Fog of War: I kinda get why we go to war now...

I have to disagree with Noor, I liked this documentary more than I did Hearts and Minds...probably because it had a rigid structure, but also because it had these little pearls of wisdom that gave me epiphanies through out the movie. I like epiphanies. A lot.
For the first time I was seeing the origin of the mentality that many Americans have about the Vietnam War, and foreign policy in general.

My favorite quote from the documentary was Lemay's statement that "If we lost the war, we would all be persecuted as war criminals". It showed me that the United States was painfully aware of everything that was going down in Vietnam. Officials knew our soldiers were doing atrocious things to the people of Vietnam, and that Vietnam was being just as nasty, but they never did anything that suggested they were taking that into account. They plunged forward.

At one point, McNam says that "If we can't persuade nations about the merit of our cause...We'd better reexamine our reasoning." I feel like the people who go to war for us never do this. So many Americans seem to think that "flip-flopping" is a sign of weakness in a leader. If we're in a fix we always plunge forward instead of stopping to and rethinking strategy. There is this incredibly stupid attitude that we're 100% right 100% of the time and if you don't think so then you're the idiot who's wrong.

Another quote gave me a glimpse of why the USA insists on being a hero. I have always wondered why the hell we fight for other nations who often times don't neccesarily need our help. Who died and made us their savior? Especially during the Cold War, the United States felt personally responsible for the containment of communism. "...What'll happen to all the other little nations?" is our attitude.
One Vietnamese official said that "They [the Vietnamese] were fighting for their independence, and you [Americans] were fighting to enslave us". The United States tries to be that kid on the playground who's everyone's friend, but somehow always manage to end up being the kid who steals lunch money instead.

This documentary was awesome in my book. Whether it was the directors intent or not, the thinking that backs reasons for war was made more concrete to me.

One Country to Rule Them All

Truth becomes whatever the audience will believe; therefore, it is hard to determine whether or not Fog of War, (FOG), is truthful or not. According to that definition, it appears to be truthful. It seems to provide a rather less biased view of the Vietnam War than Hearts and Minds did. Not only does FOG touch on the harsh subjects of the Vietnam War, the use of napalm, why the US was there in the first place, etc, it also rationalizes some of the actions of people in power.

Director Errol Morris uses a good portion of the first half of the movie describing Robert McNamara’s, the interviewee, life. This interesting choice establishes the ethos of McNamara for all of the audience members who might not have believed him otherwise--the piecing together of the documentary in this fashion was critically important. This documentary attempts to answer many questions that were never answered during the war because the US media appeared to be in cahoots with the government, or maybe the government did such a good job at lying that the media never knew the truth, or the truth as we know it today because the truth is whatever the audience buys into.

The old tape recordings and videos added a realm of truth to the movie. These provided an unique insight into the workings of the oval office and what the people in power were actually thinking--how they knew what was going on; how they knew what the men were doing out on the battlefield; how they knew the truth. The tapes bolstered McNamara's claims by adding evidence to his claims.

"He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?"-Robert McNamara

Fog of War

It wasn't really as good as "Hearts and Minds". Honestly, the first half bored me to death. But then when they got into Vietnam, the documentary got substantially better, and a lot of the points made about the war were very eye-opening because they were from this completely different perspective. Seeing this war from the eyes of someone who, arguably, was one of the masterminds behind it was a very interesting journey.

It's not like the documentary provided stuff that we didn't already know about the war, as far as violence and deaths were concerned. But I really enjoyed the "behind the scenes" footage. Listening to the phone conversations provided depth to the documentary, and a lot of insightful evidence to the claims being made. Also, there were moments where the scene would just shut off, and there would be this blank screen for half a second. These scenes were especially effective because they always came after this really deep thought or statement, and a pause afterwards really made the message stay in your head. It also provided time for the message to register and linger on long after the movie has ended.

I especially enjoyed the ending, where McNamara confronts the fact that there are a LOT of people who just plain detest him. His response to this, that he understands that, and that these people just don't know what its like, really had an impact on me. I mean, this whole time, we're sitting over here thinking "My God, the U.S. was so horrible during the war!", but we never really saw it from the perspective of the people who were forced to keep it going. Did they really have a choice? Were they not humans as well, just trying to do their job? They must have had some circumstances that prevented them from backing down. No human can be a killing machine. There mut be a reason behind the forced continuation of murder.

Also, I just wanted to say that the guy "interviewing" McNamara sounded like a douche.

Foggy is Right!

In the documentary Fog of War, the audience focuses on McNamara and his story about his life and purpose. The director did an effective job in the way he progressed the argument. Analyzing the way the director pieced everyhting together kept me from the reaction that I had from Hearts and Minds, which was rather expolosive. The director already has a strong ethos developed because of the peson he chose to focus on and have speak to the audience. I automatically felt that since he was one of the key roles in shaping the president's decisions, then he was truthful. He was also 'truthful' in my eyes because he felt he made a mistake and wanted us to fix this in the future. I felt alomost sympathetic for MvNamara. The documentary starts with telling the key elements in McNamara's life that helped shape his ways of thinking. It made the audience believe that he was a genius and had the right credentials to advise our president. He was one of us at one point and made his way to the top. This added to the ethos of the film and made the audience feel that they are in good hands.

Not only did the film cover Vietnam, but talked about World War II and how that shaped the 'fog' that takes place during this time period. The facts that were revealed by McNamara is shocking, but it does not take long to just accept it because this sort of 'fog' takes place everyday in our country. No one will ever know everything, and it's either comfortinf because we don't have the facts on our shoulders, or it's just wrong because we are being lied to by our leaders and have so little control considering we are a democratic country.

The information that came from real voice footage and an actual decision maker that definately made me lean towards a side of this issue. Not only did this provide real information, but also made me realize that the president is not the only person involved in the reality of Vietnam or war itself. The president does have to take a lot of the blame, but the people have to know that there are more people involved. This documentary made that clear.

Learning from our Mistakes

“Fog of War” is a documentary unlike many. After watching Hearts and Minds most recently, which also looked at our presence in Vietnam during the Cold War, I was whole-heartedly expecting to be confronted with juxtaposed clippings and an overall bias perspective.

Director Errol Morris takes a different approach to portraying America’s involvement in arguably one of its biggest failures. Using Secretary of the Defense Robert MacNamera as the primary interview for the entire film, we are instead shown that failure is not even the issue at hand; this has already been established. Instead, we are encouraged to “try to learn and understand what happened” during this controversial era, given eleven rules as guidance throughout. Ranging from Rule #1-Empathize with your enemy to Rule #11-You Can’t Change Human Nature, the documentary made me feel as if I was receiving real, genuine advice from perhaps one of the most qualified people to do so. MacNamera’s interview was even recorded in such a way where he appears to be speaking directly to the audience. There is no question of his motives or what is trying to be portrayed; rather, we are made to feel like this is the truth, even as something that most chose to avoid or make excuses for.

