Response Two

In these O'brien stories, 'Spin', 'The Man I Killed', and "Good Form', I learned how the 'War story genre', can be transmitted to cath the readers attention. This is an example of what Chandler says: "Genre provides an important frame of reference which helps readers to identify, select and interpret texts." I think that this is the purpose of the author, to write his personal experience during war, in enjoyable writing to make the reader be interested in the story.It is usual to see or to read in a 'War story genre' climatic moments of the story where there has to be explosions, amunition, casualties, horror, etc., this is crucial in the story because it acts like adrenaline to the mind, by making the reader get caught up in the story and become curious of what will happen next, will the main character die or become a war hero. In my opinion O'brien, wrote his personal experience during war using creativity to catch readers attention from any style, and age that they would be interested in reading a 'war story genre'.

In 'Spin', O'brien uses a more friendly approach of what war was going thru, he starts by saying,"The war wasn't all terror and violence. Sometimes things could almost get sweet. For instance. I remember a little boy with a plastic leg. I remember how how hopped over to Azar and asked for a chocolate bar." This is a n example of how war wasn't all catastrophical, in this story he explained how they passed their time playing chekers, or day dreaming while looking up at the sky and hoping to do things they would preffer doing instead of being at war. In "The Man I Killed', on the other hand, is focused on the authors grief, how his conscience kept on bringing back the memory of the young man he killed at war. He felt sorry for the young man because he didnt look like a soldier prepared for battle, he looked more like a peaceful person not interested in fighting. This is why he says the young man was "Frail-looking, delicately boned, the young man would not have wanted to be a soldier and in his heart would have feared performing badly in battle." O'brien focoses more of his feeling of guilt towards killing an innocent person, not remembering that it was war, that you sometimes have to kill or be killed, this is an innevitable consequence of war. In 'Good Form', the author is re-telling his experience at war but focusing on the present time he says, "I'm forty-three years old, true, and I'm a writer now, and a long time ago I walked through Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier." O'brien uses the term happening-truth', with what really happen while he was at war, to the story he wanted the reader to experience. All of these storie are put as Foucalt says, "Each of these strange categories can be assigned a precise meaning and a demonstrable content; some of them do certainly involve fantastic entities - faboulous animals or sirens- but, precisely because it puts them into categories of their own, the chinese encyclopaedia localizes their powers of contagion." I think this statement goes with what Chandler also used as an example that by putting genres into categories it is easier to remember the certain parts of the story that better cauht the readers attention, and lie a child it helps contribute to decide what story to read, in this case what part of O'brien's story best catches the readers attention.