Discussion Questions Week 3 Reed Steiner

2. Aside from E.E. Cumming's use of visual imagery to convey the potency of his love in the same way he experience it he used quite a strong use of ethos. The ethological can be found in Cumming's title, "somewhere i have never travelled" when he gives authority to the narrator in the poem. A traveler represents someone who is wise, experienced life, and has seen it all. So in the first line of the poem when it says "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond"(576) it indicated to the reader, that his love experience is something that even he cannot understand or fathomed because it is so amazing. Give the impression the this act could almost be considered as holy. It is a love so passionate that he has never experience before.
He also uses of verbal irony to juxtapose his feelings with actions, "...which I cannot touch because they are too near"(4) this continues the idea of how his experience was like nothing else. He is completely controlled by this love infatuation. This ideals untouchable ideas lead into personification comparing women to a rose, and not just the typical flower reference most people would automatically think. For example "you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens...or if you wish to close me"(8,9). He is saying that women open and close are turned on and turned off just like a flower. They invite you in one moment, but shut you out the next moment, but whether opened or closed, like a flower, is still a magnificent work of nature.

8. I read this book over the summer so I had to answer one of the questions from it! :)

The soldiers in "The Things They Carried" did in fact carry more than just weapons and war gear. They carried the emotional baggage of men who stared death in the face every day. Each soldier carryings something different and meaningful to each individual along with government issued necessities. Something that reminds them of home or reminds them that there is purpose in life. They carry what they found dignity and strength in.
Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries pictures, letters, and a pebble from a girl, Martha, he is in love with. She however does not return the love that he sends to her, but this does not seem to bother cross. He obsesses with the girl and is able to push through the war by carrying these items that give him hope that he has purpose back home.
Henry Dobbs is described as a hulk of a man carries extra rations and pantyhose around his neck to remind him of his girl friend, who we find out later broke up with him. Ted Lavender carries marijuana and tranquilizers to calm himself down. Kiowa carries the New Testament.
When Lavender dies Lieutenant Cross blames himself because he was day dreaming about Martha, and believes he could have prevented it if he had a better eye out, but war is an unpredictable environment. All the men who carried something needed that items as their own little fantasy world; they needed escape. The things they carried were there escape from the war and their own way to face their temporary and yet eternal lives in Vietnam.