Failure is something our country does not like to admit to, which is perhaps why the Vietnam War is rarely capitalized on as a major event in history. "Fog of War," in my opinion, does an excellent job of reexamining our past mistakes as a country and then looking to gain acceptance and understanding to be able to ultimately benefit. In one of his most honest statements, MacNamera provides that "The conventional wisdom is: don't make the same mistake twice. Learn from your mistakes. And we all do. Maybe we make the mistake three times, but hopefully not four of five."

Sad Remarks for Such a Sad Time

“I think ultimately that much of the negative response goes back to the very natural response to cover up or not acknowledge that which is painful or unpleasant.” Maya Lin

“The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on [them].” J. William Fulbright

“Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dissent. Disgust. Anger. Words used to describe the Vietnam War. Never could I have imagined that a country could learn so little from such a huge mistake; but congratulations, you, the USA, the grand ‘ole state, have done it. You have managed to not learn a damned thing from such a disaster. Not only did you massacre hundreds of people, destroy an entire country, and preach false information to your peoples, you also learned nothing from your affairs. The Vietnam War ended in 1975 and in 1982 you still didn’t have the gusto to let go of your misfortunes. A very skilled architecture student, only by the grace of anonymity, designed a beautiful memorial only to come to realize that because she is Asian that her opinion doesn’t matter. Some people saw the memorial as “too Asian,” others viewed it as too subtle. She couldn’t win. Don’t mind her Ivy League school diploma or her references, only take a good hard long look at her race, and let that, and only that, determine whether or not she is qualified to even be in the discussion of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

1982: America still had not let go of their hatred for Vietnam; America still had not let go of the anger they exhibited toward Asian people; America still had not learned to accept defeat.

A War You May Have Never Heard Of

SPOLIER ALERT: This blog contains the ending scene from Black Hawk Down, I strongly recommend seeing the entire movie first.

For those of you who don’t want to watch the movie, here is a short summary of the Battle of Mogadishu:

America's original mission to Somalia - Operation Restore Hope - was humanitarian in nature. But when UN-supplied food materials were used as bargaining chips by rival clan leaders, further fueling chaos, peacekeeping Americans were killed.

In August of 1993, President Clinton sent special forces to Somalia as part of a new mission: Operation Continue Hope. This time, armed Delta Force commandos (from Ft. Bragg) and Army Rangers (from Ft. Benning) would attempt to keep the peace. A detachment of helicopters, with their crews, were sent from Ft. Campbell. The choppers were UH-60s - also called “Black Hawks.”

On the 3rd of October, 1993, members of Delta Force were sent to capture two rebel leaders (who were in Mogadishu) while a Ranger Task Force would secure all four corners of the target block. Everyone expected the commandos and rangers to return to base within an hour. Instead, two Black Hawks were shot down by Somalis using antiquated guns and rocket-propelled grenades. An urban battle ensued, in which the Americans found themselves in the middle of a shooting gallery.

Unlike the ending in Full Metal Jacket, where the troops are happily singing a nostalgic Mickey Mouse song, Black Hawk Down’s ending offers a more realistic perspective on the harsh realities of war. The bloodied corpses accompanied by slow, melodic chanting music create a solemn mood. The only two things these movies share in common, in the ending, is the monologue by a main character of the film. Joker’s final words allude to the nostalgic feelings one gets by watching the end, whereas the reading of a letter sent home from Mogadishu, supplemented by text on the screen of fallen comrades, sends chills up my spine as this is essentially a death wish, a final letter telling a loved one that a solider might not come home.

We find ourselves trying to make sense of the Black Hawk Down incident. Most people have never heard of this battle, let alone the repercussions or the cause for invading Somalia. The United States entered Somalia to help out. As the lone superpower of the world, it was our job to help those in need and “after all, the United States and Somalia were not at war.” It became clear that the Somali people did not want the US in their country (or rather, it became clear the government, if you can say they had one, did not appreciate the US occupying their country), but the US’s “mission was humanitarian aid assistance. "

This begs the question: What were we really doing in Somalia? Was this really a humanitarian effort or was their something else to be gained (Osama Bin Laden was training in Somalia at the time)? This boils down to the truth argument: what is the truth? Do people trust what they government tells them? They have never lied to us before.

Making the Memorial (Thoughts)

The Vietnam Memorial construction began on March 16, 1982 and ended on November 13, 1982. But who designed the Memorial in the first place? How did the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF) chose from thousands of designs, to simply just one? Not many people know who designed the Vietnam Memorial.

Maya Lin's essay discusses her journey from a mere contest for a design to actually designing the memorial. She was an undergraduate student at Yale University when she entered for a contest. While planning her design, she went to Washington DC to research the area where the memorial was supposed to stand. She had no intention of winning.

This essay was truly an eye opener. Who would have thought that a mere undergraduate college student would be designing an overall touching memorial for the Vietnam War? Lin had made a decision to not do any specific research on the Vietnam War. She says “I wanted to create a memorial that everyone would be able to respond to, regardless of weather one thought our country should or should not have participated in the war.” I felt that she was truly thinking outside the box, by trying to make this design something that all people would be able to relate to on a personal level. Of course, like any other good deed that tries to be done, there were the news articles shunning Lin for being an Asian, designing an Asian Memorial. It was simply ironic that she was Chinese when she was chosen anonymously. She received many criticism and harassment because of her ethnicity but she still stood strong.

Maya Lin had many people to convince from changing her design, because everything had a meaning behind it. Her design was first controversial because it was a non-traditional design for a war memorial. One contradicting issue I found was keeping the granite black. I have personally visited the Vietnam Memorial, and the granite does leave behind a feeling of sadness and loss from all the lives taken during bravery. It is a huge difference in the atmosphere when you visit the Lincoln Memorial and right when you step into the Vietnam Memorial surroundings. Silence breaks amongst and sadness begins to fill your heart. Lin spoke the truth on how a memorial should really be about the reality of war, loss of life in war, and remembering those who served and especially those who died. Designing the memorial to where all the men who served were listed on the wall brought out the memorial even more. Knowing the history behind the Vietnam Memorial development makes me want to go back and visit the Vietnam Memorial again.

Making the Memorial (Thoughts)

The Vietnam Memorial construction began on March 16, 1982 and ended on November 13, 1982. But who designed the Memorial in the first place? How did the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF) chose from thousands of designs, to simply just one? Not many people know who designed the Vietnam Memorial.

