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Journals
The Written Journal is the heart of your work in
this course. We will discuss its form and value at length in class.
In it you will analyze readings according to specific questions.
For What They Carried, I will provide questions for you to
answer. When reading stories and essays in The Little Brown
Reader, you are to select two of the “Topics for Critical
Thinking and Writing” at the end of each reading assignment
and address them. The grade on your journal work is based on effort
and thought, not on giving “correct” answers. Journal Assignments
are in as attachments to email, along with your paper assignments.
A list of the readings for
which you will write Journal Entries is available here.
A sample Journal Entry to
give you an idea of the expectations is avalialabe here.
Below are the Journal Questions covering The
Things They Carried:
- Read the epigraph to the book, taken from John Ransom’s
Andersonville Diary. What was Andersonville?
What war is this passage referring to? What does this
epigraph say about the truthfulness and accuracy of O’Brien’s
story? How are we to read The Things They Carried,
according to this epigraph—as truth or as fiction?
- Explain the meaning of the title, “The Things They
Carried.” What is the first item listed as a carried thing?
Why? Think about the metaphors of “weight.” List a
few main characters, including the literal and figurative
things they carried.
- Explain the passage about death on page 19.
- Read pp. 58-63, on the edge of the Canadian border.
O'Brien asks, "What would you do?" (p. 59). Well,
what would you do? Why doesn’t O’Brien go to Canada?
- O'Brien calls himself a coward (p. 63). How do you
understand this self-judgment? Do you agree with it? If
he had made another decision, what would he have been?
- O’Brien defines a “true war story” throughout “How
to Tell a True War Story.” What are the qualities
of a “true war story,” according to O’Brien? What do you
make of O'Brien's definition of "truth"?
- According to O'Brien, why are stories important?
In your opinion, what do we, as people, need from stories--both
reading them and telling them?
- Who tells the story in "The Man I Killed"?
- Reread the final two pages of this book. Consider
what the young Tim O'Brien learns about storytelling from
his experience with Linda. How does this knowledge prepare
him not only for the war, but also to become a writer? Within
the parameters of this story, how would you characterize
Tim O'Brien's understanding of the purpose of fiction? How
does fiction relate to life, that is, life in the journalistic
or historic sense?
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