Response 2

In O’Brian’s chapter Spin, I feel that the way he writes it gives a more personable, specific, and a genuine experience. I found it easier to read and that the sort of fragmented setup he used made it feel like it actually happened, rather than having a flowing type novel. This gave it more of an account to account happening which was unique, and in my opinion pretty cool. Twice I recall he talks about a sudden jump in attention. The first time he says “…you’d think this isn’t so bad. And right then you’d hear gunfire behind you and your nuts would fly up into your throat…” The second instance is when he is pinned in a foxhole, he says “You’re pinned down in some filthy hellhole of a paddy, getting your ass delivered to kingdom come, but then for a few seconds everything goes quiet and you look up…” The pervasive image here would be the peace that can occur before, and even during times of high conflict. This also occurs in his chapter The Man I Killed. In this chapter he often refers to the way the man looks. He reminds us of his hair, his face, and his skin. He also takes us to an image of blue bell flowers, another object showing a sort of serenity. Good Form I found to be the most intriguing piece, for the sheer fact that he sort of tells us that the things he wrote didn’t happen, or they did, just not in the way he told them. He stresses here that things that happen aren’t as important as the things that they affect and the emotions they provoke.
Chandler writes that “…an advantage of genres is that they can rely on readers already having knowledge and expectations about works within a genre.” (Page 1, 2nd paragraph). I think that this sort of thing works for O’Brian but in a different aspect. Although this is a war book, from these limited readings it doesn’t seem like a regular war book. I think this makes it stand out and make readers appreciate it more, allowing the book and story to come into its' own. Over all of this I think Foucault touches on a very simple but possibly overlooked topic. He says rather simply “…that order exists” (page xx 2nd paragraph).He says that along with one order comes another and you can order things by many different ways spanning times, tastes, cohesiveness, and resemblance. I think an interesting question is how does entropy plays a role in our classifications, and is there anyway to tell when it does?