Maya Lin's essay discusses her journey from a mere contest for a design to actually designing the memorial. She was an undergraduate student at Yale University when she entered for a contest. While planning her design, she went to Washington DC to research the area where the memorial was supposed to stand. She had no intention of winning.

This essay was truly an eye opener. Who would have thought that a mere undergraduate college student would be designing an overall touching memorial for the Vietnam War? Lin had made a decision to not do any specific research on the Vietnam War. She says “I wanted to create a memorial that everyone would be able to respond to, regardless of weather one thought our country should or should not have participated in the war.” I felt that she was truly thinking outside the box, by trying to make this design something that all people would be able to relate to on a personal level. Of course, like any other good deed that tries to be done, there were the news articles shunning Lin for being an Asian, designing an Asian Memorial. It was simply ironic that she was Chinese when she was chosen anonymously. She received many criticism and harassment because of her ethnicity but she still stood strong.

Maya Lin had many people to convince from changing her design, because everything had a meaning behind it. Her design was first controversial because it was a non-traditional design for a war memorial. One contradicting issue I found was keeping the granite black. I have personally visited the Vietnam Memorial, and the granite does leave behind a feeling of sadness and loss from all the lives taken during bravery. It is a huge difference in the atmosphere when you visit the Lincoln Memorial and right when you step into the Vietnam Memorial surroundings. Silence breaks amongst and sadness begins to fill your heart. Lin spoke the truth on how a memorial should really be about the reality of war, loss of life in war, and remembering those who served and especially those who died. Designing the memorial to where all the men who served were listed on the wall brought out the memorial even more. Knowing the history behind the Vietnam Memorial development makes me want to go back and visit the Vietnam Memorial again.

Thoughts on In the Lake of the Woods

Before reading the book, I thought I wouldn't like it because of the author. I had read The Things They Carried in my literature class and found it boring. Thankfully, this book was a lot different and highly more enjoyable to read.

I was confused at many parts of the book but I see this as a positive; it means that I had to think about what was really going on. It reminds me a lot of watching Asian horror movies. At the end of the movie, the director pulls some weird stunt and I'm left thinking about the whole mystery. The chronology of the book sometimes made it difficult to understand and I wondered why O'Brien chose to put that specific scene at that specific point.

The whole plot of the story was very interesting. I liked how this book was unlike other things we've seen in class. Instead of the main focus being on the war, O'Brien used the war to tell of the damaging effects the war had done on Wade. It really got me to thinking how Vietnam veterans now are still probably affected and they'll have to live with this throughout their whole lives, just like what that man said from Hearts and Minds. It also had me sympathizing for the families of the veterans because just like Kathy, they must also deal with the aftermath of the war but don't know how to really help because they themselves weren't present and have not experienced the same things.

One concept O'Brien presented was the image of love through the two snakes. I thought this was a creepy way to show love. 1 +1 = 0. I understand that two people are suppose to be consumed by each other but the thought of two snakes eating each other from the tail to the head just kept appearing in my mind. It disgusts me and makes me think that Wade's love was the obsessive kind which I guess it was with all the secret spying. A better interpretation of love to me would be something less gruesome like 1 + 1 = 1.

If You Hide in Mirrors There Is Nothing To See But Yourself

I'm going to start out by admitting a personal bias about this book, but more specifically the author. Being a Minnesotan, I've read Tim O'Brien's work in the past for school. I even permanently borrowed "The Things They Carried" from my English class junior year. Many of the places referenced in "In the Lake of the Woods" are places I've been, or at least driven through. The farthest north I've been is only Duluth, but I've seen the wilderness in that area and can say that O'Brien nailed the way the forest just seems to go on and appear to be the same place in different places (that might not make sense, but you must know what I'm trying to articulate). Anyways.
This book was fantastic. O'Brien knows exactly how to connect to his audience, and he writes in such a way that makes his story yours. There is a lot to talk about.
First off, the story itself. John Wade is a psychotic main character, but through the course of the book we see that it really isn't entirely his fault. Yes, he doesn't ever face his problems and makes his life into a giant magic trick, but how else could he have been? His father made him try to win people's love instead of just receive it. This generated his craving for winning people over, thus his future in politics was set in stone from the get-go. The My Lai Massacre didn't help him. The effects of a serious event such as that leaves serious psychological issues that a person can't repress without suffering from it in the future, as O'Brien points out through his evidence (more on that brilliance later). His magic tricks, starting as a way to gain love as a child, become a way to hide from his problems. Giving Wade the nickname of Sorceror while on his tour in Vietnam was brilliant, because it gave Wade more chances to win people's devotion over through a charade. In the end, Wade's entire life is made into a giant trick. He disappears, leaving us to wonder what exactly his secret was, how he did it, where he ended up.
One thing that O'Brien did in this novel that stood out to me as a fantastic rhetorical device was the use of foreshadowing and repetition. In the beginning of the novel, O'Brien drops hints about things like My Lai and Kathy's affair, but these don't even seem significant until they are further explored by the memories to come. That's all this book is, a bunch of memories. By the end of the book, these memories are our own; when O'Brien mentions the good old days when Kathy and John would lay on the porch and think of names for babies, we end up looking back and reflecting as well. O'Brien found a way to make the story OURS. Everything is past tense, everything is just a memory. He says it himself in the end, that sometimes other memories become our own over time, and this is exactly what happens in this novel. We become John and Kathy.
The Hypothesis and Evidence chapters were the most interesting and effective chapters in this novel, even more than the memories that they explored. In the Hypothesis chapters, we are given logical scenarios about what could have happened to Kathy. Each one seems 100% likely; after reading each of these chapters I believed that that was what indeed did happen. Suddenly, however, we are shown new memories and more evidence that suggests that perhaps a different thing happened. Each time is convincing, and at the end of the novel we are allowed to decide what we think happened, because, after all, it has become a part of us. We possess these memories now, and of course we choose the ending because it BECOMES us. Am I a cynical person that thinks that John murdered Kathy? Did she just leave to cool down and get some fresh air but tragically get lost? In reality, all of these happened. Each person that reads this novel chooses a different scenario, most likely inventing their own that combines more than one of the given ones. I myself believe that Kathy needed to get away from John for a while, so she decided to escape to the river and ride around, feeling freedom from her controlled life. I guarantee you didn't come to that conclusion. This inclusion in the outcome of the story, especially by making the memories become our own, forces the reader to become very intertwined with the novel. This allows for the next and best part of the novel to take its greatest effect, and that is of course the Evidence chapters.
I've never seen a book with anything like this before. I don't read much, but I've never heard of anything like it. Stating evidence and citing sources in the middle of a fiction novel? Bizarre, yet extremely effective rhetoric. O'Brien's words are never questioned, because he uses facts; it's logos at its core meaning. He uses interviews, both fictional (with the townspeople and relatives and John and Kathy) and real (with the soldiers involved in the My Lai Massacre), excerpts from classic books and letters, even the contents of John's magic kit. We are presented with the facts and allowed to connect the dots on our own. By juxtaposing an interview with one of the soldiers that killed innocent townspeople in My Lai with a quote from a British officer about doing the same thing after the battles of Lexington and Concord, we are indirectly led to the conclusion that we were no better than the imperial forces we fought in our revolution. And yet these conclusions that we are supposed to get ourselves are sometimes explained to us by O'Brien himself. In footnotes in these chapters, he sometimes responds to a quote, and every one of these outlines what he's trying to say with this book. He is directly and indirectly, at the same time, telling us his message. We get it, loud and clear. He has become an outsider just like us, an observer of the events in the novel; he shares the memories involved just as much as we do. His observations about what he went through while walking through My Lai one year after the massacre are personal, but we see through his response what he's getting at. We see that the circumstances the soldiers were in were awful, we see that anger and heat and fear can build up in a soldier.
What I'm trying to get at is that O'Brien worked us over. He made it seem like he was just presenting the facts, that he was also just observing this story. We forget that it is entirely fictional; while the events did indeed happen, it's like he describes in "The Things They Carried": whether or not a memory or story is true doesn't mean it didn't happen. His method of storytelling allows for him to say his message in his book, lining the footnotes with his conclusions about everything. Instead of leaving us with "Oh, that is what he's getting at, I'll just move on to my next train of thoughts," we read his personal outlooks on the issues and think even more. Just like a magician's audience, we were fooled by O'Brien's slight of hand.

