Write a minimum of 275-word post in the first paragraph on the following situation: In the documentary How to Tell a True War Story, Tim O’Brien states, “I’m forty-three years old and I’m still telling war stories. My daughter, Kathleen, tells me that it’s an obsession, that I should write about a little girl who finds a million dollars and spends it all on a Shetland pony. In a way, I guess she’s right; I should forget it. But the thing about remembering is that you don’t forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life at the intersection of past and present; the memory traffic that feeds into the rotary up in your head when it goes in circles for a while then pretty soon imagination feeds in and the traffic merges and shoots off a thousand different streets and as a writer all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride putting things down as they come.”
This is a profound and complex thought, O’Brien is sharing. Please explain in your own words what he means by “memory traffic” and how a writer must “pick a street and go for the ride”? Is the memory traffic more about accuracy or feelings and experiences? And what do you think the title of the documentary How to Tell a True War Story is referring to? That is, what does “true” mean? True to war generals, President Nixon, peace activists, veterans? Is the word “true” too complicated to have a single meaning?
Write a minimum of 150 word-post in the second paragraph to the following situation: In The Things They Carried, O’Brien mentions the multiple items he and his buddies carried during the war. But he and his buddies also carried psychological items upon their backs. For example, Lieutenant Jim Cross carried fantasies of Martha. Please explain who is Martha and what she represents to Lt. Cross, especially in a time of war where he never knew he was going to survive the next day? Please make sure you integrate one or two sentences from the text to help support your views.
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Links:
https://pages.uoregon.edu/eherman/teaching/texts/OBrien_TheThingsTheyCarried.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXRSh6I1ECw&t=2s (First 30 minutes)
