ROMANTICISM: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Plot Summary:


Seventeen-year-old Catherine Morland is one of ten children of a country clergyman. Although a tomboy in her childhood, by the age of 17 she is "in training for a heroine" and is excessively fond of reading Gothic novels, among which Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho is a favourite.

Catherine is invited by the Allens, her wealthier neighbours in Fullerton, to accompany them to visit the town of Bath and partake in the winter season of balls, theatre and other social delights. Although initially the excitement of Bath is dampened by her lack of acquaintances, she is soon introduced to a clever young gentleman, Henry Tilney, with whom she dances and converses. Much to her disappointment, Catherine does not see Henry again for quite some time. Through Mrs Allen's old school-friend Mrs Thorpe, she meets her daughter Isabella, a vivacious and flirtatious young woman, and quickly becomes friends. Mrs Thorpe's son John is also acquainted with Catherine's older brother, James.

James and John soon arrive in Bath. While Isabella and James spend time together, Catherine becomes acquainted with John, a vain and crude young gentleman who incessantly tells fantastical stories about himself. Henry Tilney then returns to Bath, accompanied by his younger sister Eleanor, who is a sweet, elegant, and respectable young lady. Catherine also meets their father, the imposing General Tilney.

The Thorpes are not very happy about Catherine's friendship with the Tilneys, as they (correctly as it happens) perceive Henry as a rival for Catherine's affections. Catherine tries to maintain her friendships with both the Thorpes and the Tilneys, though John Thorpe continuously tries to sabotage her relationship with the Tilneys. This leads to several misunderstandings, which upset Catherine and put her in the awkward position of having to explain herself to the Tilneys.

Isabella and James become engaged. James's father approves of the match and offers his son a country parson's living of a modest sum, 400 pounds annually, which he may have in two and a half years. The couple must therefore wait until that time to marry. Isabella is dissatisfied, having believed that the Morlands were quite wealthy, but she pretends to Catherine that she is merely dissatisfied that they must wait so long. James departs to purchase a ring, and John accompanies him after coyly suggesting marriage to the oblivious Catherine. Isabella immediately begins to flirt with Captain Tilney, Henry's older brother. Innocent Catherine cannot understand her friend's behavior, but Henry understands all too well, as he knows his brother's character and habits. The flirtation continues even when James returns, much to the latter's embarrassment and distress.

The Tilneys invite Catherine to stay with them for a few weeks at their home, Northanger Abbey. Catherine, in accordance with her novel reading, expects the abbey to be exotic and frightening. Henry teases her about this, as it turns out that Northanger Abbey is pleasant and decidedly not Gothic. However, the house includes a mysterious suite of rooms that no one ever enters; Catherine learns that they were Mrs Tilney's, who died nine years earlier. Catherine decides that, since General Tilney does not now seem to be affected by the loss of his wife, he may have murdered her or even imprisoned her in her chamber.

Catherine persuades Eleanor to show her Mrs Tilney's rooms, but General Tilney suddenly appears. Catherine flees, sure that she will be punished. Later, Catherine sneaks back to Mrs Tilney's rooms, to discover that her over-active imagination has once again led her astray, as nothing is strange or distressing in the rooms at all. Unfortunately, Henry joins her in the corridor and questions why she is there. He guesses her surmises and inferences, and informs her that his father loved his wife in his own way and was truly upset by her death. "What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? ... Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?" She leaves, crying, fearing that she has lost Henry's regard entirely.

Realizing how foolish she has been, Catherine comes to believe that, though novels may be delightful, their content does not relate to everyday life. Henry lets her get over her shameful thoughts and actions in her own time and does not mention them to her again.

Soon after this adventure, James writes to inform her that he has broken off his engagement to Isabella because of her flirtations with Captain Tilney. The Tilneys are shocked, and Catherine is terribly disappointed, realizing what a dishonest person Isabella is. The General goes off to London, and Eleanor becomes less inhibited and shy away from his imposing presence. Catherine passes several enjoyable days with Henry and Eleanor until he returns abruptly, in a temper. Eleanor tells Catherine that the family has an engagement that prevents Catherine from staying any longer and that she must go home early the next morning, in a shocking, inhospitable move that forces Catherine to undertake the 70 miles (110 km) journey alone.

