Fireweed

The author, Tim O'Brien, is writing about an experience of a tour in the Vietnam conflict. This short story deals with inner conflicts of some individual soldiers and how they chose to deal with the realities of the Vietnam conflict, each in their own individual way as men, as soldiers.

The narrator is caught between his freedom and success in Paris and his past, marred by racism, which he is again about to confront. Using the flashback episode as an example of what he expects on his return, the narrator details the horrible feelings of helplessness and hatred generated by racist behavior. His family in the United States experienced prejudice firsthand and it damaged them forever. His father 's and sister 's lives were destroyed by racism, and the narrator escaped to France to avoid the same fate. Now famous, he must come to terms with his expatriate status, and find a way for his son to live without the same scars of racism.

Yet, he comes to realize that these stories are what define the man he is today. These stories to him are the truth, his truth of his own past and a reminder to him that those things actually happened. His stories to him serves as a reminder of what he did and did not know, and what he became or what he did not

Mostly ghettos are places or sections of a city, that are a thickly populated slum area inhabited predominantly by members of an ethnic, or other minority groups, as a result of social or economic restrictions, pressures or hardships. Ghettos also are places that do not have career oriented jobs but in most cases, they only offer trade jobs like sewing, hairdressing and carpentry. We can tell from

The theme in the story could be at the first glance be the repressions of feelings like guilt and regret. I think the author does this intentionally and that there is a deeper meaning in this story. The story is layered with vivid imagery of nature and its contrasts. The wilderness is a vicious beast that gives nothing back to the ones who does not respect it. Camp Manitou represents the safe point in this story. After Louis moves outside this safe zone, the mystery of Lucy’s disappearance happens.

According to Merriam-Webster a ghetto is, “ a part of a city in which members of a particular group or race live usually in poor conditions (ghetto).” This paper will focus, however, on what daily life was like in the ghettos, what Jews did or didn’t do to prevent their fate, and how Holocaust survivors are doing now. I chose this topic because when Elie and his family were living in the ghetto in the beginning of Night, it seemed as though they had plenty of opportunities to escape that they didn’t take. It also seemed much closer to pleasant than I imagined, and I was curious to see if that was completely true.

​According to dicitonaity.com, a ghetto is “a section of a city, especially a thickly populated slum area, inhabited predominantly by members of an ethnic or other minority group, often as a result of social or economic restrictions, pressures, or hardships” (“Ghetto”). The five major ghettos were established in Warsaw, Lodz, Krakow, Lublin, and Lvov (“Holocaust Timeline: The Ghettos”). The Nazi Party used three different types of ghettos to isolate Jews from society. The three types were closed, open, and reconstruction ghettos (“Types of Ghettos”). Closed ghettos were the most common and often had high mortality rates as they were closed off with stone or brick walls, wooden fences, and barbed wire. The largest ghetto, Warsaw, was a closed ghetto and had over 400,000 people in an area of 1.3 squared miles (“Holocaust Timeline: The Ghettos”). Open ghettos had no physical barriers, but restrictions on entering and were often only in small towns used for temporary housing before relocating to a larger, often closed, ghetto. The majority of open ghettos were located in small towns, and in the countries of Poland, the occupied Soviet Union, and Transnistria. Lastly, deconstruction ghettos were tightly sealed off and only

The main theme which is described is isolation, before talking about isolation what is isolation and how does that affect the reader? Isolation is one of the Canadian themes; it is a state of being alone, complete separation of others. The book revolves around isolation from the Karim family went to Montreal to their grandmother and then his friend left Lebanon and went to Paris. After some time everyone left Karim and he was lonely since Nada died because a building collapsed. On the other hand, isolation is one of the important themes because Karim describes his entire life spent in Lebanon. Karim wanted to live in Lebanon while his family was going, “A few days before the bombing resumed, Karim’s parents together with their youngest sons flew to Montreal in North America.” Karim was alone and decided not to go because he used to think that every cloud has a silver lining, a person is a coward and rather than finding a solution escaping is not the answer.

Didion’s tone was serious, ominous, and dark, and was very different from Thomas’s tone which was more positive. Although acknowledging the destructive nature of the fires caused by the Santa Ana winds, Thomas generally talked about positive results of the fires. She describes the “amazing sight” of the fire as she watches “the flames lick up a hillside” and ends the essay by reminding the reader that the “chaparral will return.” By this, she means that many of the plants in chaparral country need the heat of the flames to reproduce, so within a few weeks, new plants will rise from the ashes. The fire also helps get rid of the dead plants that need to be burnt so they can get out of the way for new plants to come in. Didion has a very different tone regarding the winds. She describes the various hints of change with dark words. To her, there is an “eerie absence of surf” and the “heat was surreal,” instead of it simply being hot with no waves in the water. The author particularly chooses words with creepy connotations to make the reader feel a similar feeling to the uneasiness that the Southern California natives feel. These contrasting tones make the authors' opposing views on the winds very evident.

When the safety of someone special to a person is threatened, they will sometimes sacrifice themselves to save their loved one. “Charles Halloway waited then said one word softly: ‘Hide’. ‘We can’t

My reaction to this short story was one of sadness and fear. My husband is a soldier in the U.S. Army, and this short story resonates very personally with me. I hear war stories all time; from my husband, from his friends, and from the other Army wives. O’Brien’s stories and experiences remind me of all the other sad and horrific stories that I have heard. But what is even sadder is that those not

In conclusion, the three most important themes to me in the story, abuse, fear, and karma are what made the story so good. He abuses her, she has fear, that he pokes fun at, and he is punished for his actions. Her greatest fear saved her from enduring anymore abuse from

In this book, Tim O’brien reveals all his experiences in detail about the war; as well as stories about his fellow soldiers, and makes a true, but over the top about them. He explains how he feels through stories that are difficult to clearly identify as “true.” This book has a lot of themes, death and violence is one of the major themes.

The way I interpreted the story, the themes are choices and what the consequences or advantages of those choices are. He keeps choosing to go from one job to another, and one state to another etc. and we later find out that it was either smart or dumb.

In remembering himself in relationship to his father, his mother, his sister and his best friend, Tom the narrator imbues the characters with the magic he claims in his first soliloquy to possess. Although The