The Things They Carried...

I have read Tim O'Brien's novel before and liked it then. Reading it again helped me relive those memories I had of The Things They Carried. The novel shows the life of a soldier in a war that everyone thought would end quickly. O'Brien has such great imagery of what things were like through his own eyes and the eyes of his other characters. What is important to realize is that O'Brien was in Vietnam but most of the Novel is historical fiction.
Some of the stories of soldiers deaths are so vivid, its scary. The Vietnam war books have very different feels to them because one is strictly fictional while O'Brien's has more reality to it. I felt more scared and ill while reading Fallen Angels, but O'Brien seems to have hit a more real soldier life. I don't know what else to say, my mind hurts from all the reading and work I've done the last few days.
This book is a great piece of literature though, I would recommend it to anybody who can comprehend the work.

Fallen Angels....

This book was an educational read and a fun one for me. War novels are a great way to understand parts of history which may have flown under the radar the first time we learned them. Fallen Angels seemed to be real. I felt the imagery of the novel. When I say I felt it, I mean I was there with this one. I envisioned myself being a part of their unit in each area. It helps to have seen numerous Vietnam War movies to see how things were. Each time Perry talked about boarding the choppers, I felt his uneasiness. If you have ever seen the movie "Apocalypse Now," you would be able to see his fear of boarding and leaving helicopters. A VC would have no problem losing his life to the greater good of their cause, running up to a helicopter with an explosive was not uncommon. The amount of death made me realize how hard it must have been to stay focused and stay alive. Perry was hit 2 times while in 'Nam and that was in a very short time span as far as the timeline of the war.

I also had a great connection for Peewee and Perry's relationship. I know what it is like to not want to lose a close bond. It isn't unheard of to see this type of relationship because war seems to bring people together. I can only imagine having a friend of mine so close to death all the time. It would be hard to care about others in a war you can't seem to win.

The night stories are what made this Novel really stand out. If you go back and read any of the passages, read the ones where Perry has inner thoughts about what is going on while he is sitting on guard. He can't see anything and all he can see is shadow and darkness, it's very eerie. Fallen Angels gave me a greater respect for those who have risked their lives protecting others.

This would be a great book to co-teach a unit with a History teacher. To have a book like this coincide with a war unit would be great. It would help students grasp the reality of what soldiers may have went through. There seem to be so many great ways to teach Fallen Angels. I recommend this book to all young adults and even adult readers looking for a quick read.

The Holocaust...

I grew up going to school with a large Jewish population. Lots of my friends to this day are Jewish. So, in History class, whenever we discussed the holocaust, it was a very tense subject. I was too naive back when we studied that in High School to completely understand how horrible it was. All the things Jewish people had to endure through during World War II was awful; I can only imagine what it must have been like. Like the Factories in Europe, there were camps in the islands surrounding Japan during WWII. My grandfather passed away about 2 years ago and was a POW in Japanese camps for over 3 years. He described how torturous the conditions were while he was a prisoner and how other marines and troopers were dying all around him. While I was reading these two books, I thought of how similar these depictions are of my grandfather's experience. He never described the eerie smoke stacks and the haze they created because he never said if there were stacks where they incinerated humans. The vivid description throughout the book is sickening at times. What happened in that time was repulsive, Yolen and Wiesel bring it back to life with beautiful writing for such a horrid time. The Devil's Arithmetic and Night are great books which I would recommend to any high schooler willing to read about The Holocaust.