FORM - continued

The blog topic for this week asks, "What types of "form" conventions do I see O'Brien employing in the story?" An exampled that is given is how the content of the story is given in a list form. Another question is "how do those conventions (or strategies) help enhance the story's theme or themes or ideas". Some of the forms that he uses are explanations using flashbacks used to explain the present activities. He also uses break offs from the main story to explain other characters related to him in the story such as the other soldiers. Tim O'Brien also splits up the whole recollection of the Vietnam experience in different "chapters" of the story where each chapter describes either a separate event or character that the protagonist is explaining, remembering, or just talking about. These conventions or strategies that O’Brien uses in the story helps enhance the story by allowing the reader to view what he viewed and experience as much as a reader can experience through the words of the writer of what was currently happening at that time and place of when the speaker was experiencing it. When O’Brien uses a list in the content of writing the short story, it allows the reader to experience it as if he were writing the content then and there. It seems more real and personal when the reader has the writer be informal in his writing as if writing in a personal journal. One doesn’t get the impression that the writer is writing for an audience, but more for his own personal recollections.