Saying Silence

When I was 7, in the house at the end of the road lived a woman, an elder, with hair the color of a wilting rose and a smile that made you happy, despite the absence of teeth she had probably forgot to put on that morning. I used to visit her every year on Christmas and so did her grandchild. She was a year older than me, a serious girl for her age and between her and her grandmother, I very much preferred the one with no teeth. But I spent every Christmas along her side until I was 12 and she was 13. She was solemn and always looked exhausted. Her grandmother told her she loved her, and she did not respond. The first time around I thought it was just a misunderstanding, as if she had not heard her. But once the event was repeated once, twice, three times, all my doubts vanished. She was peculiar and even though we were both girls of the same age, we never spoke, only stayed silent and sat in each others company through those icy December s .Her clothing fit her personality and as I looked her up and down I caught a glimpse of a glistening necklace. It spelled out her name in cursive letter on top of a shiny, thin, slate of gold, the letters were big and the necklace contrasting everything this girl was. The Christmas of 1980 she was gone and I never saw her or that necklace ever again. In a way I wanted her to say goodbye, in a summary say that maybe I meant something to her and that I wasn’t just the little girl that came over every Christmas.

6 summers after it was time to go to college, except, not for me. That year I moved into her grandmother’s house instead, to take care of her. I had lain her down to sleep and just as the moon took its place in the night sky a solid knock was heard at the door. I slowly turned the door knob and pulled the heavy wooden door open. Rapidly but probably too obviously, I looked the figure standing at the entrance up and down.  Her shorts were rolled up one more time then needed, her shoes breaking from the soles and the bags under her eyes pronounced to the point where her fierce green eyes got lost in translation. She looked quickly at me; I saw recognition in her eyes and a strange look of almost affection. As if reading my mind, she pulled out something from under her shirt. I watched as it caught the light from the lamp outside the porch, the glistening of the gold and the big cursive letters that spelled out her name. She did not speak and neither did I, but I moved away from the door and disappeared inside the house, leaving the door wide open. I sat at the kitchen table and watched as she hesitantly came in and stared at the leather chair that her grandfather used to sit on all day.  She remembered how eagerly her bony old grandfather would call her name from across the house and whistle to her and even then, she moved through the house, slowly, step by step, lingering at certain spots of the house. Maybe she thought of that when she stared at the chair, or maybe all she was looking at was a plain old leather couch.  

I had gone to sleep and at some time in the early morning I heard a door shut and a car outside. I lay in my bed; she was gone, and the elder with hair the color of a wilting rose was gone too. I didn’t have to get up to know it and I didn’t have to get up to know that she was never coming back either. I had felt her come in my room in the middle of the night and I felt as her fierce green eyes stared at me. But I lay there and felt the soft touch of her kiss upon my cheek and felt the moist single drop of water, she whispered the three words I had never heard her say to her grandmother and with that she walked away and within those three words I knew, she had spoken more than she ever did during the Christmas’ when I was 12 and she was only 13. 

The Man I Killed

In the Man I Killed Tim O’Brien is telling the story of the young Vietnamese soldier that he has killed. He expresses the guilt he feels and the void he has created in his own heart upon this act of violence. He speaks of the man’s physical attributes and creates a story, creating a connection with his boy and the life he has created for him.

In it, it seems as if O’Brien were to know this boy who now lies on the side of the road, dead and motionless with what he explains as a star shaped hole on one of his eyes.  He creates a whole story for him and what his life was, letting his imagination run free and creating even more guilt for himself when he says that the boy might have had a future. In the boy, he finds himself, and in the story he creates for him, he also finds self pity, connecting with the boy and loathing over the impediments of war on life. Making this connection only creates more guilt and in a way all of these details are actually coming from him self conscience and how O’Brien might have perceived his life before the war as well.

