Tim O'Brien The Things They Carried 11/23/14

In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, he tells war stories and post war stories. Reading the first couple of chapters, this book seems to be like a random book about war. As I read farther into the book, O’Brien began to talk about “story truth” and “happening truth.” Story truth is telling a fiction story that could be true or hold meaning. For instance, O’Brien gave an example of the story about the four soldiers who were walking along a trail, a grenade then lands at their feet and one of the soldier’s jumps on it saving the rest. O’Brien says (through story truth) that the real story is; four soldiers are walking along a path when a grenade lands at their feet, one of the soldiers jumps on it and they all die anyways. O’Brien said that is the true story that never gets told. Happening truth is what is really happening or has happened. For example, I have read the book The Things They Carried. That is true and it happened. Through story truth, Tim O’Brien tells readers fictional stories to show how horrifying war really is and that you don’t get glorified while raising your hands to the heavens as you die.

Proposal for expanstion essay 11/16/14

For my expansions essay, I have chosen my mini essay that focuses on the article, “What We Are to Advertisers” by James B. Twitchell. I have only touched on a three out of the eight categories which Twitchell discusses in his article. I want to turn my focus more on four categories: strivers, achievers, makers, and strugglers. I will modify my argument in saying that advertisers mainly focus on these four categories when selling their product. I will use Jack Solomon’s argument in his article, “Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertisers” that the American dream is to be an elitist, and a majority of TV advertisers feed off of this idea. I will be including a Buik commercial to show how two categories (strivers & achievers) relate with one another while supporting my argument. I will use the following key terms and phrases to guide my research: ads towards handymen, bargaining & deals, American dream through ads, how advertisers sell, advertisers appealing to today’s society, and advertisers techniques to sell & middle class.