Chapter 19

In this chapter I was able to see the relationship between Tim O'Brien and his daughter. I saw the many points he attempted to make to her but she would overlook, I saw frustration and miscommunication. I saw family and understanding. Understanding that us as individuals all long for, understanding that seems will never be fully reached when it comes to family.

I also saw a father who wanted to share so much with his daughter. He wanted to share his memories, every color, every scent, each breath and melody he had ever heard, tasted, smelt and felt in his life time. He wanted to bestow upon her the gift of history (his war history that is). He wanted to hand her the world on a silver platter represented by the many stories that makes his life story. The story he wishes to pass on to his daughter, his family, the world and future generations. 

Because Of this I felt like I had to go back to some of the paintings my dad had sent us from Afghanistan to really fully appreciate the meaning behind it. What it means to him of course. I'll never fully understand what he lived through; but we'll always have stories. 

Chapter 14

Style:

I was scrolling down my Tumblr Dashboard (something I love to do) desperately in search for inspiration. I was looking for a dancer because dancing is something I hold very close to my heart treasure deeply in a place that I like to think can never be touched.

The moment I read the chapter style and saw the word dance I felt happy. However the circumstances in the chapter seemed so difficult to understand even though its something simple. Maybe it is true when they say that only those who understand complexity can communicate simplicity. 

I felt like the whole situation in the chapter was so beautifully twisted as it explained the exact occurrence and the mystery behind this girl who was still dancing. 

As I continued to scroll down I found something that I felt perfectly matched what was occurring in this chapter. The form of multimedia is called a gif and it shows a girl dancing beautifully in a very odd atmosphere and seems like she is dancing at the wrong time.  I then read that long ago two great artists, Walt Disney and Salvador Dali had began collaboration on creating something that would eventually become a short film and that it was finally finished. I didn't look too much into it but I felt like the gif perfectly matched this chapter.

Chapter 12

The Man I Killed:

It really makes me wonder...

My dad could've been the one with his jaw in his throat, his upper lip and teeth gone, one eye shut, the other, a star- shaped hole.

It really makes me think, people who get sent off to war such as Tim O'Brien...that's someone's

son

father

grandfather.

Chapter 9

The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong:

exotic |igˈzätik|adjectiveoriginating in or characteristic of a distant foreign country:exotic birds | they loved to visit exotic places.• attractive or striking because colorful or out of the ordinary: an exotic outfit | (as noun the exotic) : there was a touch of the exotic in her appearance.• of a kind not used for ordinary purposes or not ordinarily encountered: exotic elementary particles as yet unknown to science.

No other word could better describe this chapter. It had me intrigued at every line. It was a story of love, heartache, mystery, legend, magic. It seemed so perfectly crazed. I loved it. 

The description of a girl that seemed perfect with her white complexion and ocean blue eyes just by wearing a simple pink sweater. The way in which the land was described and revered for its wonder and mystery was just wonderful. The story of a soldier who brought not a woman, a girl to the war and how this girl sold her soul to the land in every way. It seems infinite. 

Chapter 8

The Dentist:
It was the most random chapter.
I couldn't seem to find the relevance behind it however, it connected to me. I felt like the randomness of the chapter related to how unnecessary a checkup might have seemed to those soldiers being as they were living in the middle of a war zone.

My mom works in the dental field and because of that it connected with me. Since I was little she has had a little sculpture or porcelain statue of a dentist giving a man a checkup who appears to be tortured by  the dentist. When I walked by it I felt like it related to the chapter and the soldiers terrifying fear of the dentist. I tried to come up with a way of representing the randomness behind the whole chapter and I came up with two different ways. One is a gun in the background of the statue representing the dangerous and risky atmosphere and the statue randomly in front it representing the randomness of the situation and chapter. 

I also made a collage of black and white pictures of the war and all the horrible things that the soldiers were living through and placed it under the dentist revealing yet again more randomness. This is because so much was happening during this and yet they still had dentist appointments. 

Chapters 5 and 6

These two chapters seemed very random and at first irrelevant quite frankly. But then, I took a step back and I tried to analyze the meaning of it thinking out of the box. What I grasped most was not primarily the context of the chapters but rather their titles. "Enemies" and "Friends". It reminded me of the cliche line: There's a fine line between love and hate. There are so many existing quotes that exist in this world that describe friendship however nothing can ever really describe the many subshells within the composite whole that is friendship. My dad always tells me these two stories, one is about a family of midgets he met there and a man named Dauud. He speaks of them with such genuine gratitude, and reminds me that underneath it all he definitely has humanity. All of the stories make me lachrymose.