"Sweetheart" of the Song Tra Bong

       I don’t think the reason for Mary Anne’s drastic change in personality can’t be isolated. It was not one thing or a person who changed her, rather Vietnam. The environment of constant fear and to be surrounded by the gore of war which creates constant uncertainty and an overflow of emotions is what made Mary Anne wild and created the stranger girl who they once thought to be the walking image of sweet America, home.  Her interest in war and all that had to with it gave us an insight to what was to come. “Mary Anne Bell was no timid child. She was curious about things. During her first days in country she liked to roam around the compound asking questions.” As if foreshadowing that this girl was not like the usual, it became evident that her personality was certainly going to become a factor while in Vietnam.           
      With Mary Anne, I don’t think her femininity ever became an impediment or a motive, it was never the most influential and I think the reason for this, is her personality very much proved to be more important than her gender.   She became lost in the land, a part of it and once she did, she became free, “I feel close to myself. When I’m out there at night, I feel close to my own body, I can feel my blood moving, my skin and fingernails, everything…” I think everyone has that savage, inhuman, creature inside of them, just that for some people, it shows itself before others, regardless of gender.
         O’Brien letting Rat Kiley tell part of this story created an exaggerated effect and an extent to Mary Anne’s story and the reason why he let Kiley tell the story. As O’Brien said before, a war story always depends on prospective, nobody sees the same thing. When Rat is telling the story, he does not include a moral, facts and makes it so a certain degree, unbelievable, making it fit the criteria for what O’Brien says should be a true war story.

Irony of Peace

            The quote coming from Tim O’Brien’s chapter Spin in The Things They Carried comes from a peace story about a man who went AWOL. “A guy goes AWOL. Shacks up in Danang with a Red Cross nurse. It’s a great time- the nurse loves him to death- the guy gets whatever he wants whenever he wants it. The war’s over he thinks. Just nookie and new angles. But then, one day he rejoins his unit in the bush.” Peculiarly enough, after having spent his time with the Red Cross nurse he comes back and seems eager for combat, which leads to questioning from his fellow companions. When asked, he answers “All that peace, man, it felt so good it hurts. I want to hurt it back.”

I don’t think peace is accepted in war, not by the government or by the soldiers themselves. War is not the symbol for peace, obviously not, which is quite ironic since war is supposed to bring peace. This does not change the fact, however, that The Vietnam War just like any other is filled with haunting images and brutality that slowly fills the soldier’s minds and becomes their day to day life. These images and that feeling of raw war is what becomes normal to them and to an extent, what feels right.

I think the reason for this mans enthusiasm towards war and combat originates from this, that slowly a soldier is blinded from what they used to be and become this inhuman, disrespectful to the social code type of people, who believe that in war peace is not to be seen, and shouldn’t be. To be in war has turned this soldier into a savage that prefers to feel the agony of it and its entire trauma instead of the tranquility and peacefulness of what he was feeling when he was with the nurse. To be in war should not mean a sentiment of relief. 

Stories with Triggers

Dear Natalia,

Everyone shares sleep and I can hear the low sound of snores occurring throughout the foxholes. They sleep and they slept the day before that but me, I can’t sleep and I don’t want to. How can they sleep Natalia? I saw them kill, I saw them shoot with their bare hand, pull that trigger that took away a life and now, they sleep—like I used to. I haven’t even pulled a trigger yet, I’m so afraid, so afraid of becoming one of them and sharing that look that everybody here so heavily carry’s in their eyes. They talk and they joke, but it is when the silence hits, those eyes haunt me. The Lieutenant’s eyes are blue, about the iciest blue you have ever seen and when he speaks of the people he kills, he speaks of them as just another person, just another bump on the log and his eyes; they gradually change into the color of the dark sky above us. It’s bizarre and I’ve never seen anything like it. I keep telling myself I won’t turn into them, that when I come back I’ll be the same and nothing will have changed, not in me, not in us. But I’m starting to doubt myself and how capable I am, I feel no hope and the clarity of home is starting to fade. I’m pretty sure most of the people I think I remember are just figments of my imagination. I said I would never forget who you were and what you mean to me, but your voice is slowly disappearing in the back of my mind and being replaced by the vivid screams of the young boy we encountered the other day.

