My grandpa is a big part of my life and I learn a new thing from him every day. He tells me all kinds of stories from when he lived in Lithuania as a kid to his life in the Korean war, this man has seen it all. He is definitely the most entertaining and joke-telling man alive and that is why I feel honored to have him live with us.

 

My grandpa moved in with us about one year ago. We had built an addition onto the back of our house for him to stay in and he loves it! He is such a positive guy and I never really understood why. He has gone through so much at such a young age but he still looks for the best in everything and everyone. 

 

Now in order for you to understand how he came to be who he is, you need to learn about his background. To begin, his name is Romualdas Povilatis and he was born and raised in Kaunus Lithuania until he was about ten years old. While he was ten, the soviet union had taken control of Lithuania and his father was assassinated because he was the head of the department of security. He, his mom and sister could not stay in Lithuania so they fled to the United States. 

 

My grandpa always tells me this story about when he was on the boat to America. He vividly remembers being on this smaller boat, no longer than 70 feet. While on the boat there was a dining area and after lunch one day, he saw an orange fall on the floor and he really wanted to get the orange because he has never had one. He tried to chase after the orange but the boat would rock back and forth and the bright orange would roll back and forth just out of his reach.

 

Once they had got to the United States, my grandpa did not speak much, if any English. He had come in through Ellis Island and was kind of on his own. After that, I don’t really remember what he did but I know that when he was 17 he was drafted for the Korean war. He was assigned to be a jeep driver for Generals. He was stationed in Germany because he had learned how to speak German in grammar school and he was also fluent in Russian and Lithuanian which made him a very good translator. 

 

After the war, he had come back to America and had been a carpenter for a few years. He built a lot of houses and one of them was his very own house in Lemont. After being a carpenter, he decided that he would do what one of his friends from the war had told him to do, become a dentist. That’s exactly what he did! He went to the University of Loyola in Chicago to study dentistry and then opened up his very own dentist’s office on Archer avenue.

 

One time during dinner my grandpa had told me about his life in Germany and how one time he had been run over by a jeep. But after he told me the jeep story he told me this: “If I were to die tomorrow, I would die feeling like my life on earth has been fulfilled.” This put me into a sort of shock. I could not imagine not having my grandpa anymore especially with him just moving in. But then I thought about it some more and all of the things that he had done. He has had so many experiences and has got to be the happiest guy on earth. 

 

The main reason why this was so impactful to me was that it made me think about my own life. If there were something that was to happen to me and I was to die, would I feel my life was complete? The answer is no. 

 

There are a lot of things that I have done in my life but I feel like I could do more of the simple things. I don’t have to be as cool and life-changing as my grandpa, I just need to do the simple things such as staying positive while things are difficult and be nice and say hi to everyone. I know these are very simple and very common things that people do but I feel like there is always room to improve upon the simple things. 

My grandpa has taught me well because he has gone through so much and he is still so happy. All of the things that we don’t like he somehow finds a way to make enjoyable and he is someone that I aspire to be. 

 

My grandpa saying this also made me think of something else. Death is not the end, it is just the beginning. As Tim O’Brien said, we can not forget about the dead and we need to continue to tell their stories. He told the stories of Linda and when my grandpa passes away, I will do the same. 

 

 

The Notes section in Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried helps to develop a deeper meaning. It makes the chapter “Speaking of Courage” much more meaningful and it is no longer just another chapter in the book. 

Tim O’Brien starts the chapter off with “‘Speaking of Courage’ was written in 1975 at the suggestion of Norman Bowker, who three years later hanged himself in the locker room of a YMCA in his hometown in central Iowa.” (O’Brien 149) This is a very abrupt way to start the analysis portion of a chapter. In the last chapter we saw that Norman was slowly starting to become acclimated to civilization and his hometown and now we find out that he is dead. It almost puts the reader in a sense of shock.

This really makes me think about the rest of the book as a whole. This is just one section where he elaborates and tells the true story and meaning behind what he wrote. The rest of the book must be similar to this and must be all based off of what had happened to him and what some of the impacts were that Vietnam left on him. 

I was also really shocked when I heard some of the jobs that Norman had worked after coming home from Vietnam. It said that he lived with his parents and “ He had worked briefly as an automotive parts salesman, a janitor, a car wash attendant, and a short-order cook at the local A&W fast-food franchise. None of these jobs, he said, had lasted more than ten weeks.” (O’Brien 149) This is really an issue for a lot of veterans because when they leave to fight they are often very young and when they come back they are sort of left behind. They do not get a great education and it is difficult for them to support themselves. I am glad that Tim included this because it shows how this war can really affect you a lot even though you get back home and are safe.

Another part that I also found that was very interesting was when Norman wrote, “‘The thing is,’ he wrote, ‘there’s no place to go. Not just in this lousy little town. In general. My life, I mean. It’s almost like I got killed over in Nam . . . Hard to describe. That night when Kiowa got wasted, I sort of sank down in’” (O’Brien 150) This is yet another example from Norman himself that he really did struggle when he came back. He kept on thinking about the past and all of the different things that he could have done to save Kiowa. He has a lot of regrets and that is an issue that Tim really wanted to highlight.

Ultimately, Tim O’Brien added this chapter to point out to main issues that returning veterans have to face. These two main issues are thinking about the past and the things that they could have done differently in the war and also finding a stable job and education. He was able to use Norman’s story to exemplify these struggles.

Mary Anne is transformed into a predatory killer because she has never seen anything so adventurous or intense as what she saw in Vietnam. I think that she got a little taste of what it is like to be at war and in the wild for the first time. She got hooked on the adventure and the atmosphere she was. The way she changed is actually very comparable to the book Lord of the Flies because when the boys in the book first got stranded they were having a blast and had a lot of freedom. By the end, they were in a survival mode and their actions were very savage.

I think that it is also important to know that she is a woman. Especially because during this war women were not really involved in the war. As a matter of fact of the roughly 2.1 million American soldiers, only 11,000 were women and only one of those 11,000 ladies died. She also brings a sense of comfort to the men because that was the whole reason she was there in the first place. She came there because Fossie missed her and wanted to see her. She was comforting to the other men because they had not really seen any woman since they left the United States for war. 

I think that one thing that transforms people today is pressure. Whether it be pressure from your parents to do well in school, or from your friends to do something dumb, or from society as a whole making you feel like you have to dress a certain way to keep up with trends. All of these pressures are not good because they change who we are as individuals and often times if we feel pressured we feel like we are doing something wrong and someone else is more correct and they have the right to “control” us.

I definitely think that the reason that this pressure exists is that we want to be the best and most successful that we possibly can be. Everyone is naturally competitive and then there are people who are extra competitive and compare themselves to everyone else because they are more pressured. An example of this is: You don’t like playing basketball but you are on the team anyway and your parents keep pressuring you to be just as good or better than your older br=other who had been on the team a few years ago. This is a very simple example but this shows how simple it is to feel pressured into things you don’t always enjoy.

I think when people feel pressured, they are looking for approval and almost a reward. When something good happens they want to benefit the reward for their success. They want to be the ones to fit in and please their parents even if they don’t enjoy the activity they are doing.

In conclusion, the thing that made Mary Anne change was the adventure and suspense of Vietnam but nowadays the main thing that changes people is outside pressures.