Faulkner's Wagon Stops at Severn

          I walk the hallways, looking for someone who can help me. Suppose I find a doctor, suppose he helps fix me, then will I not be so alone? There are people everywhere. Vardaman keeps close to my hip, his face looks like the face of an adult man misplaced on his small body. He has all the anger of an adult man. People my age pass us from all direction, they look hurried. For why are they hurried? Their time is long, ours is gone. They probably all have mothers. They are simple tubs of guts, don't got worries about anyone but themselves. 
         I ask if the doctor is in. They stare at me for a second. Their time is long. Their gaze cuts though me and down the hall. They know. But they don't know me. Are they like Darl? Can they see I am two lives in the costume of one? 
         "The nurse is in the basement of Teel, I think," the boy with hair like corn silk says. A nurse can't do the job of a doctor. He isn't like Darl. They don't know. 
           I pull Vardaman's wrist and he follows. He stares up at me. I stare up at God. I need God now.

Jewel's Horse

               The act of purchasing his horse further isolates Jewel from the Bundren family. In order to save the money to afford the horse, he works long nights cleaning acres upon acres of field. He spends his days among his family in a sleepy daze, falling asleep at the dinner table, not making conversation. His window escapes into the night leave Darl suspicious. Darl grows jealous as Jewel's constant fatigue only gains him more attention from their mother, who worries for her son's health. Once Jewel has saved the money, he heads out to buy the horse, leaving him missing from the household for the morning. This makes Darl and the other Bundren's who were skeptical of Jewel actually worry for him. However, when Jewel returns with the horse, this worry quickly switches over to anger, only intensified as they are resentful that they worried for Jewel while he was off on a self-serving mission. The horse creates a rift between Jewel and Addie, Anse, and Darl Bundren, who all feel betrayed Jewel would work hard at night, neglecting his responsibilities to their own land during the day, to make money for a purchase that would only help himself, instead of trying to feed his family. Beyond the immediate separation between Jewel and the Bundren's, the horse serves to provide hope to Jewel that he will eventually physically escape the Bundren house entirely.

How To Have A Successful Harkness Discussion

              A successful harkness discussion is never one-sided. It does not have one singular opinion, nor reach an overall agreement, nor exist without disagreement, nor have one voice speak for many mouths. If a harkness discussion occurs with no conflicts in opinion, it is not successful. If at the end you feel your ideas are entirely correct, or if you feel your peers have all the same observations, then you have been the victim of an uninteresting and unsuccessful harkeness discussion. There is no unity. There is no common consensus. As a general rule, you can identify a successful harkness discussion if you walk away with at least one of your opinions changed, or ideas challenged. You can tell a successful harkness discussion if it humbles you, makes you see things you did not before and recognize you are not all knowing. If you don’t care to hear opposing opinions, you don’t care to learn; if you don’t care to learn, watch how much weight you give your own views. Send students to a harkness discussion, they come home with a new understanding of the topic being discussed.

Harkness Discussion: Women in TTTC

            One of the most interesting points that came up in the class discussion that I found interesting was the examination of women in The Things They Carried. A common consensus was that for O’Brien utilizes women and girls as an outlet for his emotional side. The male characters in the book are often flawed, brash, and angry at the world for the repercussions of the war. The female characters on the other hand have a sort of angelic quality. Linda, the narrator’s elementary school love, is portrayed as being stoic even in the face of mockery from her peers. She is kind and levelheaded even in the face of deathly illness. Unlike male characters who deal with loss by torturing baby buffalo, shutting off the world, or firing a gun aimlessly into the sky, Linda is non-destructive and relatively unbroken in wake of tragedy. Then there is Mary Anne, who O’Brien has Rat Kiley romanticize to the point she is more of a dream than a woman. However, Mary Anne is used as vehicle to state that women, who were generally regarded to be the weaker, more delicate sex, are just as capable of being changed into a bloodthirsty monster as men. Mary Anne loved the violence of war, more than most of the men at camp, and it changed her into a new, liberated being. Lastly, there is O’Brien’s, the narrator, daughter, who represents innocence and morality. She is untouched by war, she does not know how it feels to watch a good man be blown to bits; yet, she is curious about her father’s time in Vietnam. She provides the outlet for O’Brien to alter his memories and war stories, as she does not know anything to dispute that whatever he tells her is absolute truth.

"Style" of Grief Management

In the story "Style," there is a certain irony in Azar so intensely questioning why the young girl danced in the streets. Her family burned to death, her house in shambles, her life completely altered, and she danced. She was not crying, not hiding, just dancing. Azar being so puzzled by this comes across as almost funny given that in an earlier story, "How to Tell a True War Story," men of the company were in awe of Rat Kiley essentially torturing a baby buffalo. No one questioned his act of tremendous violence, but Azar cannot wrap his head around the girl's peaceful demeanor and dancing. Killing the buffalo and dancing on tiptoes are both outlets utilized to avoid the pains of sorrow. Perhaps Azar, so adjusted to the world of violence around him in war, was offput by an act of non-violence. In war, violence is met with consequent violence; but the girl, whose family fell victim to violence, was not taking any violent counter-measures. This girl, just like the soldiers, carries the weight of war, death, and destruction. Everyone touched by war is programed to handle its painful grasp differently, as confusing as it may be to onlookers from the outside.

Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong: Believability

The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong is the only story in the collection I find completely unbelievable. There are details woven into the other stories which I question, but this story in its entirety seems unfathomable. However, for once it is not Tim O'Brien, the narrator, whose creditability is in the air. Rat Kiley tells the story, and even in subtle details of the language such as "the way Rat told it," give indication that even O'Brien does not take the story for fact, offering the idea there is an alternate, honest version buried away in history. The concept of an underage female even being able to navigate to a Vietnamese war camp is questionable, and the idea that the military higher-ups did not forbade her stay seems even more unrealistic. Details such as the necklace of tongues and the Greenies's cooperation with Mary Anne seem downright fictional to exagerate her love of the independence and equality she found at war. Yet Rat Kiley, a generally stolid character, getting emotional and defensive of Mary Anne give her character life. Maybe Rat Kiley fell for a creature of his own fantasy; Mary Anne representing the idealized version of the women he misses from back home, physically beautiful in a feminine way, but with the cunning mind associated with masculinity at the time. Alternately, it is not outlandish to once more question the reliability of O'Brien. Perhaps he embellished both the story told by Riley and his emotions whilst telling it.

Define Yourself in Three Words

Through the process of applying to college, I have looked at and begun to attempt to answer over two dozen supplementary questions and essays. I went into the process expecting the 250-500 word requirement questions to prove the most challenging, but it is a 3 word prompt that has left me stumped.

"Define yourself in three words."

Defining myself in words, whether is be three or three thousand, is a daunting task. To construct a description of who I identify as a person, boxed in on an eight by eleven rectangle of paper, seems nearly impossible. My identity is growing, evolving, and advancing every day. Some days I am creator, typing essays in the Mac Lab or drawing landscapes in the art studio, but others I am a scientist, conducting experiments in the chemistry lab or drafting equations to explain motion. My identity is not a linear progression, I rotate back and forth between being social and shy, left brained and right brained, athletic or clumsy. To narrow down my "definition" to three words seems counterintuitive in a process that revolves around assessing a student as a whole.

Mothers In Leadership

On Friday, I had the pleasure of attending the Athena Conference at the US Naval Academy. One take away I had from the event came from hearing Indra Nooyi, the ten-year CEO of PepsiCo speak. The point she brought to surface was childcare for working women. There is a difficult balance women in the workforce must handle if they want to have children: work and family. After giving birth, twelve weeks is the typical maternity leave. However, at four months old, a baby is no where near ready to be left at home alone. To raise that child the family needs money and if the father, or wife, cannot afford to be the sole provider, the mother must return to work. There needs to be easy, affordable childcare, that is also trustworthy. The point she brought up that I found most troubling, is the idea of who will raise the childcare worker's children. She explained it as a cycle of only more and more unskilled caretakers going down the chain. I have often thought of the difficulties of balancing work and childcare for women of twenty-first century, but I had not considered the same challenge applied to women whose career is child care.

Response to the Magic of the Book

           The idea that perhaps stuck with me the most from the article was Hesse's belief that the book will find revival once it is hailed as not a predecessor to film or other multi-media, but as a unique art form itself. While upon first thought, film seems a much more immersive choice to convey a story, showing rather than telling, film does not portray the literary elements that make books such an art form. For example, in film one can actually see the scene described in a book, or hear the subtle nuances of dialog in the actors' delivery, but a film cannot convey syntax or word manipulation as it appears in written text.
          As an amateur artist myself, it is interesting to see writing as an art in the same sense as painting. Just as a painting begins with a rough sketch, then is painted over with base colors, and finally embellished with details, highlights, and shadows before it is deemed complete, one can write an essay with the same appreciation for the craft. I like to view my rough draft as my sketch, a brief outline to establish the structure of the final product I hope to create. Then writing my second draft I equate to adding a base coat, making the purpose and brunt of piece clear. My final, and favorite, step is fleshing out the piece, adding in metaphors and richening imagery, just as I would shade over my base coat with darker paint to add dimension.
         It is these details added in a piece of writing, like a playful metaphor or clever juxtaposition that would not translate in film as they would in writing. I believe that as a member of a generation that views cinema as a more entertaining medium than novels, I often am prone to overlook the unique elements of literature that make it an equally valuable art form for not only academia, but also leisure. I hope that Hesse is correct in his belief books will once more rise in popularity as they are valued separately from film, but I fear that with the technological revolution that is occurring now, it is more likely for cinema to be replaced with a third even more commonplace medium to further compete with the popularity of literature.