Evaluating Internet Sources.

Barb Pohanish
Professor Cline
English 102
24 October 2010
　
　

Evaluating Internet Sources

I found this article, “Beyond the Border of War” By Tamara Jones on The Washington Post website. The Washington Post is a reputable newspaper, and they have a website. I did some research on the writer, Tamara Jones, and she also has a great reputation within the journalism community. The Washington Post was affected by the economy, so in May of 2008 Tamara was offered a buy- out from them which she accepted. Prior to taking the buy -out, Tamara’s story on The Virginia Tech Shooting won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2008.
The Washington Post’s website is updated everyday. As for Tamara Jones, she mentioned in an interview that she wanted to write fiction. This article that she had written on draft deserter’s fleeing to Canada was very interesting. She talks about the people who have traveled to Canada instead of serving in the Vietnam War and the War in Iraq. This article will be of use to me when I’m writing essay #3.

Article for Essay #3.

Fennell,Tom, and Branswell, Brenda. " Hell no, they won't go: many draft dodgers found a home in Canada, and stayed." Maclean's. 24 April. 2000: Research Library Core, ProQuest. web. 21 October 2010.

I'm going to research this article, and others on draft dodgers during the Vietnam War. This relates to Tim O'Brien, because in 1968, he received his draft letter for Vietnam. He panicked and drove towards the Canadian border, Tim ended up in the mountains of Minnesota, where he stayed with the owner of a lodge for six days. He then decided not to dodge the draft and ended up serving in Vietnam. This article is from a Canadian Periodical, called Maclean's which was published in 2000.

My Letter to Professor Cline.

October 12, 2010

Professor Cline
English Dept.
Yavapai College
Prescott, AZ 86301

Dear Professor Cline:

My biggest challenge in this class was setting up my blog. For whatever reason, setting up the blog was really difficult for me. I still don’t know how to post my picture in the little box (where you follow other blogs). My biggest challenge now is to comprehend how to write an analysis, I don’t quite understand it one hundred percent. I think my biggest success so far was writing the Summary vs. Analysis Paper.
I really have enjoyed reading, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. I especially enjoyed the story, Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong. I’ve always had a real interest in Vietnam. The Sean Huze play was o.k. It’s a lot easier to write about something that you enjoy reading. There is nothing worse than having to write about something that doesn’t interest me. Most of the poems that we had read didn’t catch my interest in the least, so it was really hard to write about them, and then I didn’t produce a good paper.
Literary analysis is quite different from what I’m used to. In my previous English Classes, and Critical Thinking Class, I was given a list of subjects to write about, or given the freedom to choose my own subject to write about. Last semester in English 101, I had to write essays on evaluation, observation, position, and reflection. Surprisingly I did really well in my previous writing classes.
My goal for the second half of this semester is to perfect my writing skills, and to fully understand how to write an analysis essay.

Summary vs. Analysis.

