Mid-Session Blog

Dear Mrs. Cline:

           

This semester has had many challenges for and many of them have to do with the essays.  I am not completely comfortable with writing about things that aren’t particularly in my comfort zone.  Poetry and war are things that don’t catch my attention like other things in my life.  I enjoy read about love stories I must say “The Things They Carried” had a great love scene and that’s why I wrote about it more frequently.  It grabbed my attention and I felt like I could read it over and over again.  Becoming more comfortable and broadening my horizons with poetry is my biggest success so far in this class.  I have learned that not all poetry is confusing and boring.  It can be emotional and uplifting. 

The readings so far have been very educational and interesting.  I have learned more about the war from reading Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” and Sean Huze’s The Sand Storm” than I have from any movie or class I have ever seen/heard.  These readings have made me feel emotion that I haven’t been able to relate to before.  We all hear of soldiers dying but who really understand the emotion that the soldiers go through.  I do hope that the readings to come will be as emotional and educational as the firsts. 

            Literary analysis is very difficult for me.  It’s taking the whole piece and breaking it down to something smaller than writing three pages about it.  The length is the hardest task for me to complete.  I do hope that with feedback and practice I will get closer to being better. 

            For the second half of the semester I do hope to spend more time on my papers.  I have been dealing with a full schedule and two kids and it has made it difficult to put time into my papers.  I have dropped a class and I am hoping that will free up more time. 

Sincerely

Karie Lake 

Sean Huze

Sean Huze

         Sean Huze is the author of the play "The Sandstorm."  It was a well written play with so much emotion.  When I first read the play I was very over whelmed with all the action and graphics.  To read that a soldier killed a child is sad.  If it were me and I has deployed to war, then forced to kill everything and everyone I would be scared for life.  These soldiers and people with lives and children just like more of the U.S. is filled with.  When they are deployed they have to do things that they aren't comfortable doing just to keep us safe.  Is it even worth going to war and fighting?  These soldiers are doing anything that they are told when they themselves don't even believe in what they are doing.  

     There is this one scene that I can't seem to shake.  Soldiers were told to go collect the mail trucks.   On the way  they were ambushed having numerous truck blown up.  One soldier was forced to make a decision and he did.  He called in the order to have mortors sent in to help and that ment to have hundreds of innocent victims murdered.  I do agree fully with his decision.  I don't feel as if he had any other choice.  It was either him or his team or everyone else.  

       After the mortors hit and all the fighting had stopped one soldier went to look for survivors.  While looking for survivors he picked up a foot and couldn't stop wondering until he found the body it belonged to.  While a soldier was trying to get his attention he showed him the shoe and continued searching for the "Log" it belonged to.  After being slapped out it he realized that there was no way for him to find the "Log" the foot belonged to.  These are just some of the things that our armed forced face everytime there is a war.  

http://jonathanrick.com/tag/iraq-war/

http://www.lacitycollege.edu/public/news/huze.htm