Navigation | A world at war
April 23, 2008
Our protagonist is what the Usual Suspect would describe as “green as snot.”
Fallen Angels takes place in a time when our nation was in doubt about its actions in the world. Fallen Angels is a novel about military life during what could be considered America’s most controversial War. The year is 1967 and America is right in the middle of the Vietnam War. The main character is a young black man from Harlem who joined the Military believing that the war would be over before he even had to fire his weapon. He joined to get away from all the unknowns. He grew up living with an alcoholic for a mother who definitely could not put him through college despite his intelligence. So he is searching but he does not know exactly what for: he is totally adrift. But none of that really matters because Richie Perry is on his way to Vietnam. And the author knows it.
War as a lie has been a constant theme throughout the readings all semester. Vonnegut exposes war as a lie, by using liars as his main characters. O’Brien says it flat out. Walters takes a different route, he uses foreshadowing. An interesting approach because the “lie” does not expose itself right away and it is learned along with the main character. The novel starts off ambiguously; it does not give much away as to the location of the characters. The location is slowly established through the dialog between Peewee and Perry. Peewee, who is nameless (for now), has the first line of the novel, “Somebody must have told those suckers I was coming.” Perry is confused as to what he is talking about, but figures it is a joke. A little later Peewee uses the word Cong for the Vietnamese, which is the first tip off as to where they are. I had assumed that they had just arrived in Vietnam, but then Dunkin asks if Peewee thinks he is already in Vietnam. So suddenly I went from believing that they were in Vietnam, to not knowing where they were or what they were doing. In effect the author sets up an entire false reality. He lied to us.
The lie continues and grows deeper. Myers builds a lie around Perry’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Perry was originally in another company that was slated to go to Nam but due to a knee injury he was moved into another company. The intention was to keep him out of combat because his knee injury was substantial. However due to this he ended up on a plane headed towards Nam and his old company was shipped to Germany. He was assured that he would be given a job behind a desk, but because of the beginning we the readers know better. When Perry gets to Chu Lai he approaches a captain to tell him about his knee but the captain tells him to go and talk to his company commander and walks away, so much for a desk job. These are all lies that have been feed to him, which others reciprocated unknowingly. Besides, Perry was under the impression that he was going to get to Nam and then the war would be over. Again another lie. Before I go any further I want to point out that these characters did not know they were passing on lies, but hind-sight is twenty-twenty and we the readers know where all of this is heading. The author uses Jenkins as a transition. He is the first truth of the book.
When we first meet Jenkins he is scared out of his mind. Perry even says, “He looked like one of the characters from an Archie Andrews comic, but he was so scared it wasn’t funny.”(Fallen Angels p.20) When I first read that passage I did not think much of it, but then I did a quick Google search and found that Myers was actually drawing a deep connection. Archie is an all American boy, a middle class white American, a womanizer, he is passionate about sports, and leads a rock band (Wikipedia). Jenkins is a stand in for all the doomed boys that went to Vietnam.
Myers also takes the chance to expand and solidify his motif: war is a lie. Peewee, being the constant prankster, sees a chance to have a little fun. So when Jenkins asks him how long they have been in Vietnam Peewee lies to him and tells him they have been there eight months when he had only been there nine days. He then goes on to jerk Jenkins around for a while about the possibility of getting out early until Jenkins catches wind of it and calls him out for a liar. Peewee believes the war will be over soon, and while some of it is a front, he is far more Gung-ho about getting some action then is Perry and is definitely more Gung-ho then Jenkins. In a certain sense what happens in their interaction is a believer in the war, a believer in the lies, finds someone who is not, someone who can see the truth, and begins to do what all the other believers have been doing: he lies. Except since Jenkins can see the truth he calls him out on it. Jenkins represents truth and innocents but not naivety: that is Perry’s job.
Jenkins is convinced he is going to die, rightly so, and he tells Perry. So Perry tells him that he will be fine. He tries to reassure Jenkins by telling him what he was told at Fort Devens, “Most guys over here won’t ever fire their rifles. I mean, they won’t ever really shoot at anybody.” (Fallen Angels p30) Ironically, Jenkins never fires his rifle because he dies before he has a chance too. Jenkins sees right through that because he points out that the guy who said it probably had never been “in country.” Just another lie. Obviously Myers put this passage in there to expose Perry’s naivety about war. A man does not need to ever fire his weapon to die in war. This is the last time Jenkins has any dialog in the book, while he is mentioned, he never speaks. He steps on a land mine. He is the first character to die in the book and since he represented truth, truth dies with him.