Not your everyday "suspenseful thriller"

From its unconventional setup to its ambiguous conclusion, Tim O’Brien brings a certain element of confusion to In the Lake of the Woods that helps visualize the detrimental side effects of the Vietnam War.

At first, we are simply exposed to John Wade’s background in searching for the answer to his wife’s disappearance. Given his background as a Vietnam veteran, we are given pictures of murder in the most unsympathetic way possible. Similar to much of the other context we have read or viewed this semester, we are made to feel as if every soldier was nothing short of merciless to the people in Vietnam. We are additionally provided with snapshots from other aspects of his life such as his dysfunctional childhood to his strange, stalker-like tendencies in grad school to build upon a plot that is enthralling yet unpredictable.

As the novel progresses though, O’Brien provides more than just character development to support Wade’s psychological effects from his experiences at war. Readers are subjected to random flashbacks that make it difficult to decipher whether the events taking place are in the past, present or future. There are chapters dedicated solely to “evidence,” with inconsistent thoughts from other characters that we have no background or any knowledge on to begin with. The author incorporates constant questioning as to ask the reader what they think, even at points where nothing seems clear. Furthermore, we are provided with alternate endings to consider throughout the book. Was John to blame for his wife’s disappearance or was it because of her own careless decisions? Even the end of the novel provides no definite answer, which is perhaps part of O’Brien’s attempt to have the reader draw their own conclusion.

Ultimately, the story’s disoriented style is successful in communicating an aspect of war that has yet to be explored in class thus far. The psychological effects on a Vietnam veteran with a painful past are reflected in a unique approach that surpasses what could be compared to a typical suspenseful thriller.

He killed All the Houseplants and went back to bed...or did he?

When I first started reading In the Lake of the Woods I was so unsure of how it would connect to the Vietnam War. It’s not your traditional “the horrors of war” novel. O’Brien takes a different approach of explaining the aftermath of being in combat. So far we have seen interviews and read articles about people who are permanently affected by the Vietnam War. O’Brien’s John Wade is a stark contrast to this. He does all that he can to let the affects of Vietnam leave him for good. From enlisting in the army to his run for State Senate, they are all calculating plans to almost change his past. Yet it all leads him to failure.

Despite all his efforts, the effects of War and his past are ever present in John’s life. He kills all the houseplants with boiling water while reciting, “Kill Jesus”. This act somehow gives him solace, but it is only temporary. The flashbacks to his childhood and time spent in Vietnam still continue to haunt him.

What was so strange to me about all of this was reading John’s letters while he was in Vietnam. In a weird sense it seemed as if he almost enjoyed his life there. He found happiness in his identity as the Sorcerer… that was until things started going downhill for his platoon. Then John’s attitude began to change. In his later life he does all he can to convince himself, lie to himself, about much of what happened there- most notably the incident where he kill Weatherby. He also is greatly affected by his flashback of the My Lai Massacre (ps. thanks Jason for the earlier blog post about My Lai, it was very helpful).

John loses the election because it is made known that he was involved with the My Lai Massacre. This is one secret that the Sorcerer couldn’t even make disappear. This book really made you think about truth and how deception can lead to destruction.

As far as Kathy’s disappearance is concerned, while I want to believe it was all a plan and John rode away in the boat to go meet her so they could start their lives over again, I don’t think that’s what really happened. I’m thankful to O’Brien for leaving the choice up to the reader. It again makes you think about truth and what it really is. What was the truth? Did John the murder Kathy subconsciously as a result from his post traumatic stress? Did Kathy fall overboard? Was it all a big plan and she’s waiting for him somewhere along the lake? You never find out the truth…O’Brien leaves you to make your own truth.

