My three favorite blog post

Summary V. Analysis Blog Post

Frankie Pena

Eng 102

10/3/10

Summary V. Analysis Blog Post

“Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” the characters ‘Rat, kiley” “Mitchell, Sanders” “Eddie, Diamond” “Mark Fossie” “Marry, Anne, Bell”. These characters were caught up in a compound that was situated at the top of a flat hillside in the outskirts of Tra Bong. These soldiers are fighting a never ending war. But throughout this war they have time to sit around and reminisce about girls and good times. While sitting around “Eddie said, was pool some bucks and bring in a few mamma-sans from Saigon, spice things up, and after a moment one of the men laughed and said, “Our own little EM club,” and somebody else said “Hey yeah we pay are fuckin dues, don’t we?”(pg 93,O’Brien).

Now these guys where just messing around to kill time and well they were playing around “Mark Fossie” went off to write a letter and six weeks later his bubbly eyed girlfriend shows up in a helicopter. With eyes of surprise everyone stand around and out of nowhere someone says what everyone else was thinking “mother fucker”. After a few weeks in the compound this girl was helping in surgery and taking apart guns. Before Mark knew it she was going out with the greenies in the jungle doing searches at night. Well it wasn’t to much longer before she got to into it, mark could not see the old “Marry Anne Bell” that is her name. This girl was out of his hands and just before he had a chance to really talk to Mary, she went out one night and never came back. The gist of the story is she came in innocent but once she got a little dirty she was never the same.

When reading I didn’t understand why Mark would bring his loved one to such a dirty place. The compound is not really the place for a cute innocent loved one anyways. When he went to the compound he was a tall blond athlete and all that had changed he now carried anger and wasn’t so nice. Well once he brought this girl over and saw she was starting to change he should have sent her back home whether or not if she liked it. Because it wasn’t her place to be at unless assigned. Then once she started going out at night with the greenies he should have known it was only going to get worse. Once she disappeared I knew it was over and he lost his loved one. Sometimes people just cant handle what they see and they just lose it like Mary did. Lets this be an example to us all.
here is a link to some good stuff: http://www.illyria.com/tob/tobbio.html

This post is one of my favorites because i enjoyed reading this short story. Second I really enjoyed typing this post up.

Source evaluation

Frost, Adam. "Literature Online biography." O'Brien, Tim, 1946-. Chadwyck-Healey, 2002. Web. 24 Oct 2010.
The biography has a lot of information about Tim O’Brien’s life. O’Brien was born in Minnesota October first. The author earned a full ride to college and soon after he received a draft letter. This letter completely changed his plans. This was nowhere near what Tim O’Brien wanted he was a boy who disliked boy scouts and camping. After the war the put his life on hold the author went to school and became a journalist and soon a book writer. Tim O’Brien had a distinctive way of writing books. Majority of his books include the experiences he went through in the war. The biography will play a big part in my essay about the great Tim O’Brien.

Tim O'Brien. "Ambush. " Read 20 Jan. 2006: Children's Module, ProQuest. Web. 24 Oct. 2010
I think this source is of value to my essay because it has one of Tim O’Brien’s short stories in it. This will give me a source that I can take facts from and make a point. This will give my essay the extra credit so that it will be more than just talking about the books that he wrote. This short story will be a prime example of something Time O’Brien has published. This source will be of great use and that is why I chose it. Hopefully this will add a little excitement to the essay. If later on I see no use for it I can always search the great site of proquest.

http://proquest.umi.com.proxy.yc.edu/pqdweb?SQ=Tim+O%27Brien&DBId=G6&date=ALL&onDate=&beforeDate=&afterDate=&fromDate=&toDate=&pubtitle=&author=&FT=0&AT=any&revType=review&revPos=all&STYPE=all&sortby=REVERSE_CHRON&RQT=305&querySyntax=PQ&searchInterface=1&moreOptState=OPEN&TS=1287949714&h_pubtitle=&h_pmid=&clientId=1407&JSEnabled=1

This is my second favorite because after reading about all of this information i had no problem writing my essay. Do to reading this it allowed my essay to be more bold.

The Handmaids Tale topic proposal

Frankie Pena
Mrs. Cline
11/14/10
Eng 102
Topic Proposal
After reading a couple sections from “The Handmaids Tale”. I began to think what this book is about. It occurs to me that they are in a cult. One reason why I would say that is, because the women seem like they have no power in the book. It occurred to me that they just slaves to the men. If the man wants sex she will give it to him, but she will not be happy. The women just put up with all of this and in return they get to live in a house with no freedom. For essay #4 I plan to do my research on cults because in there are many types of cults for instance polygamy. In some cults women carry little, to no power. They are slaves to the male race. There are a few reasons why I have chose to do my research on this topic and the main one is that I find this would be a interesting topic to research. It would be full of facts and I really think people should crack down on these cults. This will also help me better understand why these girls are put through the things are put through. Such as the sex, she does not call it love because to make love consist of two people wanting to be involved, and she does not call it rape because she is not resisting, but she says he is fucking her. Because he is the only one enjoying it. So why is she putting up with this, is it against the cults rules to say no if she does not want to have sex? This is going to be a great research topic and the sooner I get started the faster I will better understand this book.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099731/

This was my third favorite because it gave me the chance to propose what i wanted to write about. Second it was just about the most fun topic to write about because it had so many facts.