“In war, truth is the first casualty” -Aeschylus
Thanks Call of Duty 4.
Filed by whitepe at April 23rd, 2008 under Uncategorized
No comments on this post yet
April 16, 2008
When I entered into this class I was anxious to see what I would learn and see. Mostly because the title of the class was War and Peace, and as a sarcastic SOB, I could never imagine a class that could cover a subject so broad, sweeping, and so close to human nature to be anything worth really taking. Was I surprised. While we did not delve into the entire subject, which was good, we did do something much more profound. We started blogs. It was only recently that I made a connection between these blogs and the theme of the class, other than the fact that it was and English class and our prof. was trying something new.
All throughout time men have gone off to war to fight a good fight, or at least a justifiable one. Sometimes people mess up. This war in Iraq has been a troublesome war in the respect that as a nation we went into that county because we believed that it was a threat to our nation because of WMDs. The WMDs were never found and our nation became divided, those who believe we need to get out now, and those who think we need to stay and rebuild the nation of Iraq. A divide that has, as always in democracies has become political and people have lost faith. No one trusts the government, or few do (you know what I mean) and anytime a republican is trashed on TV the response of many is that the media is liberal. Or any time a Democrat gets hit by flake by a news station, it is cracked up as the “Republic Noise Machine.” I find myself everyday wishing for a third party to shake things up. This is where the Blog comes in. Now people have the power to communicate their ideas, without having to go through any other median, what power. Total control as to what they put out there. No editors, or news agendas to worry about, just personal honesty. Not only that but it has become easy for a person to sift through torrents of information at the click of the mouse. The RSS aggregator has made that possible. It is more important than ever to discuss and share ideas about the current war and the future of our nation. And through such technologies people across the nation will finally have a way to share ideas without having to go through someone else’s programs.
We now have the power to grow closer. Communication is the corner stone of democracy. After this class I now intend to keep my own blog. The world will hear my voice, if it is paying attention and I will hear what the world has to say with my RSS.
The internet has become the most influential and most important invention since the printing press, it is already changing the world, and I now intended on doing my part.
Contrasting Tones
A Picture is Worth 1000 Words
Day-to-Day
Day at the Palm Groove
The Courtesy of War
What do the Veterans think?
Keep the Colors Close…
Guilt and Change
Youth on the battlefield
Weapons of War
Filed by whitepe at April 16th, 2008 under Uncategorized
No comments on this post yet
Maus is a book that at first glance might seem offensive to some, a comic book that centers its story on the holocaust is bound to turn some heads. And while those heads take a look the first thing they are bound to notice that the people of the times are represented by animals. Many a person probably has returned the books to where they found it and move onto something a little more traditional. A shame. Art Spiegelman’s work in Maus is profound on the most mature of levels.
He uses the mouse to represent the Jewish community. He did this to show that the Jewish people where the meek people of Germany, and of Europe. His use of Cats as Germans is interesting because cats prey on mice, which is what the Germans did all throughout WWII. A post entitled “Super Gumby” uses a similar technique to describe aspects of the War in Iraq and Afghanistan. Old Blue takes a minute to talk about the flexible Gumby as a motif for the current war being waged in which he is fighting. Also in the post he uses pictures to help tell a story which is very much like a graphic novel. His whole point revolves around the point that the American army has become flexible to the extent that it is hardly even an army anymore but more of a policing force. In his post he says that in today’s army that flexibility is required to follow orders and do what needs to be done even if it is inconvenient. While the post is very tongue in cheek it legitimately describes an experience because not only does he have to follow the orders of his superiors but he also needs to be able to work with the local Afghans, which to an American who grew up in a completely different culture that is not willing to change could be very frustrating. And as a solder it is too exhausting to always focus on the violence and obscenity that surrounds them at all time: sometimes it is ok to enjoy the view.
In both Maus and Super Gumby, the authors decided to take a preconceive concept and use it to tell a story. While Maus is not light hearted, and Super Gumby is not dark they both constitute adult reading because there are concepts in there that children would find confusing (adults find them confusing too, just adults tend to understand that very few things are cut and dry). It is those pictures that bring the stories together, and make them what they are.
