My reading list for this summer is eclectic, but someone said I needed
to read "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien. It is a fiction book,
but I sure saw a lot of autobiography in it. It is a personal story
about the Vietnam War, based on the physical premise of "the things they
carried." But is far more deeper and darker in the emotional and
psychological things things they "carried", both then and forever.
I have to tell you two things. I came of age during the Vietnam War, but
managed to get through because of school deferments. But then there was
the lottery. My father, an emotionally distant person and politically
conservative, said, once, and only once, that if I wanted to go to
Canada he would support me. He never mentioned it again and I never had
the need. In O'Brien's book the main character has to face this dilemma
directly, he chooses Vietnam. It makes for an incredible chapter in the
book.
Please know that I have worked with American military families for over
20 years of my adult life. I recently welcomed a young vet, a medical
corpsman, back from Iraq, who told me, please, Mr. J. you don't want to
know about what I saw over there. I do indeed feel his pain. He is only
21. And I know the things that he will have to "carry" forever.
Read this book, and you will understand what our young people serving in
Iraq will have to carry for the rest of their lives. God bless them.
Adam
Adam Janowski
Library Media Specialist
Naples High School
1100 Golden Eagle Circle
Naples, FL 34102
E-mail: NHSWebmaster@collier.k12.fl.us
Phone: 239-430-6644 Ext. 390
Fax: 239-430-6673
Library web site: http://collier.k12.fl.us/nhs/lmc/
School web site: http://collier.k12.fl.us/nhs/
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