Trip to Hanoi

Trip to Hanoi gave me a deeper look at the Vietnamese culture. I thought I understood what the Vietnamese were about until I realized that I really had no idea.
This article was about an American writer who had anti-war feelings felt and saw on his trip to North Vietnam. He was caught in questioning a lot of what they were about because he was still looking at the culture as an outsider. He wanted to get away from his American character and truly be immersed in the culture to better understand it.
"In Vietnam, everything seems formal, measured, controlled, planned." (pg.227) They always showed the proper decorum and hospitality to visitors by always giving to them, even if it meant they would be left without. This is a great quality that shows that they don't expect to receive as long as they can give.
After the reading, I understood the Vietnamese to be people who don't waste their words and actions, to them, everything has a purpose. They are people who are discreet and would rather keep harmony in a relationship then to get their own, personal feelings across and risk hurting someone else. (Which is a totally reversed idea in our country) They never let their feelings get the best of them. They are people who are sincerely polite and respectful. This is shown in the way they handle the idea of sex.
To the Vietnamese, sex is something that is private and sacred. The writer talked about how reserved they are and how public displays of affection are never 'public'. The Vietnamese were very respectful of the difference between sexes and so it was rare for a married couple to take part in informality. They found it rude for profanity to be used in a conversation, no matter how comfortable a group was with each other.
I really appreciated this idea of social behavior because it is something that is rare in our society. Sex and profane language are everywhere. We make sure to get our point across, even if we risk hurting someone. Yes, I think I am blessed to be an American because I have rights but I think that our society has lost moral. Being free is an amazing right but sometimes, our words and our actions are too free and can sometimes be seen as disrespectful.
I also thought found a new sense of respect for they Vietnamese when I read about how they had created a burial spot for an American pilot who had died in a plane crash. If it had been anyone else, anyone else who's country was being burned and destroyed by the enemy, they would have left the body there to rot. That person would have felt that the American pilot got what he deserved. Or maybe that's the way we would see it. But not the Vietnamese, they did what they thought was right and humane. They did what they would like for someone else to do for their soldier. They gave the pilot a proper burial and kept his grave clean so that someday, when the war was over, his family could come and take his body home.
This was just a beautiful thing to do because this action showed that the Vietnamese had no ill feelings or hate toward the Americans. These people who had every right to be angry because their homeland was being destroyed, instead, showed that they considered us their friends.
This article showed me a beautiful way to live life. A way that is giving, respectful, and proper. No matter what, I love my country and I appreciate what I have, but I still think this is a great way to live. These people truly appreciate life for what it is and do not think get caught up in little things such as self and materialism.

New favorite author

Tim O'Brien is my new favorite author! Rarely, I find readings/books that keep me engaged, where I find it hard to set the book down. There have been some readings in this class, where I forced myself to read and didn't retain much from it. This book definitely hit the spot. It had a bit of romance, drama, and suspense.

I must have to agree with Alan for some of parts of his blog post about how there was no sense in direction. When I first started reading it, it was in a romantic zone, all cutesy talking about making a bus filled with kids, even if they are in the 40s. Then when chapter two came, it had some snippets of interviews taken regarding Kathy Wade's disappearance. That's when the suspense started building up to me. It made me put down the book for a few seconds and ask myself, did I read the first chapter correctly? Then once chapter two was over, it went to John Wade's father passing away. I felt that this book was going to tell multiple stories throughout the book and then somehow tie in all together.

Through the book, I learned that lovers, husbands, and wives have qualities beyond what our eyes can see. John and Kathy were in a marriage so obscure that their secrets lead to an emotional downfall. This book made you think between the different scenes being told. From Kathy talking about the future, to the massacre in Vietnam to Kathy's disappearance. Along with the past John had hidden from the public and the downfall of his election for US Senate of Minnesota. O’Brien uses John Wade as a vehicle to assert that secrets and lies of the incident need not be covered up and America should be “big enough” to handle the truth of the horrors there. He is described as a politician who lost in a landslide after secrets of his past in Vietnam were revealed to the public. His obsessive behavior, due to his war experience and emotional trauma, caused Kathy to distance herself from him.

I liked how O'Brien used interviews and evidence throughout the novel. It gave a sense of a documentary being watch, such as Hearts and Minds. I personally enjoyed and loved his format of this novel. I think the chapters, in the way they were ordered, engaged me more into the plot. O'Brien uses many rhetorical strategies to keep us engaged throughout the novel. Such as the way he flashes back to the Vietnam War and then forward to what is currently happening. The evidence provided were very effective to keep the reader engaged.

A World of Unknown Truths

Tim O’Brien is very complex, yet in a way that is not too difficult to understand. In the Lake of the Woods explained how Veterans’ psychological well-being can and dissolve during and after war. However, after finishing the book I do not believe O’Brien’s main focus was to inform those who may be concerned about how horrifying the Vietnam War was. Instead, I believe he wanted to explain how truth is not something that is ever completely revealed.
In the novel, John Wade could be considered a complete mystery. He was a husky adolescent, magician, soldier, politician, great husband, shitty husband, and a possible murderer. Many details were revealed as In the Lake of the Woods progressed, but where was the truth? The entire book is an attempt to truthfully solve unanswered questions. For example, John Wade claimed to love politics and his wife, Kathy Wade. Yet when Kathy is missing John acts like he does not believe Kathy’s sister, Patricia, when she tells him how much Kathy hated being a prominent politician’s wife. “You really didn’t know her,” Pat said. What is the truth? Maybe John did in fact plan on having a family and vacationing to Verona, but he never showed much initiative. However, it was obvious he was madly in love with her. John claimed that he wanted to take the political road in order for her to live a great lifestyle, but O’Brien explained to us that when Kathy learned she was pregnant years before they did not go through with having the child. Tim O’Brien leaves it up to the reader to decide whether or not John Wade was just a selfish politician trying to climb the political ladder, or a loving husband who truly cared about his wife.
Most importantly, O’Brien never unravels the truth about Kathy Wade’s whereabouts. There were ample reasons to consider John a top suspect, but nothing is ever confirmed. It is when O’Brien begins telling us about Kathy’s disappearance that we learn how harshly John’s experiences in the Vietnam War as well as his childhood affected him. John was known as Sorcerer to the members of his platoon. He had a magician since the early years of his life, something of which his alcoholic father his father often teased him for. It was this “Sorcerer” mentality that allowed John to live a life of erased secrets. When one of John’s secrets leaked shortly before his attempt to be elected to the US Senate, the tables turned and he lost the election in a landslide. This secret was that he participated in the My Lai massacre on March 16, 1968. John frequently flashed back to that horrific day; the smell, the flies, the innocent dead flesh all around him. He mentions the old man he shot and the fact that he only remembers his gardening hoe flying aimlessly into the sky after the bullet struck him. Also, John mentions how he shot and killed a fellow Platoon member, PFC Weatherby, “on instinct.” John is never truthful with himself. He tells himself that it was not his fault he killed Weatherby, it was simply a reflex. The fact that he remembers the old man’s gardening hoe more than anything is not an accident either. That’s what he wants to remember. He does not want to remind himself how he simply shot the man. John Wade does not tell anyone, even his wife, of the horrific events because he is trying his best not to remember them.
This is Tim O’Brien’s way of explaining how Vietnam can affect people. We normally learn about those who can’t really let it go and are usually willing to talk about the war, such as the former soldiers interviewed in Hearts and Minds, but O’Brien highlights those who do everything they can to let it go. I personally feel like Tim O’Brien is speaking from experience seeing as how he was a Vietnam soldier himself. In the Lake of the Woods is not labeled a nonfiction novel, but it sure as hell does seem like it. O’Brien admits that he has his own “secrets and trapdoors” late in the novel, and I feel like this book is his way of revealing them. Tim O’Brien ironically ends In the Lake of the Woods with the same problem he addressed for 300 pages. What happened to Kathy Wade? Did John possibly kill her, or did she simply run away? The novel shows that even people so close to one another might not actually know the truth about each other, and that’s what O’Brien leaves us with at the end. The only truth is, we’ll probably never know what happened to either of them.