He was skinny and tall, and I watched as his eyes blew up with fear, they weren’t like the hopeless eyes that haunt me, no, not like the lieutenant at all. His eyes were green, just like the color of the tress you used to climb back home and they were naïve. I watched as he ran and my companion grabbed him and shook him, but the boy screamed, oh how the boy screamed and I was the reason for those screams. As he was pinned down and a gun was held to his head, he looked at me and I looked at him. He wanted to be me, the adult standing there, free from the grasp of that man that was about to take his life, but the feeling was mutual, I wanted to be him. I wanted to be that child, dead and gone. Just to be so easily freed from this misery that I’m slipping into, to feel that gun against the temple of my head and the fast shot of the bullet and then—gone. I want your voice to replace that boys screams, but I don’t think it can anymore. You used to sing, I remember, you used to sing all day, and I used to like it. I want to be back home and hear you sing; hear you sing until I slip into somber sleep. I just want to be home Natalia, and let your voice erase all of this. I’ll be home soon, please God, I’ll be home soon.

Sincerely,
Alex

            I chose to write this letter to Natalia because in reality if I was writing it to anyone else, my feelings and stories would be altered by the idea of what this person thinks of me. However, with Natalia I think its more like writing everything I think and letting her know everything I’m feeling, writing to anyone else wouldn’t help me just because I trust Natalia more than anyone else to discard her judgment and understand what I’m saying. The letter would be honest and would hide nothing from her. 

The Things I Carry

When I look in my bag I see all that I need for the school day. In front of everything are my soccer cleats, white with dirt and mud stuck under the pink plastic bottom of it, but placed in a red bag brought everyday especially for them. Inside are the collection of my notebooks, some torn and pages falling out while others impeccable. My binder filled with unorganized papers and shoved in tests reading B’s at the top of them, work folded every which way and probably messy enough to make any person with even the slightest case of OCD cringe. At the bottom is a collection of unwanted grades with my name and handwriting on it, shoved down and hidden from adults, but mostly myself.
            In the front pocket of the worn out Jansport backpack is my IPod touch engraved with my full name, a pair of earphones to add to my headphones and my “agenda” rarely filled with homework assignments but rather drawings developed while waiting. Cherry Chap Stick, a most commonly turned off cell phone and a pack of Kleenex. 
            I’m still a student and although my backpack is normally packed with unnecessary materials for school, that’s not the case for outside of class. When I got out I use the most minimal of bags to simply hold, once again, my chap stick, money, my cell phone and always, no matter where I go, my IPod.
            I don’t know why I carry my IPod everywhere, I just do. I mean, it’s not like I’m listening to it every second of the day (I have class to attend) but whatever chance I get, ill take. I can’t handle silence, in a way it annoys me and I’m not exactly a talker, I much rather prefer to sit back and think about things which are two things that seem to contradict each other. But I think music allows that silence to be filled and at the same time I can think to myself. 

The Vietnam War

My knowledge on the Vietnam War really didn’t extend further that its name and very obviously where it was fought. The memorial in Washington DC is the most I’ve ever seen of something related to it, so needless to say; I wasn’t acquainted with this subject.  I feel guilty about having this magnitude of ignorance on a subject that is such a large part of US history. Not having been introduced to it through school previously impeded any further curiosity on the matter thus the complete lack of information.

The Vietnam War was a battle between North Vietnam and South Vietnam which originated when communism was introduced in North Vietnam. The whole reason for the United States involvement and its support for South Vietnam is truly what I see as unfathomable. That a nation of such size could succumb under the fear of communism and the Domino Theory that suggests all countries becoming communist and is so far fetched even in the most exaggerated of circumstances. Out of all the reasons to have a war I never thought something like that was in fact why so many soldiers were drafted, died and today the Washington memorial stands to commemorate them. 

Just as I question the reason for the US’ involvement, it seems many at the time showed anger towards the matter. However, the reason for this was also influenced by the newly introduced media on the war that allowed families to tune into the war—for those who wanted to watch. It was the first televised footage of combat and it was brutal footage, giving the unaltered and no longer distorted image of war that many people were not familiar with.  Ignorance was no longer a factor, people were informed and angry with what they were watching.

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