Monday, January 5, 2015

"Love" and "Spin" Discussion

Write your group's answers to these questions as a comment on this post.

1. What is the purpose of each story? Is there a purpose of them together ("Spin" following "Love", etc)? Why did he put these stories early in the book?

2. Explain why you think Azar did what he did to the puppy? And what does he mean with what he says?

3. Where in either story are there moments of beauty? Give one piece of textual evidence to show.

4. What are stories for, according to what you read? Do you as a group agree? Do you think there are other reasons? What?

Once you've answered these questions, grab a black-spined orange lit book and read the interview with Tim on page 760,  Add to your answers some interesting points from the interview that you think apply to what we've read already or will apply to what we will be reading.

7 comments:

  1. #1. Spin is explaining the spin on war he tells much like the ping pong ball. Love is showing that there is feeling in war not just mindless killing, love for Martha and love for the men on your unit.

    #2. Maybe he saw innocence in the puppy and thought there shouldn’t be any innocence in the war.

    #3. “Henry Dobbins sitting in the twilight sewing on his new buck-sergeant stripes quietly singing.” (O’brian 37)

    #4. We all agree and we think that stories are also there for people to have entertainment and not just document things.

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    1. He thinks that he should have gone to Canada and dodge the draft, throughout the book Tim makes the war out to be good and in other chapters he makes the war terrible, he romanticizes some parts but not all parts.

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  2. The purpose of "Love" is to show what it was like to be out of war, and the purpose of "Spin" is to show what it is like to be in war. Those coincide with each other by both of them being opposites and how they can somehow attract.

    Maybe he was psychologically defective and he thought that killing the puppy was a natural response of the horrors of war.

    In "Love" he describes to extent how much love he was in with Martha.

    To remember the past and to reflect on it and possibly build a better future off of it. We do agree. Some other reasons are just to entertain

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  3. 1. He put them in early to get a connection and an understanding of the events. They don't have to be next to each other because they don't really connect.
    2. Because he was competing with the other guys, a way to deal with the war and them being young. He tries to justify his actions by just saying he is still young and doesn't know what he is doing.
    3. "Stories are for joining the past with the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story" (O'Brien 38).
    4. (Refer to question 3), Yes, but stories are also written to inform people of past stories, to express, and to carry on past events into future history.

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  4. He wants to say there is basically two things in war, love being around the people in the platoon, and spin is all of the crazy stuff like the puppy.to tell us that he has experienced these events and remembers them.

    They are all still just boys fighting for their country. The violent side of war is affecting him and changing him.

    When they are lying down at camp looking up at the stars. Everyone just stares at the sky in sort of a lost state.

    Stories are for retelling events that have happened to them, and it also lets others know what happened to them and a story tells the mood or emotions at the time of the event.

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  5. There is a trace of romance but in the big picture there is no romance. Most people see the soldiers as heroic until they here about them blowing up a puppy.

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  6. The book is not romanticized because not all soldiers are heroes

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