Semper Gumby
Filed by whitepe at April 16th, 2008 under Uncategorized
No comments on this post yet
As a film major I often find the connection between perception and understanding to be very interesting. I once read a whole paragraph of completely jumbled words. It made complete sense to me; I could hardly even tell the words were jumbled, because the human brain does not read each individual letter in a word but rather looks at the word as a whole. I would say, in the very least the connections that people are able to pull form a series of jumbled words is just as powerful as words that are written out correctly. But if you bring their attention to the fact that the words are jumbled then I would say that their perception changes. Suddenly what the words represent become more profound because they suddenly will comprehend that they are pulling meaning out of paper and ink. It works the same way in film. In Schedulers List, Spielberg, shot the whole thing in black and white, so when suddenly in the middle of the ghetto a little girl in red shows up she sticks out. The girl sticks out the picture obviously, but she brings with her the horrific violence in the scene. Suddenly it all seems to actually be happening. I have not yet seen a book that uses jumbled words to make a passage stand out, but I have read one that uses the list in much the same way.
In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien introduces his characters with lists. Instead of talking strictly about the actions of the characters, O’Brien allows the reader to interpret what these guys must have been like based on their surroundings. He lists off all the different things that the men carry at several different times in the first chapter. The first time he does it he does it is on page two of the entire novel, then he does it again and again leading up to page sixteen. On page fourteen after the characters have been introduced and the “List Theme” is well established he has one of the longest lists in the entire novel. Right before this list is the list about their lucky charms, and after a passage so full of vulnerability I understood the importance of their cargo. So on fourteen when he begins to list off the everyday items that they had on them he creates characters that are as tangible as any one of those items might appear to be to me. The same kind of thing is done in a post titled the “Sunshine Post” by Lt G. He too uses as list to create character development, although in the beginning of the post he points out that is his intention rather than letting the reader interpret the lists meaning. He feels he is becoming too cynical so he makes a list of things that make him happy and keep him fresh. Unlike O’Brien Lt. G’s list is a list of particular circumstances and background rather than items. However the effect is similar in the sense that the mind draws its own connections between these isolated events and pulls them together to form, as Lt. G describes, the delicious pistachio center of his soul.
Sunshine Post
Filed by whitepe at April 16th, 2008 under Uncategorized
No comments on this post yet
March 26, 2008
I have put considerable thought towards our in class discussion regarding the art of letter writing. I do not like the idea of something that has been around for such a long time to die in the world of digital express media: some things are worth the wait. And some things just need to be written without millions of people with the ability to look at it right away. So when I saw the post named the Fog of Life by the author, MSGT Ken Mahoy, in which he acknowledges that he cannot put his deepest feelings in his blog because people do not want to read them, I was intrigued.
In the post he speaks of frustration because he is so far from home, and misses everyone so much. He yearns for his children and the company of a good friend. He speaks directly to his children at one point, admitting that he is only human, and having a very human moment. He wonders if they every talk about him, if their mother ever mentions his name, he yearns for the life he left. Constantly trying to distract himself from the great distance between himself and his loved ones has taken its toll.
Strangle enough; this is when I realized exactly what blogs allow people to do and what they are. It allows a person to publish their thoughts online for everyone to see. However most blogs are to some extant personal (some more than others) something of a journal online, but most people do not want to read some guys journal full of deep emotions people just do not need any more then they have already got. A good blog, it seems to me, is written in much the same way many of the letters from Since You Went Away where written.
It is a fact that we live in a changing world, it has been changing since it started spinning. Now instead of just writing to someone, it seems that the blog has become a digital letter in a bottle. MSGT Mahoy is stuck on a dessert island, and this is his life line. Will the letter ever die? No, because it has a new home: on line.
I also do not think the classic letter is going anywhere anytime soon; frankly it probably will always have a use. Even in a world as connected as this one, sometimes people just want to speak to one person: not a million.
Third Time’s a Charm!