Tim O'Brien's Masterpiece

This is by far the most engaging and interesting thing we have read/watched in Rhetoric 309k. The movies and essays we have observed and analyzed have all been educational, however, coming from someone who isn't as familiar with the Vietnam War and movies and essays about it, it's not something I would pursue on my own because I can't relate to it in any way. In the Lake of the Woods is a novel that Tim O'Brien wrote about the psychological hardships and affects the war has on the soldiers. Although this is the main argument for O'Brien, it includes so much more that all kinds of people can relate to. It's about love and shows that we can't just ignore things and pretend they didn't happen, it seems like this would make things easier but we see John and Kathy's relationship implode because of the secrets that they are keeping from each other. We see that John has serious problems, but they didn't just appear after the war, he has had a history of problems. He has abandonment fears and is very needy and is desperate for love. He knows that Kathy loves him but it's not enough. He is obsessed and the root of this goes back to his childhood when his dad would drink. Another problem of John's is the whole magic thing. He actually believed that he was Sorcerer and he could make things go away and never happen when they did like when he shot Weatherby. Tim O'Brien uses many rhetorical strategies to make this story so engaging. The way he flashes back and forth from John's experiences in the war, to before the war, to the present tense is very effective because it helps show some of the reasons why things happened and how everything relates to each other. Showing his letters to Kathy from when he was in Vietnam was also a good strategy because it showed us just how screwed up he was. All of the evidence was interesting because we were able to see what people on the outside thought about the whole situation and that is rare in stories. I really enjoyed it because it was something that I am more used to reading but the rhetoric was still there. Instead of only focusing on the war, O'Brien relates the psychological affects on a vietnam soldier to his relationship. We can all relate to how our internal problems relate to our relationships with friends and family. We also relate to dealing with our problems and how to cope with them. 

Why Lake > Hearts & Minds (rhetorically speaking)

I must have a penchant for saying controversial things. Oh well.

As the title says, I found O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods (Lake) more powerful, rhetorically speaking, than Hearts & Minds (H&M). While part of this is probably some lingering resentment for Davis' attempts at manipulation (however grounded in reality they might be), the larger part comes from how much more accessible O'Brien's story is.

Under all the disjointed narrative, newspaper clippings, and ambiguous endings, Lake is about keeping secrets, both from one's self and from those you love. While not to the extent John and Kathy take it, most readers can relate to secrecy in the most intimate of relationships. We've experienced someone keeping that little white lie from their significant other and watched it grow from a harmless fib to a festering wound. It happens all the time. That's why, as I see John dip in and out of madness from his My Lai experience and his suppression of it, I reflect not on how much of a lunatic he is but on how vilely destructive war is that it can turn a (relatively) happy relationship into this sprawling mess. By contrasting John and Kathy's pre and post-war relationship, O'Brien introduces a disquietingly personal element into our view of the Vietnam War.

H&M, on the other hand, deals more with the overarching human suffering that happened during the war. While it does this very well, you never get emotionally attatched to any of the Vietnamese in there because the majority of them are presented as faces in quick, 30-90 second shots. You feel an overarching pang of sorrow as an audience, but nothing personal, because as Floyd said we really can't relate to the devestation. Unless you were intimately connected in some way to New Orleans-era Katrina or 9-11, you haven't even begun to experience the horrors these people went through. While still very gut-wrenching, H&M just doesn't have the personal punch a narrative is able to provide.

Tim O'Brien is in my head...

So far, including In the Lake of the Woods, I've read two of O'Brien's novels, and I've enjoyed both of them. I think what appeals to me in his novels is the way he writes about human experiences. The way Tim O'Brien writes about experiences during the Vietnam War is how we recall and relay traumatic memories to others, and that makes it easier to read; because the story is set up in a way that the human mind recalls any episodic memory (memory of events you've experienced), it’s easier to understand and follow.

Say something traumatic happens to you, like you got mugged. You call the police and they ask you to give them a statement. You’ll try to tell them what the mugger looked like, what was happening, how it happened, and so on. Then you meet your friends the next day and you start to tell them the story of what happened. This time around you’re going to be much more dramatic; a lot more emotion is going to go into the telling of your story. Your story also gets changed and modified, new details are added when you remember them. The event as a whole gets warped somehow, the significant parts become more dominant, the not so significant fade away.

O’Brien’s form of writing follows that convention. If you’ve read The Things They Carried, you know that the book is about the author’s experience, and the experiences of the rest of his platoon. There were four or five main events that he covered in the novel, but the way it was organized was not short story after short story. Details would unfold as you read on, and the story would become more wholesome, more detailed. New bits of imagery would be added on to what you already knew.

What’s so interesting about this is not just the fact that O’Brien captures an important part of human psychology. His purpose in writing the stories this way seems to be to make the audience feel the emotions more intimately. He makes it seem like the reader is the one recalling these memories; that the memories belong to the reader and the author.

Since novels are set up in a way that resembles the way we already think and process information and memory, it's easier to follow. O'Brien repeats some bits of detail over and over, but each time he adds another bit, just like you would if you were telling the story of how you got mugged to different friends.

Enjoyed the not concrete ending!

After reading everyone else's posts I am going to try my best to just add on to what others are saying and try not to repeat as much as possible, but still get my opinion across. As the first bloggers said there is not a concrete ending and for the first time I LOVED IT! Like some people have addressed I like to think although John is CRAZY beyond CRAZY, I still like to think of the small possibility of them ending up running away together! I know more than likely that is not what occurred but after all I am a girl who likes to dream. :)

I understood the connection between Vietnam and the strain it can cause on the craziness of soldiers such as John, but was mostly intrigued by the My Lai occurrence that was repeatedly drawn upon. With the descriptions of this massacre and the interview excerpts, I was able to better understand what went on during this time and how it effected different types of soldiers, like many bloggers before me suggested. I also felt those scenes helped me learn more about the mind sets of the soldiers prior to going into it. Although John was a little crazy before and after maybe it is because he does not truly know himself, he hides secrets from others and himself. I liked how Tim O'Brien took us through those scenes, although they were at times very hard to get through emotional because they created vivid pictures for me of them hurting young children without a due cause.

