Friday's HW:  Small change to schedule: Read "Love" (26-29) and "Spin" (30-37)

What passages caught your attention and why?

Do a double-entry journal  with  two key passages on the left, and your reactions on the right.  What connections, thoughts, emotions does it evoke for you and explain why? 

Choose one passage that you feel provides a good example of O'Brien's writing style.

What are some rhetorical strategies he employs, what are some characteristics of his style?

First consider big picture items:  What is O'Brien's purpose(s) in the passage?  What does he want the reader to think, feel, question, etc.?

What are his broad rhetorical strategies? What words would you use to describe his style, his tone?

How does he use overall paragraph organization and syntax and to what ends? What effects does his organization and syntax create in the reader's head?

What other ground level rhetorical characteristics did you notice and how would you describe his use of them and the effects they created? (Consider elements such as diction, syntax, selection of details, imagery, figurative language, etc.).  Describe them; don't just say "he uses a lot of imagery." What kind of imagery? Use adjectives!

In-class activity

For "Love" or "Spin": 
Find a passage /paragraph that grabbed you;

What is your take-way? In other words, what stuck? Why did it grab you?

What details, in particular, made it came alive?

Homework: Read "How to Tell A True War Story"(64-81)

• Orange Crush was an orange flavored soft drink. In this case, though, it was meant to refer to Agent Orange, a chemical used by the US to defoliate the Vietnamese jungle during the Vietnam War. US military personnel exposed to it developed cancer years later and some of their children had birth defects. The extreme lyrical dissonance in the song meant that most people completely misinterpreted the song, including Top Of The Pops host Simon Parkin, who remarked on camera after R.E.M. performed the song on the British TV show, "Mmm, great on a summer's day. That's Orange Crush."
• The song does not refer to any single Vietnam-related experience for lead singer Michael Stipe, but simply that he lived in that era of American history. He wrote in Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011: "[The song is] a composite and fictional narrative in the first person, drawn from different stories I heard growing up around Army bases. This song is about the Vietnam War and the impact on soldiers returning to a country that wrongly blamed them for the war."
  
  Stipe's father served in Vietnam in the helicopter corps.