Filed by whitepe at March 26th, 2008 under Uncategorized
4 persons have commented this post
In a post titled “Time is On My Side” Captain Beau Cleland illustrates the life of a modern day soldier who may be stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan. As he looks back over his last few months of deployment Captain Cleland realizes that time is relative, and that, while it may seem long at first, he has actually covered a lot more time. By this I mean, of course, that when he looks back at the first three months of deployment they have flown by, but as he lived them they seemed to crawl and drag on to infinity. Vonnegut uses foreshadowing in his novel to represent a great amount of time passing. When the POW’s are on the trains waiting to go their camps a man dies, in another car, and the POWs ask for his body to be removed. However the guards go and eat their dinner first, then come out after to enjoy a cigar, and at last they actually remove the body of the dead soldier. A clever use of foreshadowing, because he shows that these solders are going to be on this train for some time, and that someone is going to be dead before any of them get off the train. He says later that there was something about that ninth day(when the hobo and Weary die). Not only is the content similar but the style, more pacifically, the humor is remarkable similar.
I call it the one sentence break down, others call it a punch line, and I prefer my definition. When an author spends some time making a point then finally sums it all up in a short sentence, in these cases it is pretty funny. Captain Beau ends his post with a picture of a group of soldiers burning their waist, with the caption “waiting to flush,” funny to say the least. Meaning, obviously, it can bit of crappy deal always waiting. Vonnegut too uses many of these break downs, he is sort of the master of them. Vonnegut uses an illustration too; his is a sign in the POW camp. He uses it to expose the gilded nature of their situation. The sign is hung outside the latrine and is said “Please leave the latrine as tidy as you found it,” so of course the Americans are in their pooping their brains out.
The world is not as it should be sometimes, but one thing is for sure, all things pass with time. Minutes drag on, loved ones are missed, and Cities are destroyed. All things come and go. I find it a comfort to remember that no matter how evil or monotonous something is, all things pass with time.
Time is On my Side
Filed by whitepe at March 26th, 2008 under Uncategorized
No comments on this post yet
Flowing slowly down and down, circling out to the end until it reaches the very bottom of the downward spiral. The Usual Suspect wrote a powerful post titled The Downward Spiral. The path from becoming a boy to a man, maybe a man to a warrior, or perhaps simply up to down, whatever it is, it is not fun. It is a tough post to read because it deals with the death of an ideal, the point where cold hard reality meets up with personal idealism. He says quote, “Barely 21 and dumber then shit…thought we would be cool with the people, and bring the hammer down on the baddies.” It was not long until his idealism was rocked to its core. He was in his Stryker when it was hit by an IED killing two Americans: Iraqis cheered.
Born on the Fourth of July is a story that deals with the struggles of the Vietnam War era, the idealism of many of the soldiers, especially the soldiers who entered the war in its infancy and the sad reality that awaited many of them wherever they went. When the Usual Suspect talks about being “green” he means more then I could possible sum up in a 500 word blog post, but the short end of it is someone who lacks the full soldier experience: I think. For the Usual Suspect the grind of day in and day out is what gets at him.
Ron Kovic, Tom Cruise, from Born on the Fourth of July, while he was not an actual person, he represents a generation of soldiers, who went to fight a war for their country that their country did not believe in, so the country took it out on its soldiers. They went through all kinds of discrimination wherever they went. The Usual Suspect is now fight a war that he thought would be something else. The Vietnam veteran’s stories, like the Usual Suspects could be summed up in the same way, “We were green once.”
The Usual Suspect
Filed by whitepe at March 26th, 2008 under Uncategorized
No comments on this post yet
February 6, 2008
In the world of Vera Brittain her country and the world for that matter was involved in a war that they did not totally understand. All anyone knew at the time was that they were involved in a war that was justified because their right to be English was in danger. It was only long after the war had ended was it that anyone even thought to wonder why so many had died. After 9/11 we found ourselves in Afghanistan fighting men then wanted us dead. Before long there was talk of invading Iraq. In modern day Iraq we have thousands of American soldiers fighting a war that was started on the bases of false information. The core reason most Americans were for the war was the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction which we did not find. Now we find ourselves at a great cross road.
For the English of 1913 the main problems in their strategies and general approach to the war were their misunderstanding of the Germans. In fact WWI could be called a war of misunderstandings. Again, today I think much of our problems in Afghanistan and Iraq stem from a general misunderstanding we have of their culture or perhaps it is a lack of understanding. A article the accentuated the cultural gap is called Hamid and the Giant Purple Lizard. In it a solder tries to explain the concept of faith to an Afghanistan citizen named Hamid. Hamid never fully understands what he is getting at. Now it would be foolish to think that there is not some type of cultural gap when a concept as basic as faith is not shared between peoples.