At home, Catherine is listless and unhappy. Her parents, unaware of her trials of the heart, try to bring her up to her usual spirits, with little effect. Two days after she returns home, however, Henry pays a sudden unexpected visit and explains what happened. General Tilney (on the misinformation of John Thorpe) had believed her to be exceedingly rich and therefore a proper match for Henry. In London, General Tilney ran into Thorpe again, who, angry at Catherine's refusal of his half-made proposal of marriage, said instead that she was nearly destitute. Enraged, General Tilney returned home to evict Catherine. When Henry returned to Northanger from Woodston, his father informed him of what had occurred and forbade him to think of Catherine again. When Henry learns how she had been treated, he breaks with his father and tells Catherine he still wants to marry her despite his father's disapproval. Catherine is delighted.

Eventually, General Tilney acquiesces, because Eleanor has become engaged to a wealthy and titled man; and he discovers that the Morlands, while not extremely rich, are far from destitute.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northanger_Abbey)

My Criticism:

The novel is very interesting especially to those teenagers. The events of the story are very exciting that you don't want to miss something. It also tells that we should not trust people who are just good when we are with them. The storyline is well developed, characters somehow are believable. The aim of this kind of novel is to show the importance of imagination of what do we think would happen next. The novel begins showing Catherine's innocence.

HUMANISM: Lullaby for a Son (Sumerian Poem)

The Poem:

Ah, ah, may he grow sturdy through my crooning,

may he flourish through my crooning!

May he put down strong foundations as roots,

may he spread branches wide like a cakir plant!

Lord, from this you know our whereabouts;

among those resplendent apple trees overhanging the river,

may someone who passes by reach out his hand,

may someone lying there raise his hand.

My son, sleep will overtake you, sleep will settle on you.

Sleep come, sleep come,

sleep come to my son,

sleep hasten to my son!

Put to sleep his open eyes,

settle your hand upon his sparkling eyes—

as for his murmuring tongue,

let the murmuring not spoil his sleep.

May he fill your lap with emmer

while I sweeten miniature cheeses for you,

those cheeses that are the healer of mankind,

that are the healer of mankind,

and of the lord's son, the son of lord Culgi.

 In my garden, it is the lettuces that I have watered,

and among the lettuces it is the gakkul lettuce

that I have chopped.

Let the lord eat this lettuce!

Through my crooning let me give him a wife,

let me give him a wife, let me give him a son!

May a happy nursemaid chatter with him,

may a happy nursemaid suckle him!

(http://www.humanistictexts.org/sumerlove.htm#8   Lullaby for a Son)

My Criticism:

The poetry style is considered as free verse since there is no consistency of the rhyme scheme. The redundant number of syllables per line ranges from nine to eleven. The poem is about a mother who wants comfort for his son while she is singing a lullaby for her son to sleep. The poem uses techniques such as symbolism, metaphor and simile. The poem simply focuses on man.

DECONSTRUCTION: Aswang (2011 film) directed by Jerrold Tarog

Summary:

The story revolves around the abuwak race (Aswang). Thru the generations their numbers had declined and the only way they can grow in numbers again is through the rare ability that only the soon-to-be queen of the abuwaks, Hasmin (Lovi Poe) possesses. 

Abuwaks look human when they're in their normal state, but they can fly and move underground when they transform into raven type of bird. They can also burrow their way underneath the soil.

They are quick and strong, and they can attack and eat humans whether in complete darkness or broad daylight. Hasmin doesn't like all of these, preferring to congregate with humans and even protecting them when her fellow creatures attack the village. 

Meanwhile a hired killer named Daniel was forced by circumstances from he was very young. Like Hasmin, he doesn't really like killing the innocent, and this reluctance is what leads him to the abuwak lair, suggested to be somewhere in Pampanga.

Along with two other killers, they went to Pampanga to finish-off the two remaining members of the family that they massacred in Quezon City.

