Paper Two Exemplar I

QUESTION: How are women represented in two texts you have studied and for what purpose? CONDITIONS: Untimed, typed, a composite of different students work from 13EU601 and 16EU603 Criterion A Knowledge of the Part 3 texts and the way context affects their meaning. Criterion B Criterion C Criterion D Understanding Awareness of Logical of the how the development expectations writers of an and subtleties choices of the argument of the stylistic A coherent question features in the and effective text are used A relevant and formal to construct focused structure. meaning response that shows critical Understanding analysis. of the effects of stylistic features upon the way the text is read and received. Criterion E Clear, varied and accurate use of language Appropriate choices in terms of register, style, terminology.

Introduction:
The Things They Carried written by Tim OBrien and The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh are both novels based on the experiences of the Vietnam War and use women as representative characters. OBriens novel serves as a fragmented reminiscence of the Vietnamese war whereby the writer is using storytelling to capture the elusive truth as well as giving voice to American soldiers whose stories were not welcomed upon their return from war. The Sorrow of War is written from the perspective of a North Vietnamese soldier. Translated from Vietnamese, communicates the suffering of an individual soldier who is representative of other soldiers and of the nation itself in terms of physical, emotional and moral decline. Being both about war, they contain mostly male characters but female characters are used to add depth to the experiences of the soldiers. They represent the beliefs of the soldiers and their lost selves, as well as the inner conflict that is an essential part of the human condition but which war heightens. These female characters variously represent the different facets of the soldiers experience on both sides of the conflict.

Sample Body Paragraph:

Women are used to represent the lives that the soldiers were forced to or chose to leave behind. Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carries letters from

his beloved Martha. Each night he washes his hands carefully before opening the letters, which are sealed in a plastic bag. The letters are symbolic of his relationship with Martha and his desire to keep them clean reflects his desire for his relationship with Martha to be untainted by the filth and brutality of war. The relationship between Jimmy and Martha is one adoration, he is in love with an idealized version of Martha in which she is a virgin who is in love with him. The reality is that love was only a way of signing and did not mean what he pretended it meant. His nightly fantasies about touching her knee and his interest in her virginity demonstrate his desire to seek purity and beauty as a means of escaping from the harsh realities of war. He needs to perpetuate this fantasy to retain a semblance of his own innocence, which has been stolen by a war in which men come home talking dirty. He carries the pebble that she ends him in his mouth, tasting it with his tongue, expressing his desire to consume Martha and carry her purity within him for his own has been irreparably lost. Similarly, Kien in The Sorrow of War idealises and romantics his prewar memories of Phuong. In his dreams and memories he clings to the representation of her as young forever untainted by war forever beautiful. For Kien she was like a green meadow after spring rains, as fragrant as the flowers in bloom. This simile is used to show her untouched loveliness, lush and virginal. It stands in stark contrast to the reality with which Kien is confronted with mud, destruction and bloated corpses. Like Jimmy, Kien knows his idealized representation to be a fantasy. Seeing the aftermath of her war-time rape with her torn clothes and blood, he knows that she is changed and no longer the pure, virginal girl that he remembers from the hallowed evening at the lake. But returning to this memory and preserving it, just as Jimmy does symbolically with plastic bag and clean hands, he is able to seek respite from the unrelenting horror of war. The night of the lake becomes a symbol of Phuong in her beautiful youth, symbol of the marvels and grief of youth, of love and lost opportunities. Both Martha and Phuong are deified creatures that are used to represent the lost youths and opportunities of young soldiers who were forced to endure experiences that were greater than they could psychologically bear.

Conclusion:
Both authors use women as foil characters that deepen our understanding of the traumatic experiences of the soldiers. The relationships between the men and women in both novels are emblematic of the inner conflict that raged within each of the soldiers as they are plunged into a world in which the old rules no longer applied. They also represent the relationships between soldiers and their past lives, as well as their profound sense of alienation upon returning to peace. The gulf of experience that existed between men who went to war and were fundamentally changed and the American public who distanced themselves from a shameful war was insurmountable for soldiers like Norman Bowker. For Kien, confronting the reality that both he and Phuong had fundamentally altered because of the war was also unbearable. Women in the novel are used to represent the indescribable for the male soldiers, the stories they couldnt tell either because they simply did not have the words to do so or because no one listened.