The Right Stuff - What is the Stuff?
As might be expected from the title, The Right Stuff is centered on the concept of having the right stuff. Author Tom Wolfe uses several recurring techniques and comparisons to describe this idea and its relationship to the men who took part in the Mercury program.
An opening chapter of the book is devoted to the "right stuff" in order to explain the concept to the reader. In this chapter, Wolfe makes a clear distinction between the right stuff and simple bravery. He tells the reader that a possessor of the right stuff can not only risk his life. He "should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawning moment" (19). One critic interprets the distinction as being "between the actual experience of the right stuff- of being a fighter pilot and experiencing, for example, night landings on an aircraft carrier- and any prior effort to describe that experience in language" (Marowski and Matuz 419).
In the same chapter, the reader is also introduced to an element which recurs throughout the rest of the book. The author compares a career in flying to the climbing of a ziggurat, an extraordinarily high and steep pyramid. In an especially vivid passage he writes: "the idea was to prove at every foot of the way up that pyramid that you were one of the elected and anointed ones who had the right stuff and could move higher and higher and even-ultimately...be able to join the very Brotherhood of the Right Stuff" (19 ). Through this pyramid the world is divided into those who had the stuff and those were just left behind.
Another characteristic of the right stuff is the pilots' relationship with one another. These pilots seem to always want to associate only with one another. Wolfe shows the reader the pilots' belief that only other pilots can understand their daily life and death struggles. In their discussions, though, it is shown that the pilots never like to use words like "danger," "bravery," and "fear." Instead they use a special code or explain by example.
Lastly, the final FHA loan requirement involves your credit and guidelines you must fall within to meet the FHA qualifications. The FHA loan requirements scrutinize your credit history, as it can be a direct indicator if you will be a good borrower or not. As a good rule of thumb, if you currently have good credit and credit history, then you should not have to worry about this requirement. Contrary, if you have poor credit, or have many delinquent marks on your credit history, you may not qualify for a FHA loan.
Throughout our lives we encounter dilemmas which help us learn the real meaning of courage, which differs with every person. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. This could be interpreted that courage isn't committing an act of temerity without a reason, however, it is facing your fears to accomplish something which is more important than fear itself. Throughout the book B for Buster by Iain Lawrence, the main character of the novel learns the real meaning of courage through his acts of temerity in order to achieve something which is important to him. This novel takes place during World War II, when an underage sixteen year old signs up to become a crewman in the Halifax bombing of Nazi Germany. Although he is young, Kak makes it through his missions through his courage and determination to accomplish his dream and his love for flying. Lawrence uses characterization and many examples from the novel to show the true meaning of courage.
In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the readers follow the Alpha Company’s experiences during the Vietnam War through the telling’s of the main character and narrator, Tim. At the beginning of the story, Tim describes the things that each character carries, also revealing certain aspects of the characters as can be interpreted by the audience. The book delineates what kind of person each character is throughout the chapters. As the novel progresses, the characters’ personalities change due to certain events of the war. The novel shows that due to these experiences during the Vietnam War, there is always a turning point for each soldier, especially as shown with Bob “Rat” Kiley and Azar. With this turning point also comes the loss of innocence for these soldiers. O’Brien covers certain stages of grief and self-blame associated with these events in these stories as well in order to articulate just how those involved felt so that the reader can imagine what the effects of these events would be like for them had they been a part of it.
In "the things they carried", author Tim O’Brien tries to teach readers that war changes people, by using baggage as a symbol throughout the book. Ultimately, "the things they carried" is literally built on a foundation of the things they carried. Whether it’s the way Jimmy Cross uses the pebble to escape from his duties as a soldier. Or the way that they all look up to the pantyhose as an almost godly relic. All the way to Norman Bowker finally realizing that courage comes from within, not from winning the Silver Star. These things, made up the soldiers attributes, made up the soldiers’ persona, made up the soldier. But they didn’t stop at the soldier; certain items characterized all the soldiers as a collective group. It even went as far as to describe an entire group by the things all of them carried, of course being the green berets. There were no single green berets just a group; nobody made an effort to distinguish one from another. Like the way we make no effort to name each and every cell in our body, they are just smaller pieces that make up one entity.
