1. Warm up, 9/26
Look over the notes from your homework on how to write a true war story. Write a quick sentence that summarizes the “ingredients”.
Do you agree with O’Brien’s recipe? Did anything stick out to you as particularly odd or surprising?

2. Learning Targets
To connect content from one chapter of The Things They Carried and apply it to the form of the next chapter.
To utilize a formalist critical lens in order to better understand a story.
To produce thorough and independently created work.

3. Independent Work
IF YOU DIDN’T DO IT YET: Read “Enemies,” “Friends,” “How to Tell a True War Story” (by Monday, 9/26).
Keep track of the features, or “ingredients,” of a true war story according to Tim O’Brien’s “recipe.”
IF YOU’VE READ HOW TO TELL A TRUE WAR STORY,: Today, you will use the notes you took for homework to complete the task for our fifth reading, The Dentist and Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong.
While you’re reading, use the handout found on Google Classroom to record how O’Brien tells a war story using the ingredients from his own recipe, as indicated in How to Tell a True War Story.
My personal list of “ingredients” can be found on the next slide.

4. How to Tell a True War Story – Lackland Notes
You can tell a war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil (p.69)
It should embarrass people (obscene) (69)
To use imagination and creativity to express its magnitude, because you can't without doing so (71)
It's hard to believe (71)
They never seem to end (76)
If there is a moral, you can't get to it without unraveling the deeper meaning, leaving little to say (77)
True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis. (I.e., war is hell). It comes down to gut instinct: it makes the stomach believe. (78)
War truths are contradictory. It's grotesque and beautiful. (80)
Nothing is ever absolutely true. (82)
Often there's no point to a war story, and that itself can be haunting. (82)
The questions you ask and the answers you expect will tell you whether it's a true war story (83)

5. Homework
Finish reading Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong, and complete the reading guide handout.
words of a college admissions essay/personal statement, typed and printed out, due on Wednesday, 9/28