The Thing They Carried
The name of this story can barely describe all that was carried during that war. This story opened my eyes to the all that is carried during a war. Some people carry just the essentials and other carry mementos. Most of the soldiers carried their families in their hearts. All of the soldiers carried ammunition and rations. Some carried different guns and others carried drugs.
Jimmy Cross was the captain of this particular team of men. They try to make light of the situation they all face, joking around when they can. Other times they burn down and sack whatever village they pass by. The soldiers must check down holes and caves, they draw papers and whoever got 17 went down the hole.
During one of the hole explorations, Jimmy Cross is distracted with thoughts of Martha and one of the men is killed seconds later. This haunts Jimmy and he burns Martha’s letters blaming him. Jimmy had a pebble that Martha sends him, he plans to get rid of it after burning the letters. Seeing one of his men die changes Jimmy and makes him want to keep stricter order of his platoon.
The soldier get rations every week and start discarding what they don’t want or need. The one thing that they can’t discard is the horror they have witnessed. War is traumatic and can’t be forgotten by a lot of people. The carried all that they could and more.
For more information about Tim O’Brien’ go to www.bookreporter.com

The Necessity to Speak

     The Necessity to Speak by Sam Hamill is thought provocing to say the least. He talks about raw emotions and how everyone feels them. There are some things in life that no one wants to talk about or face that they are happening. Sam talks about being fourteen and being brutally gang raped. How people are almost catatonic when rape is mentioned. But why should these rape victims hide is shame, when they have done nothing wrong. Poetry gives these tortured souls a way to feel better about themselves and life.

     The poems is poetry of witness tell many different stories, with many different emotions. Sam Hamill writes of the cruetly of life and all the disasters it is made of. He speaks of the battering of women and how it is the most common felony commited in the United States. How a domestic dispute kills more cops than dope dealers and bank robbers combined. That is a shocking fact.

     For some women poetry is permission to speak. Sam tells how some women who are battered look at it as a form of love, not knowing any better. He also talks about a women who took his class and was murdered by her husband because he feared she would tell the truth. Sam went on to say that she was one of the kindest women he had ever known.

 To read more poetry go to http://poetry foundation.org