"Is Anybody Home?"

"How many of us, for example, with a certain sense of satisfaction, of cheerful American pragmatism, have turned our bodies into exteriorized projects - spending our off hours getting them into shape, giving them new faces, painting and remodeling them in quite the same house proud manner in which homeowners treat their prized and objectified secondary dwelling places ?" (46)



This part of Sobchack's "Is Any Body Home?" stood out to me when I read it. I love the way she related "painting and remodeling" a persons body to a persons house. Many times, people feel exiled from their own bodies and feel the need to try and change the way they look. They want to try and fit in or to be approved for the way they look. We all spend time in gym, hair salons, barbershops, shopping malls, looking for a way to alter our exterior. But are we doing this for self or for others ? And we do this for different reasons; low self-esteem, media, and past experiences have an impact on what we do to ourselves physically.

Is Anybody Home/The Things they Carried

I was particularly intrigued by the part of Vivian Sobchack’s essay “Is Anybody Home?” in which she describes her personal experience of her amputated leg. The reason I was intrigued by this part of the essay is because she constantly describes how she had to operate her body consciously… “Ultimately I learned to walk by locating myself and being on “my” side of my body—that is, not by seeing my body as an image of me, but feeling my body image as me.” The reason this intrigued me is because it shows that she exiled herself from her body to operate her prosthetic leg. She was able to remove herself from her body and see it from a different angle to fully conquer the problem she had with the prosthetic leg. This belief is seen in The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien as well, in the novel we see that when they are removed from the war setting they are constantly haunted by the fact that they had to “toughen up” (for lack of better words) when surrounded by the other men of Alpha Company. They are exiled because of the horrors they witnessed when they had to change basically their humanity to be able to cope with the dread and fear they faced constantly in and off the battlefield.

Help! I'm trapped in a human body!

The dilemma put forth in "is any body home?" is something that I had not previously considered as a form of exile. Vivian Sobchack starts off by asking "who of us is 'at home' in our bodies?" It seems strange to articulate this question. In truth though, who feels at home in their body throughout their entire life? When we are young most of us are blissfully ignorant of the physical ideals that we will later want to live up to. Every person goes through at least one point in their life when they feel that their body does not meet certain standards. Whether this is because of physical conditioning or physical appearance, we all experience the desire to "better" our bodies. Sobchack's personal example is more extreme than most people experience. Through her extreme example it becomes clear that we all go through similar training processes. Some train their body's to be stronger or better looking. Some people train their body's in less obvious ways such as for perfect posture. However we do it, it is inevitable that we all train our bodies in some way or another to make our selves feel more at home in our body's. In this way we may not be exiled from our bodies physically but we are estranged and exiled emotionally. -- Ian

"Is Any Body Home?"; Vision

Vivian Sobchack provided a provocative article that expanded my thought process regarding exile from the body. I was initially intrigued by the concept of the body being home, house and prison all at once. To differentiate between the "home" and "house" aspects of the body was unique and made sense to me. I liked how Sobchack described the body as a "house": "the place in which we live in a variable relationship of hermeneutic objectification, that we decorate and display for the edification of both ourselves and others, that confounds us with problems and expense but allows us still a certain familiarity..." (47). I found this to be a very apt analogy. As the text evolved in its complexity, the different narratives that Sobchack provided gave a more grounded foundation for the theories she espouses, much as the physical body does for one's self. Sobchack writes that "The neurological loss of proprioception is not equivalent to the surgical loss of a leg, and neither can be equated to the social loss of the very substance of personhood that is a consequence of racism," (50). I would expect the comparison of neurological and surgical loss of proprioception to be complex enough of a study; to add the social aspect of themes such as racism was a brilliant addition to me. The account of the Million Man March, particularly the inclusion of Zook's description of Stevie Wonder and his feelings was very telling, and provided a new perspective of the "lived body" for me. This tied in beautifully with the concept of placing ourselves before our images and later, within them. I just felt that it was a very powerful and appropriate example to use. I also found it astounding that Sobchack herself was able to write about her leg amputation in such scholarly terms, and provide a telling account of "feeling (her) body image," (59). One of her closing thoughts, "we must remember in our seeing that we transcend and subtend the images we produce and allow ourselves to be produced by," (60) gave me greater insight into the notion of vision and how it plays into the theme of bodily exile.

Found in Translation-- The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

"In any war story, but especially a true one, it's difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen. What seems to happen becomes its own happening and has to be told that way. The angles of vision are skewed... And then afterward, when you go tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed."(71)
After reading a work as complex and brilliant as Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, the thought of even trying to analyse it is a daunting one. The multi-layered subtleties, the gripping moments of brutality, the shifting in and out of a sense of realness-- all these elements, among others more difficult to pin down, made this book one of the most compelling I have ever encountered. In his narrative, O'Brien simultaneously challenged the reader to question the accuracy of his account of the Vietnam War, while insisting that facts and names and detailed correctness didn't really matter. What matters in a war story, according to O'Brien, is its ability to "make[] the stomach believe."(78)
I don't know if a word of this book ever 'really' happened. What I do know is that I feel in my gut now the horror, the unspeakable filth and pain and emptiness of the war experience. And I don't even know what it's like or whether I could ever survive it. All I know is that my stomach believes it.
In another English class this semster, I and my fellow students got into a heated discussion about whether poetry could be translated "accurately". We debated how much license poets who are appointed as translators should have when interpreting the language, tone and feel of the original poem, especially if the original was not written in a language familiar to the translator. My teacher felt strongly that poets should have unlimited license when translating another's work, since the soul of a poem would be essentially lost if each word was merely defined. I tend to agree, and feel that O'Brien's work serves to enforce the argument. As far as I know, no detail in O'Brien's war stories is technically accurate, and probably could not be found in any official record. But that does not detract from the validity or importance of his work. The messages in The Things They Carried are strong enough to stand apart from factual reliability-- the power in his writing may be merely the result of a "translation" of his experience, but that doesn't lessen the impact, and doesn't make it less true.