(http://pinoymoviesynopsis.blogspot.com/2011/11/aswang-2011.html)

My Criticism:

The movie changed the idea of what aswang really is based on the traditional feature of aswang have before. Some scenes look over acting because aswang in that movie are visible even if it is already morning. It is not an ideal movie to watch because the effects are unbelievable than those movies before. The ending is appropriate because the main characters finish-off their race because they don't want it. The movie lacks unity because, when we say aswang it should look like a monster but in this movie, they look same as human. In addition, whatever it takes, Aswang is always aswang they can eat humans whenever they want.

READER'S RESPONSE: America by Allen Ginsberg

The Poem:

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

(http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/america.html)

My Criticism:

The poem is in free verse. Some lines are too long, some are too short that's why the syllables are indefinite. The poem is trying to portray the life in America. It is obvious that the author seeks changes to his country. The poem is both descriptive and narrative. It contains techniques like symbolism, irony and metaphors. This poem is a bit humorous yet there is something that the author wants to tell to his country America.

EXISTENTIALISM: The First Man by Albert Camus

Plot Summary:

The novel takes Jacques Cormery from birth to his years in the lycee, or secondary school, in Algiers. In a departure from the intellectual and philosophical weight of his earlier works, Camus wanted this novel to be "heavy with things and flesh." It is a novel of basic and essential things: childhood, schooldays, the life of the body, the power of the sun and the sea, the painful love of a son for his mother, the search for a lost father. But it is also about the history of a colonial people in a vast and not always hospitable African landscape; about the complex relationship of a "mother" country to its colonists; about the intimate effects of war and political revolution.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Man)

My Criticism:

The readers of this kind of novel can relate to its theme that made them interested to read it. It shows that we should live life to the fullest and be contented of what we have. The storyline somehow is fairly developed. The character's life is believable like to those people who was a product of a broken family. The novel is about being visceral and vulnerable of the character and the author as well in a chaotic world.

PSYCHOANALYTIC: The Bully Book by Eric Khan Gale

Summary:

There is a book that teaches how to be a bully, and it will ruin Eric Haskins’ life. It all starts when his best friend, Donovan, ditches him and befriends Adrian Noble, the tallest kid in class, and a karate-kicking 10-year-old Eric calls Jason Crazy-Pants. The three boys systematically tease and humiliate Eric, eventually turning the entire class against him. When even that isn’t enough, they sabotage the friendship of his grade-school crush, Melody Miller.

​How did 5th grade go so wrong so fast? Adults offer little help: Eric’s single mother doesn't listen, and Tony Clark, the school’s principal, misinterprets every situation. In a chance encounter with a 6th grade loser, Eric learns of a school-district-wide conspiracy theory: “The Bully Book.” According to local legend, a devious 10-year-old wrote a Machiavellian manifesto for the 5th grade, instructing its readers how to gain power in the school. The Bully Book’s lynchpin is the selection of a “Grunt”—the kid who will become “the lowest of the low.” The Grunt unites the class around a common goal (making his life miserable) and gives the possessor of The Bully Book a platform on which to demonstrate his dominance. The Grunt is selected through a specific, but mysterious process. Eric believes that discovering the specifications used to determine the Grunt will allow him to change himself in the necessary way, and escape The Bully Book’s all-encompassing grasp.

​Eric becomes a detective of The Bully Book, seeking out its former Grunts in the middle school, perusing historical documents, and even coming into possession of a single page of the storied text. Meanwhile, the world is growing up around him. Melody begins “going out” with one of his key tormentors, Jason Crazy-Pants, and his mother carries on a relationship with Tony Clark, his principal.

​The story of The Bully Book is told in chapters that alternate between entries from Eric Haskin’s journal and passages from the actual Bully Book. As the novel progresses, the two documents inform each other and their relationship is made clear, while Eric grows ever closer to The Bully Book and the dark secret at the heart of Arborland Elementary School.