This is mostly because friendship can turn to disappointment and dust, or can bloom into someone's reason of living. I imagine that in war the whole idea of "friendship" and "enemies" is heightened significantly.

Because of that I did a simple painting that used methods that looked more like comics shown by the faces of the men on the picture. 

It has a diagonal divide between the two friends which are represented by soldiers fighting side by side upon a gold background which represents how in war; friendship is golden, it can even be the sunlight of the dark days. the divide is diagonal and has movement as it contrasts the long gun. Underneath the divide one sees enemies. A man pointing his gun to another. On the  side there is a flower with a metaphor to it. Friendship is like a flower, delicate. On the side I have three flowers one is perfectly attached with every petal and as one looks the petals eventually fall until completely unattached covered in red paint. 

Chapter 4: On The Rainy River

This was definitely my absolute favorite sketch. As I had already mentioned, when I began sketching for the first chapter, this was my original idea. I aimed at basically making it display the word: OVERWHELMING. I felt the first chapter was full of emotions and the threat of war but not nearly as much as On the Rainy River. 

I had always heard people talk about how the get goosebumps when they hear about something or someone and that had never ever happened to me until I read this. Vulnerability is the foundation of this chapter and revealed a whole other mental and emotional dimension. I felt like the story and Tim O'Brien's secret could go on and on forever because maybe no matter how much he wrote about it, it would still never be enough to ever fully describe how he felt in the very moment he opened the life-changing letter.

As I kept reading through the chapter I instantly thought of the story of Pandora's box (the very little I know of it that is). I had heard about this particular box being opened unleashing all that is negative, impure, sinister, dark, painful and the list goes on. I felt like this chapter was a list of so many wild emotions that Tim O'Brien could to handle as well as endure because everything just happened so rapidly. In one second his whole destiny was written out for him; his life would never be the same. 

I did my best to sketch different faces with various expressions from rage, horror, to evil laughing (anything creepy). I wanted it to have movement as the faces start from one corner of the page and get smaller in size as they came down diagonally into a little box. At the bottom corner it has words such as  cowardice, numbness and self-pity.

This was definitely my favorite chapter as well as the sketch. I then surrounded it with different pictures of the war that were black in white , like a collage and a frame to the sketch. The black of these little pictures gave it a better contrast to the white of the page and the pencil drawn faces. 

Chapter 3: Spin

This Chapter I feel definitely was a temporary ray of sunlight through the previously ominous pages of the book. It gave a different spin, using a bit humor as well as mentioning a simple yet extremely powerful word: peace. It spoke of brief moments where the characters could just inhale the deceiving war which concealed the remarkable beauty that Vietnam had to offer. The chapter was short, but in this chapter the first sign of positivity was presented. 

I asked my dad about war, and about the controversies about war being in anyway pleasant. He said, "The land is not war. Motherland, mother nature, mother Earth is not war."

It was very simple yet at the same time so eye opening, allowing me to understand that war is blinding on so many different levels. 

I decided to do something very simple for this chapter. I used the method of water color painting which I found to be rather frustrating and complex. Sure its what many of us would use in elementary school but if you really want to make an incredible work of art with it it takes much patience and a lot of practice. Even though it turned out to be nothing like I had hoped for, I attempted to mainly paint a calm view. I did this by using pastel hues especially for the sky. I had the sky begin with a fuchsia which slowly shaded into different shades of blues until it even got to the Earth green colors. The various pinks are random but it represents wonder, uniqueness and mystery just as Vietnam sounds to be in the book. On the left side I painted a tree which connects to the old Banyan Tree where Mitchell Sanders sat. It then has a soldier looking off into the distance with a blank expression which isn't clear at all due to poor painting skills because of excess water. On the right I placed one of the most extraordinary quotes in the whole book. It's the previously mentioned special 9 lines of that 38th page.

