Mid-Session Check

English 101 PRE 134
Fall 2010
Darrow
13 October 2010
Dear Professor Darrow,
My biggest challenge so far in this class has been the reading assignment of the two books “The Sandstorm” and “The Things They Carried”. Although these are two great books written by two great authors, reading these books and having to write about them has been hard for me due to my experiences in the military and these books have brought back not only good memories but also bad ones. The biggest success I have found for me in this class is the success of overcoming my fears of remembering the negative experiences I had in the military and to be able to not only read other veteran’s stories, but to be about write about what I have read and compare it to my own experiences. I think writing about one’s negative experiences which has had a huge impact on their daily lives and then being able to share them with others take a great deal of courage and it was nice to see there are people out there who can do just that.
The readings in class have had an effect on me unlike any other reading I’ve had to do in any other class thus far in college. I can personally make a connection with both authors in many ways, veterans will always have some sort of connection with each other and for many, no one but a veteran can relate to what the other is trying to express. I feel these two authors did a great job in trying to express their own past experiences and their stories; they express these feelings so that people with no military experience can try to understand the effects of war. They want people to understand what soldiers go through in a time of war and just how it affects a soldier’s life for years to come as long as they’re alive.
For the second half of the session I would like to improve on my writing so I can use this to better my extension of listening and speaking skills. Thus, I must focus on developing more fully the skills I have learned in the first half of this course.

Sincerely,
Mark Garcia

Summary v. Literary Analysis

I chose the “The Ghost Soldiers” by Tim O’Brien, this story is told in the first person through the memories of Tim O’Brien and his twelve months as a soldier fighting in a jungle and an American firebase in the Vietnam War in the late 1960's. The Principal Characters are Herb, Lemon, Azar, Teddy Thatcher, and Jorgenson. The story occurs at two distinct moments in time when Herb is shot for the second time, and then when he later tries to get revenge on the brand new medic Jorgenson, who froze instead of immediately treating him and blamed him for the infection because of Jorgenson’s dely. Jorgenson sought O’Brien’s forgiveness for freezing up the time O’Brien got shot. But O’Brien who was set on revenge, enlisted Azar to help him get it. “Ghost Soldiers” shows the dark side of camaraderie, it shows just what happens when someone fails in his duty and how the relationship among soldiers is a social contract, which can be broken and unforgivable.