(Source: amazon.com)

My Criticism:

The novel is somehow nice. There is always the feeling of hopelessness that the character's life would not become normal anymore because of the different frustrating events in his life. The novel is essential to parents that they should listen, support and trust somehow their children. Furthermore, this teaches us to continue life even there are problems around us, its normal anyway. The storyline is well developed. The characters are also believable like those acted lives of different people in TV shows like MMK and "Magpakailanman".  The main character reflects the life of the author Eric Khan Gale on how he was bullied when he was a child, felt hatred and rejections from the people around him.

POST COLONIALISM: The Seige of Krishnapur by J.G. Farell

Plot:

The story is set in the fictional town of Krishnapur and tells of a besieged British garrison which holds out for four months against an army of nativesepoys. Among the community are the Collector, who is an extremely Victorian believer in progress and father of small children and who can often be found daydreaming of the Great Exhibition; the Magistrate a Chartist in his youth but who sees his youthful political ideals destroyed by witnessing the siege; Dr Dunstaple and Dr McNab who row over the best way to treat cholera; Fleury, a poetical young man from England who learns to become a soldier and Lucy a "fallen" woman rescued from a bungalow who eventually runs a tea salon in the despairing community. By the end of the novel cholera, starvation and the sepoys have killed off most of the inhabitants, who are reduced to eating dogs, horses and finally beetles, their teeth much loosened by scurvy. "The final retreat of the British, still doggedly stiff-upper-lipped through the pantries, laundries, music rooms and ballroom of the residency, using chandeliers and violins as weapons, is a comic delight".

The Siege of Krishnapur is part of Farrell's "Empire Trilogy", which concerns the British Empire and its decline in three locations. Other books in the series are Troubles, about the Easter 1916 rebellion in Ireland, and The Singapore Grip, which takes place just before the invasion of Singapore by the Japanese in World War II, during the last days of the British Empire.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Siege_of_Krishnapur)

My Criticism:

The novel is somewhat like interesting. It looks very inspiring to those who are going to read this. It is essential for the people who loses hope sometime, this can help to fulfill their dreams somehow. The storyline is fairly developed. The characters are believable since this shows different attributes of human. The novel examines the culture, politics, history and former colony in India. The book portrays an India under the control of the East India Company, as was the case in 1857, 

NEW CRITICISM: How Doth the Little Crocodile by Lewis Carroll

Text:

How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws!

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Doth_the_Little_Crocodile)

My Criticism:

The style of poetry is rhyming. The first line contains eight syllables and the second line contains six syllables and alternately so on and so fourth. The poem is very obvious that it is about a crocodile. The text has a unifying central theme created by the perfect union of all artistic elements.

MARXISM: Man's Fate by André Malraux

Plot Summary:

The novel occurs during a 22 day period mostly in Shanghai, China, and concerns mainly the socialist insurrectionists and people involved. The fourprotagonists are Ch’en Ta Erh (whose name is spelled Tchen in the French version of the book), Kyoshi ("Kyo") Gisors, the Soviet emissary Katow, and Baron De Clappique. Their individual plights are intertwined throughout the book.

Chen Ta Erh is sent to assassinate an authority, succeeds, and is later killed in a failed suicide bombing attempt on Chiang Kaishek. After the assassination, he becomes governed by fatality and desires simply to kill, thereby fulfill his duty as a terrorist, a duty which controls his life. This is largely the result of being so close to death since assassinating a man. He is so haunted by death and his powerlessness over inevitability that he wishes to die, just to end his torment.

Kyo Gisors is the commander of the revolt and believes that every person should choose his own meaning, not be governed by any external forces. He spends most of the story trying to keep power in the hands of the workers rather than the Kuomintang army and resolving a conflict between him and his wife, May. He is eventually captured and, in a final act of self-determination, chooses to take his own life with cyanide.

Katow had faced execution once before, during the Russian Civil War and was saved at the last moment, which gives him a feeling of psychological immunity. After witnessing Kyo's death, he watches with a kind of calm detachment as his fellow revolutionaries are taken out one by one, to be thrown alive into the chamber of a steam locomotive waiting outside, intending, when his turn comes, to use his own cyanide capsule. But hearing two young Chinese activists talk with trembling fear of being burned alive, he gives them the cyanide (there is only enough for two), himself being left to face the more fearsome death. He thus dies in an act of self-sacrifice and solidarity with weaker comrades.

