I usually post along with the class, but I missed the last due date. However, I've been thinking about the readings in my classes: The Things They Carried in 1A, The Secret History in 1B, and Stephen King's "Why We Love Horror Movies" in 79. I have read all of these texts numerous times and I am wondering what it is about them that still holds my interest. Take King's essay as an example. In this piece, he writes on a topic in which I have very little interest: horror movies. I don't watch them or like them. I do enjoy thrillers and true crime, but I find horror movies often to be just gore. Although this is gross and sometimes shocking, it isn't scary to me. Yet, I love King's essay. Why? One is how he sprinkles in "Kingisms" throughout--the worms waiting for us in the ground being just one example. But, I really love how he breaks the rules of writing. King has a 6 word paragraph! Not six sentences, but six words. I know most of my students would be scared to write such a paragraph. However, it is one of the most effective paragraphs in the entire piece.
This breaking of the rules is seen in the other two readings as well. The Secret History is a "mystery" book, but it tells you who is murdered and who the murderers are on the first page. That move clearly breaks the rules of mysteries. As the author says, the book is not a "whodunnit" but a "whydunnit." Her narrator also lies to the other characters, and probably to the readers as well, throughout the story. It is difficult to trust anything he says. Strangely, it is because the author has broken the rules that the text most intrigues me. And, of course, O'Brien plays with the rules in The Things They Carried as well. The title page tells us that the works is one of fiction and yet he dedicates the text to the characters he has created. The reader is continuously stuck in a loop of believing the text to be memoir to fully realizing it is fiction. As readers, we should be mad at him--he seems to be toying with us. And, yet, I can't help but admire his courage to break these rules.