The Things They Carried: The Real Deal.

After reading the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, I can't help but believe that it's the real deal. Every aspect of the novel seems to have an effect on me, I am not the biggest reading fan ever but while reading this story I feel as if I was reading O'Brien's personal journal. First of all, the language in which he wrote was so natural, inviting to an extent. I felt as if I was one of the fellers slugging around in the slumps. Even the way he implemented the use of profanity made his novel richer and more appealing to me as a reader. The way he described the soldiers physical and emotional burdens made me believe that this book was a true account of what these soldiers encountered during the Vietnam war. The way Henry Dobbins clutched on to his girlfriend's pantyhose, and Kiowa carried around his grandfather's hatchet, in contrast to soldiers that go to war today also tag along personal items. Maybe I'm reading too deep into it but in the chapter entitled Spin when the little boy asked for the chocolate bar, maybe it's coincidental but my uncle went to Kuwait recently, he's in the army and when he came back he told me how the children would be poorly dressed and that he also gave these kids chocolates and candies. O'Brien also showed us the effects the war had on the soldiers, for example in the chapter entitled Love Jimmy Cross states that he will never forgive himself for Lavender's death, and in the chapter Speaking of Courage Norman Bowker, wanders around aimlessly writing a 17 page letter to O'Brien telling him how he never felt right after the war, eventually hanging himself. In connection to present time, I have seen the psychological burdens many soidiers have after the war. Just last Saturday, I was on my way home from work on the E train, and there was this guy who sat opposite me, and he kept on mumbling and swaying back and forth. Another guy asked him what's his deal, and what did he say, he said, " I got damaged in the war." These are just a few reasons why Tim O'Brien's book best persuades me that he's giving us an account of what really took place, what really happen during the war.

Another form of exile

To feel that your body is not controlled by yourself is a feeling that no one would want to experience. Vivian Sobchack explains "our body is like our home" (46), which in my opinion makes sense because we keep our important information, in the brain particularly. Throughout the story, she explains not having our own body and as well viewing examples of people that endure this situation such as Christina. Christina is a girl who could not gain control or sense of her body.

What I was intrigued about by this story was the adversity that both Christina and the author took to gain control of their bodies, particularly the author, who had her leg amputated. As explained in the story, it is like an eviction and alienation from one's body. Not gaining control of one's body is another form of being exile. People that are paralyzed can be viewed as exile. The fact that they do not have part in moving their own body part. Though when a person thinks of the word exile, what comes to mind is because of political, and personal reasons. After reading this story, not being able to detect one's body can be considered a form of exile.

O' Brien And The Thought of Getting Away From Exile

The Things They Carried is perhaps a more realistic and in depth look at the many forms of exile that arise when a soldier returns "home" from war. The book explores and discusses the many leading causes to these various types of exile; what seems to be most outstanding is O' Brien's constant self-reassurance that he is not in exile, that everything that he is telling and perhaps feeling (as a result of his experience in Vietnam) is only a result of his wonderful imagination or mainly made up. It seems like writing things down is his door to amnesia, and a way to clear his memory from the many reoccurring images that he may have in his mind. Through writing O'Brien allows himself to say what he wants to say, and to be who he wants to be, and how he would like his feelings about war to be."But it's not a game. It's a form. Right here, now, as I invent myself [...]" (O' Brien 179). In his book, he creates a character that supposedly is able to distance himself from the reality of feeling alienated from home, after returning from war, perhaps the "ideal soldier". It seems obvious that even his "ideal soldier" fails to distance himself from the circumstances because he constantly repeats and gives clear images of the things that occurred during war, and has a tendency to go over the occurrences or telling them all the time.

"Is Any Body Home?"

While reading Sobshack's "is any body home", I was thinking back to the first day of class when Prof. Kijowski asked the class to name all the ways in which a person could be exiled, and being exiled from one's body, never came up. Sobshack's article is a breath of fresh air. It looks at exile from a different angle, one that I feel that more of us could relate to. In "The Sun Also Rises" for example, we could not relate to the lost generration. Many class members basically felt that these alcoholics need to get there lives together. However, in Sobshacks article, in the first paragraph, Sobshack says, "How many of us walk around in the world feeling...trapped not only by but also in our pigmented, gendered, aging skin, the obesity or infirmity or flaccidness of our flesh?(45-46) Only Some people are actually exiled from a country or region, but everyone can relate to feelings of insecurity. Everyone has a body, and anyone is capable of feeling exiled from their body.