In both Bowling for Columbine and "The Things They Carried", the deaths of countless innocents died by the hands of guns. In Bowling for Columbine there is talk about pushing for stricter gun control yet in "The Things They Carried" they don’t seem to speak of gun control what so ever. In both cases we can see what kind of destruction can occur by the hands of weapons.
I found a very interesting quote in the novel “The Things They Carried” that made me think in a different perspective. “I survived, but it’s not a happy ending. I was a coward. I went to war.” I found this quote to be interesting because O’Brien relates going to war as being a coward and staying home from war as being brave. At first when I heard these words they made absolutely no sense to me and I thought he had made a typo, but I took time and thought about it thoroughly and It made sense. If everyone is telling you to do something and saying that you are a coward if you don’t do it, then doing it would make you a coward because you fear the way people will treat you if you don’t comply with them. If everyone told you to do something you never thought of and you don’t do it, it doest make you a coward, it makes you brave because you’re taking a stand for something you believe in and not letting people sway you into doing things they want. Remember courage is doing something that you are afraid or scared of doing and doing it anyways.
In O’Brien quest for freedom from the war he is fortunate enough to meet a man named Elroy Berdahl who was generous, affable and tactful, and this sage elder reminds me of a person I know that has the same qualities as Berdahl named Archie Calderon. Mr. Archie as we call him is one of my neighbors that has the best heart a person can have as he too is nice to strangers, he’ll do anything he can in his power to help anyone out. I remember a time where my family had a little accident on the road and my sister and I were still in school so my dad called our neighbor for a favor to just pick us up; well he did pick us up but he also went to help out my dad and with his help the car was good to go.
Dear O’Brien
Ever since reading your novel of “The Things They Carried” I have never been so amazed of the power of descriptive writing in a tale of a soldier’s life in war. You have such an interesting perspective of writing a novel that not only tells a story but with the help of exemplification makes it more interesting and defining, a true page turner (and if I had the actual book I would read the whole thing). What I like so much about your novel is that you say the truth and you don’t skip out on something if you have to tell something personal about your life, you do it even if it embarrasses you. That is what most writers are missing they lack honesty and that is what makes a story interesting and last long in peoples memory.
