Prompt 2: Sentence Analysis
Sentence Analysis: They carried whatever presented itself, or whatever seemed appropriate as a means of killing or staying alive. (pg 7) The first thing I noticed about this sentence was the separation between “means of killing” and “staying alive”- that is, is killing implied not to be necessary to survival in war? At first, I thought this was just a natural and possibly unintentional insertion of the author’s political beliefs. Tim O’Brien has spoken occasionally on his view of the high death toll of the Vietnam war specifically, in which he served a tour. It seems more than feasible that he might find the violence of war unecessary, even when thinking only in terms of self-preservation. But re-reading this sentence with the context of the entire story in mind makes me wonder if O’Brien intends for us to read this line as though the soldiers themselves are the ones making this distinction. Everything each soldier carries, tangible or not, is representative of their own values. For in