Notes

In the Latehomecomer, Yang uses a lot of oral storytelling to tell her story and keep the history alive, vs in TTTC, there's several different accounts of single events, for example Kiowa's death, how does this relate to memory and storytelling and truth and how is the comparison different or similar from the Latehomecomer? Valery's Question

Replying to Valery's Question, we know that each account of a single event relates to the person themselves. We know this because in the Latehomecomer, Yang and her connection to her grandmother builds this sort of biasness and love through how she tells her story and her history. And in TTTC, the men reacted differently to Kiowa's death, and this tells us that there's not just one single side to a story, there's multiple layers to it. For example, in the book, when the young boy was digging in the field where Kiowa died, probably trying to search for him and having to see for himself his new reality.

How do stories like the Dentist and Church, where the perspective isn't primarily focused on the actual war, impact or affect the tone of Tim O'Brien's novel? Soahcheht's Question

I think the chapters bring more of a humanistic aspect to the novel. For example, when the soldiers were in a church and the monks welcomed them and were especially nice to Dobbins. On page 115, when Dobbins says "The thing is, I believed in God and all that, but it wasn't the religious part that interested me. Just being nice to people, that's all. Being decent." I think that mentioning this in the book shows a more humanistic side to things because we as humans want to be treated with respect and we want other people to be nice to us, regardless of our situation.

O'Brien says that his stories are fictional, in what way do you think the significance of the Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong story had towards the moral or morals of his book? Soahcheht's Question

I think that the Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong story shows us a perspective on women in relation to the Vietnam War. TTTC is primarily about the male soldiers and their experience with war, but this chapter shows us the perspective of Mary Anne and how she goes from curiosity, to rewording how she says things when talking about plans after the war, to her bubbliness gone, and how she changed like the soldiers.