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.