psychological Science. Berger states that “the sharing of stories or information may be driven in part by arousal. When people are physiologically aroused, whether due to emotional stimuli or otherwise, the autonomic nervous is activated, which then boosts social transmission. Simply put, evoking certain emotions can help increase the chance a message is shared” (Berger 1). Related to the novel The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, we can see that he shares stories because hey are important to him. These stories are a way to vent his emotions and feelings. Berger also goes on to state that “feeling fearful, angry, or amused drives people to share news and information” (Berger 1). These feeling are probably very relevant in O’Brien’s memories of Vietnam. Possibly another reason he shares his stories, and sometimes very detailed.

 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110630131838.htm

secondary research Emily

My topic for my paper is fear. How fear has changed Tim O'Brien in to a soldier, a superstitious soldier, and into a writer. A topic that I believe will help improve my paper is Psychological Warfare in Vietnam. I felt that I needed to dive deeper into what created fear on the battle field besides death. I found from my research that this type of warfare could be the most dangerous. This warfare in the Vietnam war was used on both sides. I feel that I now have concrete information proving there is many types of fear on the battle field. He is a link to my best website I had found during my research. http://www.psywarrior.com/psyhist.html

Secondary Research Derek Purdie

My topic of discussion was about how killing another human being would affect someone. This was a very interesting topic to me (that's partly why I chose to write my essay about it) so I was interested to look deeper into it. I found a site that talked about how the Military trains the soldiers to "dehumanize" their targets to help them not think of them as another human, as well as many other factors about how killing someone is an incredibly powerful thing to deal with for the rest of one's life. I learned a lot from this site and the link to it is below.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heart/themes/prep.html

Secondary Research- Amanda Gooden

I didn’t think there was a lot of secondary research to help me with my theme other than sites like spark notes and cliff notes etc.  I think the best source was http://voices.yahoo.com/tim-obriens-things-they-carried-assessment-146951.html.  This was an assessment page that wasn’t your typical book notes summary.