Library Database Source
“By means of these negative exempla, Atwood urges us to recognize the flaws of our culture and to refuse passive acceptance of them. Handmaid is, above all, a book about responsibility, at once emotional, sexual, intellectual and civic.”(Hammer, 47)
Summary
Basically, what the passage is saying is that Atwood was trying to make sure the reader understood the fact that similar events still happen today. She wants the reader to know that these events are not acceptable. Then it goes into an interpretation of what the book is about. It is a book about responsibility, a book about sex, an emotional book, and finally a book about intellect and civic.
How I will use this in my essay
I am going to use this in my paper to help me explain to the reader what the book is about and what Atwood was trying to teach the reader.


Internet Source
“Isolation: the meeting or training takes place in a place where participants are cut off from the outside world. This often involves making a public commitment to stay during the training. When training takes place in isolation like this, there is usually a quick follow-up session to ensure that the technique has really taken hold.” (Sutphen).
Summary
Isolation is a brainwashing technique that was used by the Germans in World War two. What they did was take people and put them in a location and that’s where they had to stay. The prisoners were cut off from everything outside of that location.
Evaluation
The author of the passage is Dick Sutphen and he is an author with 19 New Age books. The website was last updated on July 15th 2006. I am not looking for any dated information because I am not worried about that. The website has a link to the full article and there they cited their information. There isn’t really anything I saw on the website that would make me suspicious. The website seems legit to me.





Works Citied
Hammer, Stephanie. "The World as It will Be? Female Satire and the Technology of Power in "The Handmaid's Tale”." Modern Language Studies. Modern Language Studies, spring 1990. Web. 25 Jul 2010.
Sutphen, Dick. "Six brainwashing techniques and the decognition process." Radical Mutual-Improvement 15 July 2006: 1. Web. 25 Jul 2010. .

Link to more on evaluating websites
http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/webeval.html

Kyle Lindahl
Historical Event Research
ENG 102-Summer 2010
Instructor: Laura Darrow
I researched the Battle at the Hamlet Ap Bac, which is one of the many very significant battles that happened during the Vietnam war. In the following text I’m going to tell you a little bit about the battle itself so you have will be able to understand better. Also, I will go into detail how learning about this battle helped me understand Tim O’Brien’s Book The Things They Carried “How to tell a war story” very well.
On January 2nd 1963 the Battle at the Hamlet of Ap Bac began. It took place about forty miles from Saigon along the Hamlet of Ap Bac. Troops from the seventh Division of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam teamed up with American forces. Together they battled the well-established Viet Cong 261st and 514th battalions. (Long, 1).
The battle strategy was to drop off the AVRN a few miles north of Ap Bac by helicopter. While the AVRN is being dropped off two Civil Guard battalions are suppose to flank the Viet Cong from the south. It was rumored that the detonator was surrounded by one hundred twenty Viet Cong, but there was actually somewhere around three hundred sixty soldiers. Unfortunately, the weather conditions were not suitable for a helicopter landing, so they had to wait for the weather to clear up. (Battle at the Hamlet of Ap Bac).
The Army of the Republic of Vietnam and American forces killed eighteen Viet Cong and wounded thirty-nine. American forces suffered three deaths and eight more soldiers wounded. The ARVN’s casualties were much greater a devastating eighty deaths with another one hundred wounded. (Battle of Ap Bac).
Doing the research on the Battle of Ap Bac made me agree more with what Tim O’Brien was saying in his book The Things They Carried. I think his writing is saying that there is no way to tell a true war story because it is impossible. Impossible because you have to be there and experience it for yourself to fully understand. If you have then you know there is no upside to war. There are not any good aspects to it. O’Brien writes about it his book, “ A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at all the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue.” (O’Brien, 68-69).
Even though I did the research and all that I still don’t know what happened at the Battle of Ap Bac. I don’t know what happened because I wasn’t there. I know the statistics and the battle plan, but I don’t know about the struggle each and every soldier went through. I won’t ever know the names of those who died or be able to hear their stories. So I agree completely with O’Brien that there is no true way to tell a war story. It is one of those things you have to experience to understand, but I don’t see why you would want to. War doesn’t sound very nice to me.



Works Cited
Battle at the hamlet of ap bac. (2009). Retrieved from http://www.vietnam-war.info/battles/hamlet_of_ap_bac2.php
Battle of ap bac . (2010, July 2). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ap_Bac
Jennifer Long, JL. (2009, June 11). Battle of ap Bac. Retrieved from http://timelines.com/1963/1/2/battle-of-ap-bac
O'Brien , Tim. The Things They Carried. 1st. New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. 246. Print.

Link to more about Vietnam war: http://www.vietnam-war.info/facts/

topic proposal

My main question is what are some of the methods of totalitarian thought control? What do they involve and who came up with these ideas? I want to know why people felt they have to rule like that. Did they not care about what the people under them felt or thought?
I am going to research the methods of totalitarian thought control to start. While I am also going to research all those questions I have just asked. Simply because I want to know why and I feel it will help me better understand the book if I know what the background of what is happening in the story. It will give me an insight of what the handmaids are feeling and what the rulers are feeling and thinking as well. I am confused as to why things like what is happening in the book actually happen in the real world. It just doesn’t seem right to me. Why does anyone want to be that damn mean? At the moment I have no clue, but I am going to do the research and find out so I can tell you.

