Getting Out by Cleopatra Mathis

#11



In "Getting Out," similes add to the poem. The first stanza states "we hardly slept, waking like inmates who beat the walls." This comparison stands for the trapped feeling of the couple in the poem, confined to the walls of their apartment. They felt like prisoners to their problems left unsolved. "Heaving words like furniture" portrays the heaviness of the words in a domestic state; throwing furniture would leave permanent scars, just as verbal fighting causes more harm than good. The "unshredded pictures" represent the memories the couple wanted to keep, indicating that there was a time when pictures were destroyed.



From the poem, it's evident that the couple tried to work things out as they lie awake during sleepless nights or he tried to leave several times and couldn't quite make it out the door due to "piles of clothes" and "unstrung tennis rackets." They didn't want to leave each other, but the problems had grown to be too much, the fighting too often, and love not enough.

Spin

O'Brien started out the chapter "Spin" with an edge of sarcasm. He said that "war wasn't all terror and violence. Sometimes things could almost get sweet (page 30)," and then jumped immediately into a story about a kid that was "lucky" because he only get one leg shot off. The cruel reality of war shines through this dark humor. By using a simple simile by comparing war to a ping pong ball, O'Brien adds the crazy concept that war is almost treated as a game. He furthers this illusion by explaining Norman Bowker's and Henry Dobbins' nightly checkers ritual (page 31); however, he "spins" the concept by saying that with checkers there is actually visible enemy lines, knowledge of one's position, and a winner and loser, things that the Vietnam War clearly lacked.

When O'Brien described the sense of boredom felt by those not "humping" but waiting, I could almost see the soldiers twitching with anxiety and anticipation about what would come next. Out there in the jungle with no distinct path or purpose, they must have had a lot of time to ponder the absence of loved ones, entertainment, and home. I don't get bored very easily; I try to make my own fun or take in my surroundings, but I know I'd probably go crazy living out there in a constant state of reminding myself to just relax.

O'Brien repeats several times throughout the novel that he's "forty-three years old" and "still writing war stories" (page 31 & 33). He seems to rely on this release of emotion, or catharsis, to execute his purpose for writing. He goes on to say, "the thing about remembering is that you don't forget" (page 33), speaking directly to his reader, explaining this is the only way he can tell the world.