Chapter 3

"Spin" 

Important Sections of the Chapter

1). "Spin" (pg.31) 

ANALYSIS

Although this is not a quote, it is the title of the chapter and an important piece of analysis because the word "spin" is used as a metaphor to convey the idea that war is ambiguos; it has many shades, tones, colors and faces. 

It is vital to understand that through this chapter the author is trying to say that war has good and bad sides, or like the first phrase of the chapter says "the war wasn't all terror and violence. Sometimes things could almost get sweet." There were moments of mere relaxation and others of terror, and these faces are the ones that change a soldier's life and rip away the innocence and naiveness with whom he entered the war.

2). "I remember Norman Bowker and Henry Dobbins playing checkers every evening before dark...The rest of us would sometimes stop by and watch. There was something restful about it, something orderly and reassuring. There were red checkers and black checkers. The playing field was laid out in a strict grid, no tunnels or mountains or jungles. You knew where you stood. You knew the score. The pieces were out on the board, the enemy was visible, you could watch the tactics unfolding into larger strategies. There was a winner and a loser. There were rules." (pg. 32)  

ANALYSIS

This quote is a direct allusion to war through the means of a checkerboard. The idea of the author is to compare war to a common game board. In both you have two teams, the reds and the blacks but unlike checkers, in war, you do not know who belongs in which. 

Like in a game, in war you also have a playing field, an area of combat, but the difference is that in a board game there are no mountains, jungles and unknown places where the enemy might hide; you know where you are and your surroundings, and in war, you can only hope that what surrounds you is safe. Another interesting aspect, is the idea of the enemy. In war, you don't see him or the tactics he plans to use against you, but in a game, you can predict them and hence, attack with newer, more effective ones. In war, there are no rules, only the motto of "the survival of the fittest" but in both it is important to understand that there is a clear winner and a loser. 

In conclusion, this quote suggests that war is a checkerboard only that bigger, deadlier and with no rules or clear warning moves.

3). "But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersections of past and present." (pg. 34)

ANALYSIS

This fragment is said by Tim O'Brien when he talks about how his daughter continuously tells him to forget the obsession of writing war stories. In it, the author says why he has such an inability to forget the war (his obsession). He states that as a writer, he will never be allowed to forget it because its mixed between his past and his present; what occurred during his past, when he remembers it, becomes his present. Those thousandths of stories he revives in his memory and experiences again are his true obsession, because as a writer he just wants to write them down and convey them to the entire world.