The weights of desires, fears, and responsibility place great amounts of pressure on an individual. The soldiers in “The Things They Carried” all around lug a great deal of heavy weaponry and equipment. But the heaviest items are intangible things such as their emotions, shame and reputations. These intangible items cannot be discarded and thus, the men continue to “hump” by enduring their weight for the remainder of their lives. Lieutenant Cross realizes that the men “carry these things inside, maintaining a mask of composure” (369) and that unfortunately, the only way to release these things is death.
As students we are brainwashed by ancient myths such as The Iliad, where war is extolled and the valorous warrior praised. Yet, modern novels such as Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried (THINGS) challenge those very notions. Like The Iliad, THINGS is about war. It is about battles and soldiers, victory and survival, yet the message O'Brien gives us in THINGS runs almost contradictory to the traditional war story. Whereas traditional stories of war take place on battlefields where soldier battles soldier and the mettle of man is tested, O'Brien's battle occurs in the shadowy, private place of a soldier's mind. Like the Vietnam War itself, THINGS forces Americans to question the foundations of their beliefs and values because it calls attention to the inner conscience. More than a war story, O'Brien's The Things They Carried is an expose on personal courage. Gone are the brave and glorious warriors such as those found in the battle of Troy. In THINGS, they are replaced by young men who experience not glory or bravery, but fear, horror, and a personal sense of shame. As mythic courage clashes with the modern's experience of it, a battle is waged in THINGS that isn't confined to the rice-patties, jungles, and shit-fields of Vietnam. Carrying more than the typical soldier's wares, O'Brien's narrator is armed with an arsenal of feelings and words that slash away at an invisible enemy that is the myth of courage, on an invisible battlefield that is the Vietnam veteran's mind.
The vast majority of heroes in novels display courage frequently, making it a characteristic praised by many. Once a character demonstrates their cowardly nature, he becomes looked down upon. Those unlucky enough can be named weak, wimpy, chicken, and so forth; however many do not understand that both courage and timidness are intertwined. In the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, the author indicates that courage can be driven by both fear and cowardice.
In The Things They Carried, an engaging novel of war, author Tim O’Brien shares the unique warfare experience of the Alpha Company, an assembly of American military men that set off to fight for their country in the gruesome Vietnam War. Within the novel, the author O’Brien uses the character Tim O’Brien to narrate and remark on his own experience as well as the experiences of his fellow soldiers in the Alpha Company. Throughout the story, O’Brien gives the reader a raw perspective of the Alpha Company’s military life in Vietnam. He sheds light on both the tangible and intangible things a soldier must bear as he trudges along the battlefield in hope for freedom from war and bloodshed. As the narrator, O’Brien displayed a broad imagination, retentive memory, and detailed descriptions of his past as well as present situations. 5. The author successfully uses rhetoric devices such as imagery, personification, and repetition of O’Brien to provoke deep thought and allow the reader to see and understand the burden of the war through the eyes of Tim O’Brien and his soldiers.
Everyday individuals face decisions in which they must choose whether to do what is appealing to them or to choose a more suitable and compliable choice. In the fictional work of ‘The Things They Carried’ by Tim O’ Brien, certain characters such as Tim O’ Brien himself must face decisions similar to these. The novel demonstrates that when an individual is faced with a decision in which there is a choice that he may have to conform, the individual tends to conform due to not wanting to embarrass themselves or to not be portrayed as a coward to others. However when the individual is challenged with these types of decisions, the choice does not matter since the outcome will be what the individual was trying to avoid. That is to say that in the excerpt “The Rainy River” Tim O’ Brien was going through a conflicting decision on whether or not he should go to the war. Yet, as we see it turns out that either choice will lead to either shame or cowardice. If he goes to the war he feels that he will be a coward and that he gave up his own morals and values and accepted something he does not believe in, but if he does not go to war he will be shunned by society and will be labelled as a coward because he will not fight for his country.