Barb Pohanish
Professor Cline
English 102
3 October 2010
　
　

Summary vs. Analysis

For this essay, I chose “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong.” This story was told to Tim O’Brien, by his friend Rat Kiley. Rat and eight other soldiers were running this basic emergency station in the mountains near the village of Tra Bong. There were also six Green Berets that used the compound as their base. According to Rat, “The Greenies were not social animals, in fact they would vanish for days at a time, or even weeks, and then late at night they would just as magically reappear.” (92). the highest ranking soldier was Eddie Diamond, who had a thing for dope and Darvon. There was no such thing as military discipline in this compound.
There is this young soldier, Mark Fossie, who sends his girlfriend money, and arranges a helicopter which brings her to the compound. Rat said, “This tall, big-boned blonde. At best she was seventeen years old. She had long white legs and blue eyes and a complexion like strawberry ice cream. Very friendly, too.” (93). The war intrigued Mary Anne Bell, one morning she talked Mark into taking her down to a nearby village, so she could get a feel for how other people lived. Mary Anne felt at home, the hostile territory didn’t seem to bother her at all. Over several weeks, Mary Anne fell into the habits of the bush, learning how to disassemble an M-16, and cutting her hair short which she wrapped in a green bandanna. Rat explained, “Twice, she came in late at night, and then finally she did not come in at all.” (99). Rat said that she disappeared for three weeks once, and then one night she and the Greenies came up the hill, drifted across the compound to the Special Forces bunker where she followed the others inside. The next day and night, Mark Fossie waited near the Special Forces area for Mary Anne, but she never came out of the bunker. Rat explained, “Fossie hit the door hard and it swung opened, across the room a dozen candles were burning, and the place seemed to echo with a weird deep-wilderness sound-tribal music. But what hit you first, was the smell. Two kinds of smells. There was a scent of incense, but beneath the smoke lay a deeper and much more powerful stench. It paralyzed your lungs, Rat said.” “On a post was a decayed head of a large black leopard; strips of yellow-brown skin dangled from the overhead rafters. And stacks of bones-all kinds. There was a poster that said: ASSEMBLE YOUR OWN GOOK!! FREE SAMPLE KIT!! Out of the shadows stepped Mary Anne, she gazed down at Fossie, almost blankly, and in the candlelight her face had the composure of someone perfectly at peace with herself. Rat said, “In part it was her eyes: utterly flat and indifferent. There was no emotion in her stare, no sense of person behind it. But the grotesque part, he said, was her jewelry. At the girl’s throat was a necklace of human tongues. Elongated and narrow, like pieces of blackened leather, the tongues were threaded along a copper wire, one overlapping the next, the tips curled upward as if caught in a final shrill syllable.” (111). Mary Ann told Rat and Fossie, “I want to eat this place. Vietnam. I want to swallow the whole country-the dirt, the death- I just want to eat it and have it there inside me.” (111). Fossie stood rigid. “Do something,” he whispered. “I can’t just let her go like that.” Rat listened for a time, and then shook his head. “Man, you must be deaf. She’s already gone.”
So what happened to the Mary Anne Bell? She was young, fresh out of high school, but was she really the naïve, innocent girl from Cleveland. It’s possible that she didn’t understand the danger and severity of the Vietnam War. Maybe she was so curious, that the answers to her questions were not enough, so she had to experience the war for herself. Her boyfriend, Fossie wasn’t fighting, but the Greenies were and that peaked her interest. I believe that after she went out a few times with the Green Berets, there was no turning back. Mary Anne became addicted to the “adrenaline rush”, while she was out in the bush. She may have become addicted to opium also. After watching, and then participating in the slayings of the Vietnamese, I think, mentally she just lost it. Unfortunately when someone crosses over to that place in their mind, they are oblivious to it. It’s heartbreaking to think of the guilt that her boyfriend must have gone through, and the pain of watching her fade away, right before his eyes.

Works Cited

O’Brien, Tim. (1990). Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong. The Things They Carried. New York. Broadway Books.

www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/08.24/99-ptsd.html

http://www.thethingstheycarried.com/

The Things They Carried

Barb Pohanish
Professor Cline
English 102
23 September 2010

My Response To: The Things They Carried

I was excited when I learned that, The Things They Carried was on our reading list for this English class. My teachers in High School didn’t teach us anything about Vietnam; they never mentioned it at all. I’ve always wandered why the Vietnam War was never taught to us. Most of the information on Vietnam has come from the movies, and from talking really briefly to a few guys that had served in Vietnam. I’ve always been hesitant to ask about the details of the war, because all I’ve ever heard is “soldiers can’t go there mentally, because of all the crazy and f***ed up things they have seen.”
This has led me to choose the chapter; “How to Tell a True War Story.” The paragraph that I’m about to quote is related to what I wrote above. “In many cases a true war story cannot be believed. If you believe it, be skeptical. It’s a question of credibility. Often the crazy stuff is true and the normal stuff isn’t, because the normal stuff is necessary to make you believe the truly incredible craziness.” ( O’Brien. P.71).
Even though this book is a work of fiction, I can see the realism in these stories. I truly believe all of the craziness, like the story about the baby water buffalo (which is on page’s 78-80) which is really hard to quote word for word, because it’s so grotesque. The story is about a soldier finding a baby water buffalo which he brings back to camp, and persists to shoot the buffalo’s body in several different places. As a life long animal lover I’m repulsed by the story, but I also understand that war screws up people’s minds.
I have to ask, “Why have we heard over the years that the soldiers that made it back from Vietnam, are more psychologically messed up than the soldiers from WWI & WWII?” “In every war the soldiers kill and witness death, so what was the difference?” I hope to find the answers to these questions someday, and who knows, maybe I will find answers as I finish reading this thought provoking book.
Works Cited
O’Brien, Tim. (1990). How To Tell a True War Story. The Things They Carried. New York. Broadway Books.