Throughout History one main characteristic of Warring States is their lack in cultural exchange. Drop books instead of bombs? Radio broadcasts instead of bullets? Maybe one day it will be a question of what books, and what channels to watch, or what movies to watch. Here is looking forward to then.
Filed by whitepe at February 6th, 2008 under Uncategorized
2 persons have commented this post
War has a way of reaching out and sucking people into it. In many ways wars do not ever end they just change with time. One thing is undeniable, war changes people. In a war a man will change whether he is a front line solder or an average college student. In the case of the college student it is not something that is going to be noticed in a matter of days, weeks or even months: maybe years, but in decades it will be used to define him. Then there is the front line solder, from the moment he (or she) enlisted he has been pushed and shoved in one direction or another. Obviously war affects this man the most. It could make him or break him.
In the book Testament of Youth Vera Brittain (also the author) worries even if her lover, Roland, survives the War (WWI) he will be forever changed by the horrors he witnessed. She writes:
“In desperation I begun to look carefully through his letters for every vivid word picture…which suggested that no merely the body but the spirit that I desired was still in the process of survival.”
I recently found a blog on The Sandbox by a solder named Toby Nunn who unknowingly read the fate of a solder he had known that had been recently be discharged. He describes the shock from finding out that the man he used to go on patrol with had recently murdered a man. At the end of his article he sums his thoughts up with:
“I am not sympathetic to those that murder, but perhaps I understand the willingness ingrained.”
Another reminder of how wars never really end, they just change. Perhaps one day we will no longer need men to train to kill. Perhaps one day there will be an end to war. Until then we need brave men like Toby Nunn and Roland who are willing to fight the fights, and because of their bravery they will change the world.
Filed by whitepe at February 6th, 2008 under Uncategorized
2 persons have commented this post
It has now been a couple weeks into the semester and I still have yet to explain my choices for my Google reader account. There were a couple reasons I did not make this post earlier, even though I am relatively positive that I was the first in the class to set up their Edublog. The first reason is I am kind of lazy, then I wanted to see what other did for their articles, and the third (also the lamest) is my internet died last night and I could not write this then. Why all the excuses? I am hoping through these honest explanations of my procrastination I could set up some precedence of sincerity in my blog. Well, without any further delay (I really cannot put this off any longer); I want to share my choices with the world.
My first pick, I never would have even thought of had I not heard it in class, and whoever originally chose Al-Jazeera for one of their Google Reader subscriptions is a genius. What a great source. Every American home should have Al-Jazeera broadcast into their living rooms: if for no other reason than to close the cultural gap between America and the Middle East.
As a counter point to Al-Jazeera I wanted to go with something familiar or something British. In the end I went for both. On the familiar side of life (and journalism) I decided to go with the Middle East section of the New York Times. It is trusted, reliable, and popular. It is probably pretty easy to guess I went with BBC Middle East to satisfy my thirst for British Journalism. Not only do they have a wonderful tendency to address people as Mr.Soandso and Ms.Whatsherface it is really world class reporting. Also it is a little more neutral then the NYT or AJ.
As for my podcast selection I thought it would be a good idea to change the pace up a little. I decided to go with Military Spouse Talk Radio. For me it has been easy to forget how much Military service effects everyone involved with that person. I cannot imagine what it is like to watch a loved one walk away into the unknown. I cannot imagine what it would be like to leave all that I love for the fray. I thought, that maybe, this podcast would give me some insight into the life of a Military family and their daily sacrifices.
I would like to have another podcast but I am not sure which one I should go with. If anyone has any suggestions I would more than happy to check them out.
The Sandbox is awesome. Fantastic, insightful, gripping, and real are just a few of the words to describe my milblog of choice. If you do not have it, get it.
Last but not least is my Google News search query. The key terms of my search were Iraq War and Propaganda. I had a lot of trouble with this one because most of my searches where just too broad and the ones that did not have 165946 hits only turned up about 10. Finally I got it right. Right = Iraq War + Propaganda.
All in All I am happy with my choices but if anyone has any suggestions I am but a comment away.
Filed by whitepe at February 6th, 2008 under Uncategorized and tagged Blog, Choices, Google Reader, RSS
No comments on this post yet
