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Summer Reading: JuniorsReader’s Response Journal
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A reading response journal is a notebook in which you write about your reading. In it you communicate thoughts and feelings about the book you are reading. |
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What are the expectations?
What can you write about in your journal?
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From Randomhouse.com:
One of the first questions people ask about The Things They Carried is this: Is it a novel, or a collection of short stories? The title
page refers to the book simply as "a work of fiction," defying
the conscientious reader's need to categorize this masterpiece. It
is both: a collection of interrelated short pieces which ultimately
reads with the dramatic force and tension of a novel. Yet each one
of the twenty-two short pieces is written with such care, emotional
content, and prosaic precision that it could stand on its own.
The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and of course, the character Tim O'Brien who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. They battle the enemy (or maybe more the idea of the enemy), and occasionally each other. In their relationships we see their isolation and loneliness, their rage and fear. They miss their families, their girlfriends and buddies; they miss the lives they left back home. Yet they find sympathy and kindness for strangers (the old man who leads them unscathed through the mine field, the girl who grieves while she dances), and love for each other, because in Vietnam they are the only family they have. We hear the voices of the men and build images upon their dialogue. The way they tell stories about others, we hear them telling stories about themselves.
With the creative verve of the greatest fiction and the intimacy of
a searing autobiography, The Things They Carried is a testament to the
men who risked their lives in America's most controversial war. It is
also a mirror held up to the frailty of humanity. Ultimately The
Things They Carried and its myriad protagonists call to order the courage, determination,
and luck we all need to survive.
A native of Worthington, Minnesota, Tim O'Brien graduated in 1968 from
Macalester College in St. Paul. He served as a foot soldier in Vietnam
from 1969 to 1970, after which he pursued graduate studies in Government
at Harvard University, then later worked as a national affairs reporter
for the Washington Post. He now lives in Massachusetts.
Other books by Tim O'Brien include If I Die in a Combat Zone Box Me Up and Ship Me Home, Going After Cacciato, Northern Lights, The Nuclear Age, and In the Lake of the Woods. Going After Cacciato won the National Book Award in 1979. In the Lake of the Woods won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the society of American Historians and was selected as the best novel of 1994 by Time magazine. His latest novel, Tomcat in Love (1998), is published by Broadway Books, a division of Random House.
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