1. Create a strategy and a plan of action for how you will relate your session to all the previous ones.
2. Create a character profile for the main character of each story. Who are they? What are they carrying and why?
Stockings: The main character of this story was Henry Dobbins. He was a good man and a good soldier. Henry Dobbins was a big strong man with good intentions, a good friend who was always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and directness and hard labor. He carried his girlfriends pantyhose, because he said they were his good luck charm. He would breathe in the scent and was intrigued by the memories it brought back. The pantyhose gave him access to a spiritual world, a world of hope that he would come home alive and get to see his girlfriend again. Even after his girlfriend dumped him he still used the pantyhose as a good luck charm insisting the magic didn’t go away.
Style: The main characters of this story are Azar, Henry Dobbins, Lieutenant Cross & the dancing girl. Henry Dobbins carries his girlfriends pantyhose for good luck. Lieutenant Cross carried letters from Martha, a girl he is obsessed with. He feels safe reading them and likes the fantasies they bring. The girl just dances because it is her way of coping with her dead family and she likes to dance.
Night Life: The main character of this story is Rat Kiley. He is a good medic and a good soldier. His intentions are good, and he helps his fellow soldiers whenever they need him or are hurt. He seems like nice guy that just likes comic books, however he has a hard time telling the truth, and sometimes stretches the truth in his stories. He carried many things from comic books to a satchel full of medication because he was a medic to brandy and M&M’s candy.
3. What is important about “style?” What does the title come to mean?
Style is important because it is one persons way of expressing themselves. The girl had a specific style of dancing and enjoyed doing it, but Azar felt the need to mock her dancing and do the same but as a joke. The girl expressed herself by her method of dancing that she enjoyed very much. She wasn’t doing it to be funny or to get made fun of, she was dancing simply because she liked to dance. Dancing may have helped her cope with the loss of her family. The title comes to mean that everyone has their own style in order to express themselves. Expressing yourself is important because everyone is different and entitled to their own styles. The title gives meaning to the story and shows that this girl had a different tradition of dancing than the American soldiers did.
4. What types of bravery might the stories convey?
All three stories convey different types of bravery. The main characters in these stories are all brave men for participating in the war in the first place. It takes a lot for one man to go to war. In “Stockings” I think there are two types of bravery conveyed; emotional and spiritual. Henry Dobbins was always drawn towards sentimentality and the pantyhose as his good luck charm gave him access to a spiritual world, where things were soft and intimate. In “Style” I think the type of bravery shown is moral courage. Azar feels the need to mimic the girls dancing which is wrong, his intentions may have been good but he acted out disrespectfully about someone’s style of dancing that he didn’t understand. In “Night Life” I think this story conveys emotional courage. Rat Kiley fears operation and doesn’t know if he’s cut out to be a medic. He states that body parts haunt him at night and the soldiers that passed seemed so alive, then so dead. He was so nervous and freaking out that he shot himself in the foot to cause his own injury and be dismissed from duty.
5. Why do some men love war? Consider passages in the stories that could help answer or dispute the question.
Some men love war because they agree with what they are fighting for. They will give everything to defend their country and fight for what they believe in. The men get to mock the values they are fighting for. War gives them a sense of danger, a reason to act brutally and harshly. Why some men love war is built off of contradictory reasons, some easily discussed while others are hard to talk about. The love of war stems from a variety of different things such as destruction, beauty and horror, love and death. Going to war gives them a sense of bravery and loyalty to their country as well as heroism for defending their country.
6. Discuss the style of writing in these stories: word choice, imagery, figurative language, sentence type, etc.
Each story conveys a different meaning because each story focuses on a different character. The word choice, imagery, and language in “Night Life” is a little softer and more sympathetic given that Rat Kiley is the main character and it discusses how he is afraid of operation, and becomes so emotional that he injures himself just to get called off duty. The word choice, imagery, and language in “Style” for example expresses how harsh Azar was for making fun of the girls dancing and mimicking her for no reason. Henry Dobbins becomes angry with Azar’s disrespect and tells him to dance right or he will drop him down the well for being so disrespectful to the girls style of dancing and emotions. In “Stockings” the word choice, imagery, and language was average because it was just a story about how a good man used his girlfriends pantyhose as a good luck charm, it was a short story about how the magic helped him feel safe and kept him going through tough times.
7. Compare what you learn about the characters in these three stories to what you learned about them in the first story, “The things they carried.” Have they changed? Has your impression of them changed? Why and how?
I think that a couple characters made a turn around from their personalities and motives in the beginning of the book to the end. Lieutenant Cross used to be obsessed with Martha and would carry around letters that he hoped were love letters, and fantasize about all the things he would do to Martha if she were there, etc. He blames himself for the deaths of Ted Lavender and Kiowa because he had been so occupied with his unrealistic love with Martha, and his tendency to follow orders despite his better judgement. As the story progresses he gets better at putting the Alpha Company first and his unrealistic love for Martha second. He does the best he can to keep his men safe and be a better leader, as well as use his better judgement and not second guess it. Another character I think made a small turn around was Azar. He started off as a disrespectful, cruel, unsympathetic soldier who didn’t care about anyone’s feelings and would do mean things just to get a laugh or two. He made fun of a young girl dancing because her style was different than most but she just enjoyed dancing. My impression of him changed when he demonstrated some kind of humanity and was forced to help pull Kiowa’s body from the sewage field. That moment of remorse he shared probed that their a a breaking point for every soldier even one who uses cruelty as their defense mechanism.
8. What kind of multi-media, documents, and sources can you use to make your presentation a solid, coherent, in-depth, and challenging? Keep in mind that you have to use the book, no matter what.
I can use a variety of different text from the stories as well as audio clips that have to do with the Vietnam War, along with pictures or video’s portraying the Vietnamese War and the conditions of the soldiers in it. I can also use clips portraying the characters in the stories. To make my presentation a solid, coherent, in-depth, and challenging I can use trivia that quiz’s the class on the stories so they understand what they read and can experience in depth what the character went through. Each story shared a different point of view from a different character, along with what they carried and why they carried it. Each man was different and conveyed different aspects such as bravery. Some were more emotional, some more spiritual, etc. To further understand the personalities of the characters the class would need to be aware of what they were reading and develop their own interpretations of the character.
9. How will you ensure that the audience participates attentively throughout?
To ensure that the audience participates attentively throughout the presentation my group is making a quiz about each of the stories to challenge the class on what they read, and to help them further understand the stories, and understand the different characters. I think this is a good idea because it will help keep the class intrigued and paying attention throughout the presentation as well as listen and understand what they are listening to as well as reading themselves.
