Ten - The Man I Killed

This is a pretty textbook example of stream of consciousness, which is kind of handy, as that's one of my literary terms. And I say "textbook example" only because even before I knew the word for it, I could tell exactly what O'Brien was doing, why he was writing this way, and what he was trying to accomplish. His style pretty effectively demonstrates how most people would feel, think, and act after killing somebody (I assume). O'Brien is stunned, and not quite thinking clearly. His thoughts are repetitive, rambling, chaotic, and he is grossly fixated (pun fully intended) on details, as can be seen in his description of the body on pages 118, 120, 121, and 123. Also, he seems completely unresponsive to the outside world, like Azar and Kiowa, and focuses primarily on the most-likely fictitious life he creates for the man: "Even growing up in the village of My Khe, he often worried about [performing badly in battle]" (p. 121). Even though he knows nothing about the man, he is positive he knows where he lived, how he grew up, his love for math, his aversion to war, and his fear of performing badly in battle. I think O'Brien makes up this math-loving pacifist for the sole reason of showing that perhaps the people on the other side were fighting for the exact same reason that he and the other men were fighting. They were to afraid to appear afraid. It seems that every character in this book is not fighting for honor, glory, wealth, power, personal gain, justice, love, or peace, but simply because they don't want to be embarrassed. And, to take it a step further, I think O'Brien might even be trying to say that America itself is in the war for the same reason as O'Brien and the man he killed: it doesn't want to look too afraid to go to war.

This is what I got when I googled "Stream of Consciousness." I think it fits pretty well. Especially that eye. Yick.

Seven - The Dentist

This really tiny snippet of a story serves two purposes, as far as I can tell. The first is obviously the development of Curt Lemon. So far, we only know little morsels of information about Lemon, like the trick or treating story, and how he got blown to smithereens. This chapter shows that he is not exactly as brave as he lets on, implying that maybe all of his brave exploits that he so often does are really only masking the fact that he's terrified just like all the rest of them. This deep-seated fear seems to leak out when the dentist comes to visit, which then leads to the second purpose. O'Brien noted on page 21 that the soldiers weren't fighting because of courage or valor, they were just "too frightened to be cowards." The story about Lemon and the dentist reinforces this point by having the dentist pull a perfectly good tooth just because Lemon was afraid to appear afraid. Seems like a silly reason to pull teeth or go to war, but it makes sense I guess.

This is a dentist. Lemon is afraid of them, and can you really blame him?