If anyone, who is responsible for Kiowa’s death? Why? How does “the boy” fit into this idea of responsibility, and the story itself? Lieutenant jimmy cross feels he is responsible for the death of Kiowa, he blames himself for making the wrong decision, concluding that he should have followed his first impulse and removed the men from the field. He feels that his oversight caused Kiowa’s death.
Why does O’Brien return to the place of Kiowa’s death? Has anything changed – for the narrator, for the people in Vietnam, Vietnam itself? A few months after completing “in the field” O’Brian retuned to the place of Kiowa’s death where he looked for signs of forgiveness or personal grace or whatever else the land had to offer. The field was still there although not as O’Brian had remembered it. It was completely different now, everything seemed to be bone dry the place was at peace and things were quiet, Vietnam wasn’t what it had used to be. Farmers were now working near by the river farming, and there were birds and butterflies the soft rustlings of rural everywhere.
O’Brien mentions the deaths of several of the soldiers before he gives detailed accounts of how and when they died in later stories. “In the Field” and “Field Trip” expand the reader’s understanding of Kiowa’s death and the narrator’s reaction to the events that took place in the field. The stories are interrupted by a very short story, “Good Form,” in which O’Brien provides the reader with factual information about where he served and where most of the stories take place: The Quang Ngai Province. Why might that matter? Research materials about the province. (Pay attention to the timeframe: O’Brien served from late 1968–1970.)The Quang Ngai Province, located on the south central coast of Vietnam, was targeted early in the Vietnam War because U.S. military officials suspected it of being a Viet Cong stronghold. By the end of 1967, most of the homes in the province had been destroyed and many thousands of civilians were homeless.
How do the stories help in understanding the frustration and/or disillusionment of so many U.S. troops who fought in Vietnam? The personal stories in the book help in understanding their pain and frustration because it shows the war on a personal level, not such a broad level. Reading the book, it’s like you’re there with them in the field, getting shot at. Friends dying and the guilt of killing many people affects the soldiers in a negative way, and they sometimes feel helpless. This is how soldiers in every war feel.
What kind of multi-media, documents, and sources can you use to make your presentation a solid, coherent, in-depth, and challenging? Keep in mind that you have to use the book, no matter what. To make our presentation solid coherent and challenging, we use videos and word document handouts for a visual and vivid understanding. Students can follow along with our presentation, while doing an activity about the book at the same time. We also will use power to make our presentation more entertaining; we are also going to assign a writing exercise and a small quiz of questions to make our presentation a little more challenging.
How will you ensure that the audience participates attentively throughout? Do you want to assign a blog or homework (to be done in advance or after your session)? To ensure that the audience participates attentively throughout the presentation, I will hand out keynotes on the chapters so the students can follow along with. I will assign students with a work sheet of questions after the presentation to make sure they fully understood what was going on in the book. I will also assign a writing exercise the students will Choose one of the soldiers from in the field the night Kiowa died and write a condolence letter from that character to Kiowa’s family. This will help put the student in the position of how a solider really felt in the war, of how much pain and sadness is to lose a friend and tell there family they have lost there son.
Alexis McHarg 