Baron De Clappique is a French merchant, smuggler, and obsessive gambler. He helps Kyo get a shipment of guns ended and is later told that Kyo will be killed unless he leaves the city in 48 hours he will be killed. On the way to warn Kyo, he gets involved with gambling and cannot stop. He considers gambling "suicide without dying". Clappique is very good-humored and always cheerful all the time but suffers inwardly. He later escapes the city dressed as a sailor.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man's_Fate)

My Criticism:

The novel shows bad influences to the readers. It is so sad that some people live to kill and wait for their death. It is not essential to the readers because it shows unethical way of living. The storyline is poorly developed because there is no unity of events. The characters are believable especially to countries with not so strict implementations of laws and rules. The role of the characters in the story is to live immorally by revolting, smuggling, gambling and etc. The condition for its economic publication is the increasing weight of Asia in world affairs; it described epic moments of suffering and upheaval, in Shanghai.

FEMINISM: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Plot:

The novel takes place in Nigeria during the Nigerian-Biafran War in 1967-1970. The effect of the war is shown through the dynamic relationships of four people’s lives ranging from high-ranking political figures, a professor, a British citizen, and a houseboy. After the British left Nigeria, the lives of the main characters drastically changed and were torn apart by the ensuing civil war and decisions in their personal life.

The book jumps between events that took place during the early 1960s and the late 1960s, when the war took place. In the early 1960s, the main characters are introduced: Ugwu, a 13-year-old village boy who moves in with Odenigbo, to work as his houseboy. Odenigbo frequently entertains intellectuals to discuss the political turmoil in Nigeria. Life changes for Ugwu when Odenigbo’s girlfriend, Olanna, moves in with them. Ugwu forms a strong bond with both of them, and is very loyal. Olanna has a twin sister, Kainene, a woman with a dry sense of humour, tired by the pompous company she is forced to keep. Her lover Richard is an Englishman who has come to Nigeria to study the arts.

Jumping four years ahead, trouble is brewing between the Hausa and the Igbo people and hundreds of people die in the massacres, including Olanna's beloved auntie and uncle. A new republic,called Biafra, is created by the Igbo. As a result of the conflict, Olanna, Odenigbo, their daughter Baby and Ugwu are forced to flee Nsukka, which is the university town and the major intellectual hub of the new nation. They finally end up in the refugee town of Umuahia, where they suffer as a result of food shortages and the constant air raids and paranoid atmosphere. There are also allusions to a conflict between Olanna and Kainene, Richard and Kainene and Olanna and Odenigbo.

When the novel jumps back to the early 1960s, we learn that Odenigbo slept with a village girl, who then had his baby. Olanna is furious at his betrayal, and sleeps with Richard in a moment of weakness. She goes back to Odenigbo and they take in his daughter, whom they call Baby, when her mother refuses her.

Back during the war, and Olanna, Odenigbo, Baby and Ugwu are living with Kainene and Richard where Kainene is running a refugee camp. The situation is hopeless as they have no food or medicine. Kainene decides to trade across enemy lines, but does not return, even after the end of the war a few weeks later. The book ends ambiguously, with the reader not knowing if Kainene lives.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_of_a_Yellow_Sun)

My Criticism:

The novel looks very interesting, yet it is not that understandable. The feeling of excitement would arouse to its readers. The essence of this novel is that it teaches people to be loyal and faithful to their love ones. The storyline is well developed and the characters are believable nowadays. This novel shows gender issue, having an affair like that of Odenigbo do as well as his wife in return to his actions done.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL: The Things they Carried by Tim O'Brien

Plot Summary:

