First Response to A Long Way Gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Instantly I am drawn into this extremely powerful and emotional tale by Ishmael Beah. The strength and courage displayed by these young and innocent souls demonstrates such character, exhibiting something truly to look up to. Beah presents such a unique way of illustrating his experience, facing the terrror of civil war to his community and country as well as the arming of children, through flashbacks, nightmares, and narration of daily occurances. "These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past."(pg20)
A Long Way Gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, pulls you into the experiences of this young 12 year old boy facing evils of the world. From actually feeling his fear of life and death, lonliness and incapability to trust anyone, and strength to keep going fighting hunger and fatigue, continuously you are drawn to this persisting force exerted by this character. You become emotionally attached to this individual who is truly a role model to life today. Through Ishmael Beah's Memoir he demonstrates and helps individuals realize how fortunate people are today and the terrors many individuals face in these foreign countries daily. This mezmerizing war story presents changes that occur to these individuals faced with these fears. For example, when Ishmael Beah is separated from his brother and friends and comes across a family he comes to the conclusion, "I was glad to see other faces and at the same time disappointed that the war had destroyed the enjoyment of the very experience of meeting people. Even a 12 year old couldn't be trusted anymore."(pg48)
With the thought of his fathers presence and remembering what he used to always say, motivates Beah to endure and perservere the struggle of life. "If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of the person, he or she will die."(pg54,Ishmael's father) Ishmael Beah displays such bravery and courage through the first 8 chapters and he does an incredible job presenting the true life experiences and hardships of this war. I am really interested to find out what he will prevail next.

Writing Vietnam-Tim O'Brien Lecture at Brown

In Tim O'Brien's powerful, honest, and entertaining lecture at Brown he explains some key elements behind the ingenious novel he has constructed. He begins speaking of how simple an individual he is, that he is no genius, historian, or philospher, just the fact that he is a great fictional story teller. O'Brien mentions how monotonous and painful writing might be, yet the pleasure and satisfaction he recieves from it.
Throughout the course of the lecture he goes into facts about his most famous novel The Things They Carried, discussing some of the key moments and themes of the book. Here he supplies some clarity to aspects of the novel and explains some of the more confusing areas of The Things They Carried. A common issue of the novel was reasoning behind the war, why blood was being shed, and what position many individuals held towards support or opposition to the war. O'Brien in the book as well as in the lecture specifically shows he is in opposition to the draft and Vietnam. O'Brien continues to tell his story of how he fled the country, relating to our past issue, commenting about how he felt like a coward for going to war. "What I was crying about, you see, was - was not self-pity. I was crying with the knowledge that I'd be going to Vietnam, that I was essentially a coward, that I couldn't do the right thing, I couldn't go to Canada. Given what I believed, anyway, the right thing would have been to follow your conscience, and I couldn't do it."
Through this explaination of his story he eventually comes to tell us that everything he just said is false. Clarifying that not all war stories are specifically about war."War stories, like any good story, is finally about the human heart. About the choices we make, or fail to make. The forfeitures in our lives. Stories are to console and to inspire and to help us heal." Speaking about the invented story prior to the war, O'Brien makes a great point stating that honestly that is what fiction is for, to spice up aspects of the novel. He could have told the literal truth, however how exciting would it have been."It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth."
Tim O'Brien's lecture at Brown was not only entertaining and held my attention, yet he really help clarify some aspects which contributed to the uniqueness of The Things They Carried.

On the Rainy River

On the rainy river discusses O'Brien's issue with going to war. In this chapter O'Brien recieves his draft notice faced with the fear of whether to go to war or not. With the pressure of the community and their expectations of wanting their own individuals to represent their nation at war, O'Brien worries of the embarrassment he will inflict on his family and the loss of respect that he will gain as an individual if he was to avoid these circumstances. "I was drafted to fight a war I hated. I was 21 years old. Young, yes, and politically naive, but even so the American war in Vietnem seemed to me wrong. Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons. I saw no unity of purpose, no consensus on matters of philosophy or history or law." (pg40.) As you can see through this quote O'Brien much like many other young men of this time period, are in disagreement with the war. From there O'Brien does what he feels he will truely regret, fleeing the nation for Canada to escape the war. He goes up north making due with working with Elroy a proprietor, shortly realizing he would go to war because he was embarrassed not to. "All those eyes on me-the town, the whole universe-and I couldn't risk the embarassment....I couldn't endure the mockery, or the disgrace or the political ridicule....I could make myself be brave. It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassment, that's all it was." (pg59).

"I was a coward. I went to war." As displayed through the examples in the book and the scenario that O'Brien faced this quote is explained. He felt he was a coward, not in terms of his bravery to go to war, but because he gave up his morals against war so he wouldn't have to face the disgrace delivered by the community.