Exploration 5: Skyler Siles

1.) The story that i have found the most intriguing to me is the about Marry Anne. What i really liked about this is the fact that up to this point, its been about how the soldiers have had to interact and deal with Vietnam and how that has affected them. The soldiers know it changes a person but know they have gotten to a aid station near a river called song tra bong that is very well protected and isolated compared to what they have had to encounter. It was so well protected that mark fossie invites his elementary school sweetheart Mary Anne to come over. She comes over and is very good a picking up some of the language and culture of Vietnam. She learns to cook and isn't afraid to help out when injured people come in. She gets so emsured in Vietnam that she starts not coming back to the camp at all and goes missing for a few weeks. She comes back with the same outfit but in her tent she set up candles, singing tribal music with a leopard head mounted above and the skin dangles and she is wearing a necklace made out of tongues. she tells fossie that he doesn't understand Vietnam. She later goes to the other side and she goes out and becomes part of the land. I really like this story because when everything is suppose to be protected a outsider that comes in and is really suppose to be there to support and keep fossie company is influenced so much by the culture that she eventually becomes the land.

2.) The character that I connect with the most is Tim O'Brien. The fact that he was faced with this huge decision and forced to do something that he did not believe in and the fear that he was feeling, well i think everyone has some kind of event that they have faced similar, maybe not to the magnitude to what he encountered but myself, and I think everyone can understand and somewhat relate to.

3.) One part of the book that I picked out from rereading this book a second time and from the chapter how to tell a true war story is that the way how he describes a true war story is true when you believe it in your gut, and to make a point or how to explain himself and maybe a way that he couldn't get out, he has to use fictional stories and fiction parts so that way he can describe what and how he feels from his experience

4.) In "Spin" at the very end he describes how what you have left is your memories and stories. "stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember expect the story". I really like this whole last paragraph of spin not because i can relate to it but i am amazed of what these people like Tim had to go through and really what they have to carry with them for the rest of their lives are their stories and how those stories and memories make the past become their lives now.