Lieutenant Jimmy Cross' platoon of soldiers are a group of very young men, most of whom are unprepared for the Vietnam War. They carry heavy rations and supplies, and pictures of their girlfriends, and fear and sadness and confusion. They often pretend that they do not feel as much as they do, because they don't want to look silly to the other soldiers. Jimmy Cross loves a girl named Martha who he knows will never love him back, and he continues to love her long after the war ends. The men do sometimes reveal their emotions, in heartfelt or comical ways. Tim O'Brien, the narrator, writes stories about his friends in his platoon. Mitchell Sanders mails lice he removes from his body to his draft board in Ohio. But there are many terrible memories Tim can't shake. He watched a man get blown up by a mine. He saw young men get hardened by grief and anger and injustice. He remembers believing the war was wrong, and wanting to run away to Canada. He even tries to go, and spends six days in a lodge at the border, but in the end he is too afraid of what his family and friends will think if he doesn't fight. He went to war, he says, because he was a coward.

Strange things happen to soldiers in Vietnam: they get paranoid, and they lose their sense of morality and justice. They become hardened and angry, because no one back home understands what they are going through. After his best friend dies, Rat Kiley, a medic, writes a letter to the friend's sister, telling her what a wonderful man her brother was. The sister never writes back, and Rat's grief turns to hard anger. Tim explains that this is a true war story, because there is no moral, only ugliness and cruelty. One particularly strange story Tim heard from Rat Kiley: a soldier brought his girlfriend to Vietnam. She arrived fresh-faced and very young, but she quickly became absorbed into life in the jungle. Gradually she lost all of her attachment to her old life. She disappeared into the jungle. The soldiers understand this story, because they believe there is magic in Vietnam. Superstitions are real, and the truth is relative. There are moments and feelings that Tim cannot forget. One of them is of the man he killed: a young Vietnamese soldier who was walking down a trail when Tim threw a grenade at him. Tim will never forget the man's exploded face. Nor will he lose the image of a young girl dancing outside of her destroyed village, as American soldiers carry her dead family away.

Norman Bowker, one of Tim's friends and fellow soldiers, returns from the war unsure of what to do with all his terrible knowledge and memories. He finds he can't talk to anyone--no one will listen, or could understand if they did listen--and everything he does seems silly and irrelevant. He eventually kills himself. Tim tells Norman's story to try to do his life justice.

After one of the best men in their company dies in a night attack, the men search for him in the mud. Each of them feels somehow to blame. The narrator-Tim explains that all these stories are made up, but they are true anyway, because they explain what Vietnam was like. Besides, Vietnam makes it difficult to know just what is true: Am I to blame for the death of this man? Each soldier asks this question, but there are no answers. Twenty years later, Tim brings his young daughter to the riverbank and buries his friend's shoes in the mud. He doesn't know what to feel.

Tim was shot twice: the first time he was taken care of by a good medic, but the second time, the medic was inexperienced and Tim nearly died. Tim gets revenge: he pretends to be the enemy one night when the medic is on watch. He later hates himself for doing this, but he feels close to the man, because he watches him cower in fear, just as Tim did when he was shot and thought he was dying.

Rat Kiley lost his mind in the field. He thought bugs were trying to kill him. When he shoots himself in the foot so he can leave the field, no one blames him. He was a good soldier, but combat was eventually too much for him.

Tim knows that stories can bring the dead back to life. Telling stories about people can make you feel like they're there with you. The soldiers do this so that they don't have to think about the fact that their friends are actually dead, or that they just killed a real person. Tim has been doing it since he was a child, when the first girl he ever loved died of a brain tumor. The stories change--names, dates, and even events transform--but the memories are kept alive by the storyteller.

(http://www.bookrags.com/notes/tttc/)

My Criticism:

The genre of the story is nonfiction. The author himself wants us to remember always the stories and the reason why we love and admire people we know even if they are dead. The story contains a lot of tragic and sorrowful events about the one who are close to the author. The structure of the story was very confusing, the speakers and the acts are not clear. The events are simple, boring and confusing. There is no excitement in the middle of the story. The introduction was good but the ending is not connected to the introduction. This story is associated with Historical-Biographical Criticism. The author, Tim O'Brien told his story about being a soldier during the Vietnam War, which is a part of history and life of people.