Culture and identity are two very strange ideas. They are received at a very young age, yet they are very hard to give to someone else. They will affect you for the rest or your life, yet for the most part you are born into them. However, they soon become very important to us and we cannot, no matter what we do, live without them. They are a part of us, and a vital aspect of society. However, it took me a very long time to recognize that I had an identity and a little while after that before I knew what it was.
There are many studies have conducted on the Common Core issue. I am interested in reading and knowing this topic, the Common Core Standards in the American perspective. According to State Standards Initiative, the Common Core State Standards established curricula for English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects “the Standards” are the peak of a prolonged effort to carry out the charge supplied by the states to build the generation of K-12 standards to help guarantee that all learners are college and occupation ready in knowledge at the end of high school. (Schutz, n.d.).
Through The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien moves beyond the horror of fighting in the Vietnam War to examine with sensitivity and insight the nature of courage and fear. Included, is a collection of interrelated stories. A few of the stories are brutal, while others are flawed, blurring the distinction between fact and fiction. All the stories, however, deal with one platoon. Some are about the wartime experiences of soldiers, and others are about a 43-year-old writer reminiscing about his platoon’s experiences. In the beginning chapter, O’Brien rambles about the items the soldiers carry into battle, ranging from can openers, pocketknives, and mosquito repellent o Kool-Aid, sewing kits, and M-16 assault rifles. Yet, the story is truly about the intangible things the soldiers “carry”: “grief, terror, love, longing… shameful memories (and) the common secret of cowardice” (Harris & O’Brien 21).
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried has readers and critics alike scratching their heads with wonder about the meaning of “story-truth” and “happening-truth.” Although, he served in the Vietnam War from 1968 until 1970, he fabricates the events of the war throughout The Things They Carried. At the same time, he insists that the truth lies at the heart of the emotion in the story, an idea that many readers question. Furthermore, it is pointless for the reader to attempt to sort through the stories and differentiate between the “story-truth” and “happening-truth,” because it is nearly impossible. This tactic is one of O’Brien’s more ingenious writing methods. He does not want the reader to know the difference between the two because in his opinion that fact is irrelevant. O’Brien obviously thinks outside the box and has everyone questioning reality. However, this fact is truly ironic, because the point is not to care what type of “truth” it is, but to instead feel the raw beauty of the emotion and to accept it as the truth. While trying to define “story-truth” and “happening-truth,” a couple chapters in particular focus on the idea of truth, “How to Tell a True War Story,” “The Man I Killed” and “Good Form.” O’Brien believes that the most important thing for a reader is to experience the emotion of the story, be it “story-truth” or “happening-truth,” as long as the real emotion is conveyed and understood by the reader, then it is as true as it could possibly be.
... go down in that stick and work" (214). This scene shows a horrific reality because it exposes the gruesome deaths of many innocent people during the bombing. It also displays the terrible reality that a whole city population could be wiped out in just one bombing.
Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that is designed to provide managers with cost information for strategic and other decisions that potentially affect capacity and therefore “fixed” as well as variable costs. Activity-based costing is mostly used for internal decision making and managing activities while traditional costing method is used to provide data for external financial reports. Most organization uses activity-based costing as an addition system for using traditional absorption costing as sometimes the traditional cost system misleads the product’s profitability. In a company, there are many products on sale, if one product is sold at a high price with low product margin and a product with high product margin at a low price, it may result in a loss. In addition, due to the reason that cost drivers and enterprises business may change, activity-based costing analysis also needs to be revised periodically. This amendment should be prompted to change pricing, product, customer focus and market share strategy to improve corporate profitability.