The War Genre An Animal Within Itself

Tim O’Brien’s first short story seems more flowery. Though most of his stories are about war this first story seems to be less focused on the violent aspects of war. Spin seemed more like the author was trying to reminisce on paper. He doesn’t just focus on things getting blown up but also nicer moments, when most people think about war stories the only sweet aspect of them has to do with the hero going off to war at first of when he finally comes home gruesomely disfigured or injured. The only happy ending being that the hero finally came home even if he isn’t physically the same when they return. With this first story O’Brien mentions different things. When he first mentions a little boy with a rubber leg this showed that all though the war can be violent there are not only casualties to the violence but also another side to it. Also there was the mention of body lice. Mitchell Saunders had mailed his lice his draft board, this seemed funny to me but also a bit on the shocking side because it seemed like Saunders wanted the board to feel his suffering. O’Brien described the war to be “Like a ping pong ball, on occasion you could put a fancy spin on it, you could make it dance” With Spin O’Brien focuses on other things besides what is expected, in a way putting a “Spin” on the traditional way people expect war stories to be written. Even with things like playing checkers or Lt Lavender taking care of a puppy he highlights softer points of the story, while doing this he still tells you about the war but does it unconventionally.The second of the three O’Brien readings The Man I Killed showed the more graphic side of war and war stories. Though very grotesque when describing certain parts of the story I liked the way he told it because he gave a background on the dead person leading up to their death. I didn’t really enjoy this second reading because even though it was heavy on the background information it seemed to be taunting people who are not built for wars. The character in this O’Brien story is described as girlish and feminine with “wrists of a child” with an interest in Mathematics and no interest in Warring. The way the men talk about killing one and other is done almost in a celebratory way. Kiowa isn’t proud of the fact that he had to kill someone Azar on the other hand acts as if he has done something he should be proud of. “Oh man you fucking bashed that fucker” Azar said. “You scrambled his sorry self” mean while he feels bad about what he has done. “The Man I Killed” in my opinion shows, that even though you may be part of a war it doesn’t nessacarilly mean that you may want to be there or are in anyways proud of what you had to do. Azar kept rubbing in the fact that he killed the man. While Kiowa is neither proud or boastful. O’Briens war stories may be told with great interest but small variations seem to cause some aspects of the stories to blur into each other.
The last O’Brien story Good Form was the shortest, while being the shortest he also brings up the issue of his age. I also noticed he kept bringing his age up in other stories not just this one. It was almost as if this final story was his way of saying he was not the same kid that went to war, that the war in some way wraped him and his way of thinking. “Good Form” was just O’Brien reminiscing instead of doing it through his characters. He talked about the difference between “Story Truth” and "Happening Truth" What I took from that was that story truth is the truth you tell yourself in order to live with your actions, while Happening truth is exactly what happened. He has to live with his own guilt. This last story showed that though the war was over they who idea and the consequences of war still stayed with him. I think that "Good form" was really all about being able to keep a straight face when your faced with difficukty, guilt or danger, or even having to explain yourself to a loved one. When it came time for him to have to explain himself to his daughter he said he could either lie or tell the truth, but it sounded like him having to choose was what was most upsetting.These three stories though similar in some ways, they still manage to go against what it means to be a war story. I think this because even with War being the main subject the underlying subjects are what make the stories human or more real. While it is understood that there do have to be wars O'Briens stories show more than one side of them. Whereas the basic cookie cutter war story is just mind feilds and blowing things up. Tim O'Brien does not "Stay follow the drink and stay in the pink" when it comes to his form, mainly because his stories tell stories within themselves.Another thing I noticed about the O'Brien stories is that he repeats the same discriptions in all the stories "His jaw was in his thoat" and the other "His one eye shut and the other a star shaped hole" At first glance all there of these stories could be taken as war stories but this is only if you do not examine each and deconstruct them. In the order of things Foucault says that animals are divided into sub catagories. With this concept in mind it is safe to say that each genere can be considered its own "animal" He says that limitations are only placed on ideas and things by us ourselves and do not trully exsist. This is seen in the quotation "What transgresses the boundries of all imagination of all possibility, though is simply that alphabetical series" In other words if we ourselfs did not assign catagories to things there would be no way to seperate them or divide them making them all transedencial and able to mix together. Lastly I wanted to close with a quote by Chandler "Any text requires what is sometimes called 'cultural capital' on the part of its audience to make sense of it. Generic knowledge is one of the competencies required (Allen 1989: 52, following Charlotte Brunsdon). Like most of our everyday knowledge, genre knowledge is typically tacit and would be difficult for most readers to articulate as any kind of detailed and coherent framework. Clearly one needs to encounter sufficient examples of a genre in order to recognize shared features as being characteristic of it"
This went back to what I said in my forst posting about the first story we read. 'Cultural Capital" made me think that as an audeince we may not only have to have another group of people read the work to identify what it is exactly but perhaps they would have a different interpretation as well as i stated before. Also what I took from the term was that people would have to have some kind of background understanding before they labled something a certain genre. After reading the three stories I can say that I have been given " sufficient examples of a genre in order to recognize shared features " All three can be called War stories at some point along the line others not so much, but this leaves the question where do we put them? The only place I could think of is maybe in the autobiograpical genre, because even if hes talking avout the war he ultimately talks about himself as well