Also, many of us already commented on the way O'Brien wrote the novel and I personally LOVED that as well. Some posts prior to mine suggested the confusion the hypothesis and evidence chapters brought but I personally thought, like some others, that those chapters were the ones that drew us in more. O'Brien knew how to keep us going. We also gained insight from a lot of his excerpts placed in these chapters from other sources. And we could gain other views and insight from his own footnotes made about certain comments in those chapters.

I think I specifically liked the book and the ending because of the way Tim O'Brien drew himself into it. Especially towards the end, I felt like he gave us his opinion and asked rhetorical questions that made us form our own. As confusing the book may have been, and how beyond crazy John may have been, I have to say it was definitely a good read!

This book details a very different side of the war: the psychological affects. The premise is the massacre at My Lai and a fictional story that surrounds the suffering a soldier who partook in the massacre deals with. It highlights how hiding information never helps anyone—not the government or even people.

Hiding information served as the main poison to John Wade. The sounds, sights, and emotions were constantly recalled and were hard to repress. What he saw at My Lai forever changed his life. While the mind is a powerful tool that can, at will, alter memories, nothing ever leaves the mind. So when John would hear something, smell something, or see something that reminded him of Vietnam, it would recall all of the bad memories.

The author implemented powerful rhetorical tools: combining a fictional story with factual quotes serves to tie the two together. By offering a side-by-side comparison of the factual information with a fictional story allows the reader to draw a parallel between the two without the author having to do much work. Going even further, setting aside the facts by giving them their own paragraph, O’Brien distinguishes the story from the facts; but yet, by setting the facts apart, the author highlights them, making the reader take them as a whole, making sure not to skip over any fact.

There is no sense in jumping to conclusions about the main character John. Some may call him crazy, not sound, insane, but all of those assume John knew who he was (it also presumes that everyone has the same definition for every word). Many people suffer from PTSD, especially those who come back from combat and who have seen disturbing things; many can’t sleep at night due to insomnia; many suffer relationship troubles. The cause: War.

O’Brien successfully highlights the atrocities of war through a clever fictional tale about John Wade, his PTSD symptoms and flashbacks to Vietnam.

Well..

I might be the only person to say I wasn't a huge fan of the book. I had read it in my senior year of highschool and honestly had a hard time finishing it. That's why I was almost surprised when everyone was tweeting how much they all loved the book, but I figured a second go around might make me like it more.
Of course having read it two years ago, I didn't remember every single detail about the book but as I began to read it again, first things that came to me were the reasons I didn't like it. To start, I always felt that the book's organization was really off putting for me at least. I would get into the story and then it would cut off and go to another section of John's life and just as I got involved with this passage it switches to evidence. At some points I was hooked enough to keep my interest but at other points I was just really waiting for the continuation of previous passages. Something that I enjoyed was the detail of the Vietnam War aspect of the book. It took the detail of the psychological trauma that a soldier faces from during the war into after the war and how much it can still affect the person years later. I think one aspect of the book that I didn't like when I first read it before but I really liked a lot more this time was the evidence sections. With the evidence O'brien almost invited you to just think of what could have happened to Kathy, giving you hypotheses as well, and since he doesn't ever give a clear cut resolution (another reason why I wasn't a huge fan, I want an ending!), you do have to take what you read and interpret the ending in your own way which is why I liked it and didn't like it. I felt I was more involved with this book than had it been mapped out and I was just following along, as I read it again I felt as though all of this was happening while I was there and I was trying to solve the mystery as well. All in all, I hate to say it but I could put down this book, I could put it down pretty easily.

My Confusion Leads Me To Understand

Most of us, when beginning to write or even continuing to write, have no idea what we are going to say or are saying. That is probably why we become so incoherent, and our audience becomes confused. We start adding sentences in that are way off topic, and do not build on the piece at all. Tim O’ Brien displays to his readers that he is not even close to that kind of writer.

While I was reading O’ Brien’s In The Lake of The Woods, I realized how “all over the place” the novel seemed to be. One chapter, the main character in the book would be talking about his battles, and the next he was looking for his wife. All of a sudden, the reader is trying to understand the many different quotes from both fictional and real people. Most readings and books structured like that would bring out the question, “What is this piece of writing even about,” but In The Lake of The Woods does not create this question in the readers mind. Why not? In order to understand this, I feel a summary of the book is necessary.

John Wade is a Vietnam War veteran who has seen and done some extremely controversial and just naturally wrong things in the war. After the war is over, he returns home to his beloved Kathy Wood, who he then in turn marries. All the secrets of his past are jumbled up and mixed with the political confusion of the present. He has lost an election to enter the U.S Senate, and has no idea where his life is going to lead him next. Him and Kathy decide to get away from all of the media and accusations about his past by residing in a cabin by a lake. The marriage’s flaws begin to shine brighter than ever before, and one morning John wakes up to find Kathy missing. This adds on to the massive confusion in John’s life.

This really helps the reader figure out why O’ Brien has structured his book the way he has. Jumping from John’s present troubles to his past troubles and then to what other people have to say, and then back to his present troubles confuses the reader in such a way that they are absorbed in the book, and know what the character is truly going through. When I say confused, I do not mean that they have no idea what is going on in the book. I mean the exact opposite. They know exactly what is going on in the book, causing them to feel the confusion that John Wade is feeling.

Another thing the author of the book does in some chapters is that he adds a hypothesis chapter here and there. This is John’s conjecture of what he thinks happens to his wife. It sometimes changes from cheating to running away, and at other times builds on to his previous hypothesis. The only thing is, reading the hypothesis chapters, one would not think it was just John’s guess. The details are so vivid, and go deep into Kathy’s mind. There were times where I forgot that these were not real stories, but only what John thought.

The way O’ Brien does this, displays to the reader that the main character has a very wild imagination, and proves the point that he is actually very afraid of losing the important people in his life. It shows the effects of losing his father when he was little combined with what he saw in the Vietnam War. All of this without stating it in bare terms.

Tim O’ Brien does not just throw his chapters around with incoherency, but, instead, actually has a reason for every little sentence, paragraph, and chapter structure he has used. The best part about this all is that a couple months ago, I would never have thought that I could not only analyze fiction novels in this way, but also be able to use the techniques in my own writing.

In the Lake of The Woods

            Wow, In the Lake of the Woods was incredible. I wasn’t that in to The Things They Carried, but I finished this in a day. With every paged I turned I tried to obtain as much information as I could about John. O’Brien was able to keep me interested by only giving a little bit of information at a time. However, in the end I formed my own hypothesis, that no matter what happened in that village in Vietnam the most obvious evidence was that John Wade had always and will always be crazy.