Link: http://www.thecorner.org/hist/total/total.htm

1.A. I’m going to write about Darwin’s concerns with evolution in The Origin of the Species.
This is the weak thesis statement because this thesis makes no claim. All it says it that you are going to write about a book big deal. It should go into more detail so that an argument can be made.
2.A. An important part of one’s college education is learning to better understand others’ points of view.
This is the weak thesis statement because to me it seems like it is more common sense. Obviously you could argue about this, but it would be a waste of time.
3.A. The jeans industry targets its advertisements to appeal to young adults.
This is the weaker of the two thesis statements because it is to broad and general. In order for these companies to make money they need to target everyone not just a specific group.
4.A. Othello is a play about love and jealousy.
Example A is the weak thesis statement because you don’t have to watch the play to figure out what it is about. It should go into a little more detail of the actual plot so that it will suck the reader in and make them want to see the play.
5.A. The songs of the punk rock group Minor Threat relate to the Feelings of individuals who dare to be different. Their songs are just composed of pure emotion. Pure emotion is very important in music, because it serves as a vehicle to convey the important message of individuality. Minor Threat’s songs are meaningful to me because I can identify with them.
The thesis statement above is the weakest out of the two options because it does not stay on topic very well. It should be written in a better method than the one that was chosen.

more on how to write a thesis statement
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/545/01/

Mid session letter

Dear Ms. Darrow:
Hello, Ms. Darrow I want to start off by saying that I have learned a lot more about grammar from this class than any other class I have taken so far. I have enjoyed reading the books you have assigned and I feel I have been able to understand the underlying message to each one of them.
Well, so far my biggest challenge in the class so far has been being able to write a full paper. I always seem to be struggling with the length of my paper. I have been working on it as much as possible and it’s getting a little better. I would have to say my biggest accomplishment so far has been passing the quizzes and test. I usually don’t really do so well on those, but for this class I have. The way the readings have affected me is that for the most part I have been able relate to the text in some way. The literary analyses we have done are different from the other types of writing I have done in college because for a literary analysis you write a summary, a description, an analysis, and finally an argument. The other writings didn’t have me write in all these different ways in one paper. My goals for the second half of the session are to just do the best I can in all my assignments and learn along the way. Another goal I have in the class is to prepare myself for when I go off to college. I hope to improve myself in the class by completing the remaining assignments that way I will pass the class and get the credit.
Well, that’s all I have for you and thank you for reading. I hope you weren’t completely bored reading my letter,



Sincerely, Kyle Lindahl

The Things They Carried

The book “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien exceedingly helped me understand how hard it is to withstand the burdens of grief, love, fear, yearning all while carrying fifty pounds of supplies really is. I couldn’t imagine and don’t really want to what it would be like to carry almost my body weight in gear while being scared, feeling anguish, and never truly knowing if the one you love is staying faithful. It is pretty unreal when you think about. How could someone deal with all that while getting shot at?

The author depicts images of the things that the soldiers carried mostly the items of Lieutenant Cross. Not to mention all the mental baggage he has such as his love for Martha, grief of his dead men, his longing for Martha. Martha has an enormous affect on Lieutenant Cross and his ability to focus on the tasks at hand those being keeping himself and his men alive. After one of Lieutenant Cross’s men is shot and killed he can barely stand the heartache because he feels it was his fault for not paying attention and instead daydreaming about Martha. In reaction, he burns the letters and photos of Martha.

Mr. O’Brien does an excellent job of explaining why men kill and go to war. His explanation is that men are afraid to show that they are scared and that they are terrified of dying. That is the reason they came to war because they are afraid of what people might think of them. In the end, I’m pleased I read this and I’d recommend it to anyone.

More on Tim O'Brien: http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-obrien-tim.asp

Summary

The short story “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien is about a recent college graduate who is unexpectedly drafted in the army. He has to fight for a war he doesn’t believe in. He spent his last summer before being shipped off to basic training working at the slaughter house with the job of declotter. It made him reek even after he bathed this made it hard for him to get dates.

He had many thoughts of running away to Canada. A little while before he had to leave he went to a lodge for a few days to relax. Where he helped an old man there named Elroy with simple tasks. He told the old man about his job in the slaughter house and worked out a deal with him so he could pay for his stay. After he had paid his debt the old man took him out on his boat almost all the way to the Canadian coast to fish. The old man was giving the young man a chance to swim to Canada and escape the war. Unfortunately he couldn’t bare the embarrassment so he didn’t and jump in. Instead he went home and then went to war. After that the man deemed himself a coward because he went to the war.

Analysis

My analysis of the short story “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien is that if you don’t do something because you are worried of what people will think of you then you are a coward. The young man in the story said “All those eyes on me-the town, the whole universe- and I couldn’t risk the embarrassment” (O’Brien 59). Which does make him a coward because he couldn’t do something he believed in. Which was running away so that he did not have to fight in a war that he didn’t believe in because he couldn’t handle what people would think of him.

Works Citied

O'Brien, Tim. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. 246. Print.

Facts about the Veitnam war
http://www.vietnam-war.info/facts/