Having done two combat tours over seas this story hit close to home. The world is never quite the same once you've gone to war. Close relationships such as the one between Stephan and Marty are even changed by war. The story starts out telling stories of the brothers past seemingly happy stories then Stephan goes off to war. When he comes back it seems the war hasn't quite ended inside his mind. He battles with new technology and the closeness with his brother. Nothings the same to him his war hasn't really ended he seems to still be fighting in his mind. Which is very similar to what I think many vets go through. Today we call it PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder. It took a fight with his brother and a car to bring him back to the real world back home. However I think it also brought the on sought of an unbelievable realization of what he has been through and possibly the guilt of what he has done. I wonder maybe the guilt was to much maybe he knew what would happen when he went into the lake. Did Stephan commit suicide? Maybe the happiness at the end was because he knew what he had to do to get rid of the guilt.
My experiences I think gave me some what of an understanding of what Stephan must have been going through. Even though he left the battle doesn't mean it was over for him maybe death was the only way for him to end his war. I feel a connection to this story, but I wasn't quite a fan of the writing. I felt the author was over descriptive and at some points it took me out of the moment. I felt sometimes it was to much like when Marty describes what the car looked like after he trashed it. I felt it just was over the top and to descriptive it didn't give me the chance to use my imagination.
Thomas Moss post 2
I'm glad that this story resonated with you on a personal level and that you were to able to use your experiences to achieve a deeper understanding of the story and its characters.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure that I follow you, though when you say that you did not enjoy the story at points because it was overly descriptive. Could you give and discuss a more specific example? Why might it be that Erdrich chooses to use a great deal of description at times? Do these descriptions serve a purpose in terms of the larger meaning of the story?
There seemed to just be to deep of descriptions where there didn't need to be. The one that comes to mind is the damage Marty did to the car. I could've done with alittle less description about it and more of what was going on in Martys head when he was doing it. I think though that nerves may have played a part in all the description. After going back and reading the story again I noticed many of them came at uncomfortable points in the story. I think now that may the author may have rambled a bit with descriptions because of the way he felt Marty was a rambler when he was out of his comfort zone. Hopefully this makes sense to you it's alittle hard to explain for me even though I'm the one who is thinking it.
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