Chapter 1: The Things They Carried

"He remembered kissing her good night at the dorm door. Right then he thought, he should've done something brave. He should've carried her up the stairs to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left knee all night long. He should've risked it."- Tim O'Brien 

For this Chapter I'll admit I began with a whole other idea for how I wanted to represent it (seen later). In the beginning what evidently stood out more were the many things they carried:

"They Carried Ghosts."

"Dense, crushing love."

"The things they carried were determined to some extent by superstition."

"They Shared the Weight of Memory"

"They Carried the land itself--Vietnam, the place, the soil-- a powdery orange-red dust that covered their boots and fatigues and faces. They Carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity."

"They would repair the leaks in their eyes"

"They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die."

"Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the tangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained."

                                                                            

The first chapter gave me so many ideas of how I wanted to demonstrate the atmosphere and the incomprehensible weight that each of the characters carried. However, one thing that truly stood out in the first chapter was the conflict of person vs. self; lust vs. guilt. 

The first quote was what truly inspired me and motivated me to do the drawing above. Its a sketch of a young boy or man laying down on the corner of the page. In the book it often mentions, smoking and joints and the relaxing sensation it has to offer to the many anxious soldiers. It reminded me of one quote I had seen before:  

I felt the presence of smoke and its therapeutic factors is a constant reminder of the anxiety each of the characters faces throughout the chapter. I then had the smoke shade into what appears to be a soldier kneeling representing giving up or giving in. To what exactly? Lust. Next to the soldier is a young woman sitting in seductive position. Something I feel that had to be evident to really connect to the chapter was how I tried to have the soldier kiss the woman on her left knee. 

The display of affection being so evident represents guilt in all which connects to the culpability Lieutenant Jimmy Cross feels for  thinking about Martha which came at a tragically high price. It cost him Ted Lavender's life. A sudden death such as that was intolerable for Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. However, the way in which he died seemed so incredibly innocent to my eyes. It is due to this that I sketched Martha shooting or taking the life of Tim Lavender containing a sense of metaphor. Its relevant to notice that the man who is being shot is unarmored and defenseless representing Tim Lavender's unforeseen death. 

The main message that stood out the most was that, we are all human, we make mistakes, we give in to ourselves and our surroundings, lust, love, pain and as seen; even war.

Summer Enrichment Rationale

Rationale: Summer Enrichment

A Spark,"Served to ignite the explosive mixture in an internal combustion engine." The 9 lines of the 38th page in my copy of Tim O'Brien's "The Things they Carried" was definitely what sparked the idea behind my summer enrichment. From the very beginning of the book to the end I felt a certain affinity to the distinctly unique stories. As every page passed, I felt a sense of dejavu as if I had already heard such impacting stories. I felt not only dejavu, but I also felt like the stories provided a desperately searched explanation to help me understand a very important person in my life; my father.

Once Upon a Time a year and a half ago, a mother and two children lived in absence of a father for 7 months. However, it wasn't the amount of time that defined this delicate matter but rather the place. Afghanistan.

Until today, it still remains a topic for conversation, an empty yet simultaneously fulfilling place and the home of nostalgia. 

While he was there, he found himself fascinated with the plethora of unappreciated factors that ultimately make up a culture. He'd often go to the markets and see the most remarkable things; works of art of all kinds and would buy them to send to us. Along with the extraordinary works of art came and continue to come the many touching stories. It is through this that I get that distinct sense of vicariousness as I read the book, but because of him. 

As I read the following 9 lines, I knew that I wanted to try my absolute best to share Tim O'Brien's life changing war story through art, as my dad shared his.

"Forty-three years old, and the war occurred half a life-time ago, and yet the remembering makes it now. And sometimes remembering will lead to a story, which makes it forever. That's what stories are for. 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." -Tim O'Brien

By Choosing to demonstrate Tim O'Brien's story through ART, I first aimed at making my best attempt to make some kind of art of all styles, colors and textures for each of the 22 chapters that makes up the book. It was a little after I began this project that I realized a lot of the art that I connected to the story wasn't just my own art but also random things I'd always seen but never really  looked at quite carefully. Through the process I found myself continuously searching for inspiration and through this I found many other types of multimedia that I felt perfectly matched to what I grasped from my favorite chapters. I ended up connecting art to my favorite chapters rather than to all 22 of them. 

I achieved analyzing and treasuring this book and its many heart-rending stories in a free manner, through an infinite amount of questions, mini-epiphanies and quote circling (my favorite).