            O’Brien spent so much time talking about John's childhood, his alcoholic father, and his obsession with magic and deception. For me, this was the reason if anything why John could have been responsible for Kath’s disappearance. Throughout the whole book, I had the feeling that I knew what everyone else was thinking, EXCEPT John. Which I figured was like he didn’t have a conscious and that the mirrors in his head just reflected the lies he told and never really processed them. The most telling of John’s character was the stalking. No sound-minded person would spend his or her whole day stalking and spying on someone. It was also really interesting to see the “evidence” of what other people thought about him. Because on one end you have Kath who totally adores him along with the small amount of public when he was in office that he was able to persuade. But other than that people got a weird vibe from him.

            I really liked how O’Brien not only used the typical evidence such as pictures and interviews, but also how he used excerpts from politician’s biographies and magic books. He tied them into what the previous interviewer had said which made you think about the true meaning of the interview and gave it a deeper meaning. This to me was a form of logos, or logical explanations for why he was so disturbed.

            I would like to have thought that they ran off together in the end and that was the real hypothesis. However, to be his insanity was so obvious it was hard to ignore or dispel. 

Thoughts on "In the Lake of the Woods"

My opinion on "In the Lake of the Woods" is a mixture of like and dislike. There were aspects of it I definitely liked, like the unique structure of the book and different perspectives it takes. But its not like the book made for an easy read! The flashbacks to the war, and John's recollection of the massacre were extremely vivid and disturbing. The way the author describes each and every instance so clearly really takes the reader back to the war, which is not really my cup of tea.

Furthermore, I never really understood what the problem was between Kathy and John. I mean, if she didn't like politics, she should have just told him! But perhaps this is just a matter of perspective. I'm not really one to beat around the bush, so the frustration that Kathy and John felt within their relationship only irked me, and I never really felt any sense of understanding as to why both of them felt so tortured within their own relationship. It just seemed like they were inflicting pain upon themselves for absolutely no reason.

But I did like how the book ended. Its ironic, because I absolutely despise books with no concrete endings. If I had it my way I would never allow books without a solid ending to ever be published. But sadly such is not the case. Which, in this particular case, is a good thing. Because if the author had chosen to tell us exactly what had happened to Kathy, then the impact felt at the end would not have been so enormous. Because of the uncertainty of it, the reader is left to ponder upon various aspects of the story, and we feel the need to think about each and every circumstance, each and every twist and turn that led to the very end of John + Kath. The detrimental effects of the Vietnam War on John are so profound because of the fact that we never really knew how it all ended. There was no solid resolution. Both John and Kathy were just two lives that were torn apart because of this war. And that's why the ending works.

Overall, the book was a fast read. Honestly, you just wanted to get right to the ending to see how it all played out. Yeah, the scenes from the war were pretty gruesome, but that was not unexpected. And yeah, the ending isn't exactly an "ending". But for some reason its the perfect ending for this particular book. I'm not saying I absolutely loved this book. I didn't. But I'm not saying I hated it either. Because it wasn't a bad book. It was just different.

In the Lake of the Woods is Amazing

In the Lake of the Woods in my opinion was an amazing book, at first I was somewhat confused by the way the author created the story, but I soon loved the jumping from one time to another. It helped to keep me even more enthralled into the book and I could not put it down. You go from one scene where Wade is in Nam and then to the present where you wonder what has happened to Kathy, never during the book are you not wondering what has happened.

The book in general makes you think the whole entire time, from the massacre that occured in Vietnam with Wade to when Kathy has dissapeared without a trace. With the evidence and hypothoses that the author incorporates it helps create even a better sense of mystery. Also by how how he refers to John as the Sorcerer over and over again emphasizing the dark, shady past that he has hidden from everyone and that is slowly revealed is the reason for his political downfall helps to create even more wonder and mystery. With all this coming into play I could not the book down, I kept reading more and more hoping to find out exactly what happened or another clue helping to piece everything together. Instead we are just given different theories and quotes that make everything even less clear, it is obvious that the author does not want to provide exactly what happened, but instead just wants to make his audience think and come to their own conclusion on what occured in the past and what is happening in the present in the book. I myself went from thinking John was out of his mind at times to a person who just went through a horrible experience that affected his marriage and life and brought downfall to a happy couple.
The ending is perfect by how he finishes by still not giving exactly what happened, but instead letting the reader pick from many choices and allowing them to decide if they want the happy ending of escaping together or the more darker side.

In my opinion this book was perfect for the class by how the author uses a rhetoric style that most of us do not see that much by how he creates a story, but never fully reveals all that is happening. I loved how when reading it my brain was coming up with so many different theories on exactly what happened to Kathy and the other parts of the book that leave us wondering. Plus with the addition of Vietnam showing how the cruel acts that were done there can come back and haunt the soldiers and tear their lives apart years down the road helps to give a different side of Vietnam we have not seen yet. Through all this the author creates a work that is so addicting to read and I loved every minute of it.

This was an eye opener!

hmmm.. where do I begin when it comes to In the Lake of the Woods... I call this novel an eye opener becauseof a few different reasons. To start off, I was very shocked to how this novel was organized. i agree with Alan in the sense that it took me awhile to get the whole the thing with the interviews and the order of the chapters/stories. It was very original to have the hypothesis and evidence placed throughout it to make the reader think, but sometimes I found myself lost and became a tiny bit confused. In the plot chapters, his thoughts seemed to mess with me because I would lose track of the chronological arrangement and have to reread the page to make sure I am not getting the wrong message. Once I got a hang of his style of organization, it began to fall into place.

Even though I struggled with this crazy style, I could not put the book down. It is not everyday that you read a book about this man's life and his obsession with a woman and the detail involved. This was the major reason why I felt this novel was an eye opener, BUT surprsingly I was also very intriqued by the interviews involving the war. If I was not in this class, I would not have found that to be one of the most interesting aspects. Yes, I would have been disturbed, but since my knowledge lacked in this war era, I would have just read over it. But I understood the information and only made me more aware to the situations that happened. So since I enjoy the mystery within this novel AND information about the war, I really started to enjoy it and had no problem finishing early (for once haha). Also, I love L.O.V.E. so all his words about expressing his love made me melt and that was the only reason why I considered this ending to decent.

I am more of a concrete ending type of person and this novel does not give us this. When I was reaching page 93ish, I was thinking "please just give me the ending I want or please just give me an ending!" When I finished, I realized that this author really just wants to make us think. I am a romantc person and see it as them having their time of 'happiness' or travelling to places like Verona...finally! She deserves to have her personal time with the man she truly loves and owes it to her. I didn't want to have it end as a double suicide or anyhting of that sort. I do find the ending somewhat beneficial, but it is still hard to completely like it since I just want to know!

This novel was a great addition to our course worka and I am personally glad that it was included. Well my battery is about to die on my laptop! bye!