Summary V. Analysis Blog Post

This post is one of my favorites because i enjoyed reading this short story. Second I really enjoyed typing this post up.
http://callmenglish.blogspot.com/

Source evaluation

This is my second favorite because after reading about all of this information i had no problem writing my essay. Do to reading this it allowed my essay to be more bold.
http://callmenglish.blogspot.com/

The Handmaids Tale topic proposal

This was my third favorite because it gave me the chance to propose what i wanted to write about. Second it was just about the most fun topic to write about because it had so many facts.
http://callmenglish.blogspot.com/

Reflective video

This is a reflective video straight from the heart.

Visual Video About Essay #2

Hope you students like this.

Essay #2

Frankie Pena
English 102, Essay #2
Laura, Cline,
October 8th, 2010

Contrast of “Tim O’Brien” and “Sean Huze”

The day is Thursday the 7th and after reading a passage from Tim O’Brien “On The Rainy River” and Sean Huze’s monolog “SGT Williams,” I had an extremely heart- felt moment about what the two stories said to me. We do not go to war because we want to. We go to war because our founding fathers have fought for our freedom and fighting for our country just comes with the title of being a hero. It is expected if we are called to duty that we will arise and except any challenge because if we don’t we will look like a coward.
When we sit around at home playing “Call Of Duty” we all talk about how bad we are at sniping with a 50 caliber rifle and how we could totally pull off this lifestyle in real life. We don’t realize just how we would really react if we were called up to the line in a war.
The author from “On The Rainy River” quotes “All of us , I suppose like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth, bravely and forth rightly, without thought of personal loss or discredit”( O’Brien,39). The author clearly points out that we believe if a situation is put out in front of us that we will just jump right to the gun without thinking what the turnout could be.

When the situation of war has called upon us we are not quite ready to play the role of hero; this isn’t the war we want to fight. The author quotes “I was drafted to fight a war I hated. I
was twenty-one years old. Young, yes, and politically naïve, but even so the American war in Vietnam seemed to me wrong” (O’Brien,40). The author clearly shows that he felt the war he was going to was wrong but he had to go because he was now enlisted and therefore is expected to act like a hero about the situation.
Those who think that war is good for us should come out and put their money where their mouth is. The author points out “There should be a law, I thought. If you support a war, if you think it’s worth the price, that’s fine, but you have to put your own precious fluids on the line” (O’Brien,42). The author clearly expresses the idea that we look like cowards if we don’t want to go to war, those who say that going to war is good should go.
The thought of being the only coward in the neighborhood that ran for Canada and not for war was embarrassing enough to make a person stay through the pain. The author quotes “It had nothing to do with morality. Embarrassing that’s all it was, and right then I submitted. I would go to war - I would kill and maybe die - because I was embarrassed not to” (O’Brien,59). The author clearly gives it away that if we do not go to war we will look like a coward and that he rather die than run like a coward.
The author “Tim O’Brien” from “On The Rainy River” clearly is not fond of war but instead of going to Canada he went to war because the guilt and embarrassment kept eating him up.
The author in the monolog “SGT WILLIAMS” joined the army with belief that the war was going to be everything he expected, but turns out reality struck. The author “Sean Huze quotes “It happened every time we got alerted to a possible NBC attack, we had to don our rubber gloves, put on that fucking mask, and cinch our hoods on our heads, No airflow
once so ever. I guess that’s the point, but it was more than I could bear” (Huze,7). The author did not believe that in the war it was going to be all about just grabbing the gun and shooting, then he found out that they had to wear SCBA (self contained, breathing, apparatus) which can be a pain on the skull. The thought and feeling of being suffocated was really getting to the sergeant and it was turning out to be more than he bargained for. The author says “I did the unthinkable. I broke the seal of my mask” (Huze,7). This is clearly proving that some things are harder than they occur to be and maybe war is one of those mind tricks. Once reality has hit we begin to realize what is really going on and what were we thinking. The author quotes “…so, folks are all pissed off about there not being any weapons of mass destruction shit, not me. My ass is damn lucky there were no WAD over there” (Huze,7).

Clearly it takes just one experience to change someone’s total view on the outlook. The author Sean Huze realized after he joined the war that in order to fight for your country and to be called a hero that it takes an extreme amount of work. These two authors really did contrast. Throughout the whole “On The Rainy River” the author believed that the war was dumb and that he shouldn’t be called a coward just because he thought he could be doing something better with his life other than war. Although he talked himself into going to the war because he thought that if he didn’t go to war he would be considered a town coward. After he went to war and came back home he realized that he was a coward for going to war, because he ran from his fear of being called a coward. With “SGT Williams” by Sean Huze, this author thought completely differently; he thought fighting for his country would be easy and he could claim the title of a hero with just a few kills and that be it. Well reality really hit him and once he experienced war his total perception on it was different. He couldn’t wait to get out and go be with his family.

Links;
www.imdb.com/name/nm1011341/
www.alternet.org/world/20358
www.flixster.com/actor/sean-huze
www.illyria.com/tobsites.html
www.illyria.com/tobhp.html

Works cited page:
Huze, Sean. The SandStorm. Hollywood, California: 2004. Print. Pg7
O’Brien, Tim. Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried. Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1990. Pg39.
O’Brien, Tim. Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried. Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1990. Pg40
O’Brien, Tim. Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried. Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1990. Pg42
O’Brien, Tim. Tim O’Brien The Things They Carried. Boston, New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1990. Pg59