Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Prime Directive

When I first read this story I was kind of lost, the story jumped around a lot and I really didn't know where it all was going. But now that I have read the entire thing and set through our discussion in class I am amazed about everything in this story has an underlining message or can be related to something that is going on in Iraq.

One of the first points we talked about was the fact that the guy dressed up as Captain Kirk from Star Trek for Halloween. At first glance this did not mean anything important to me and even after they mentioned the Star Trek code or creed, the Prime Directive, I still did not understand why they were talking about Star Trek so much. But again after I was able to finish the story and hear our discussion it was so clear that he was stating his disapproval with our country being at war with Iraq. For those of you who don't know what the Prime Directive is it is a code that says basically that you we will not interfere with problems with other "planets" or "aliens" (countries). This means he thinks that we should not be dealing with Iraq's problems.

Besides the Star Trek comparison he also has things in his story that can be related to things of war and soldiers. Some examples are how he is away from his wife and he feels lonely just like the way a soldier would be if he were on duty in Iraq. Another would be how in the story he goes from party to party and he moves around a lot just like an army convoy would do.

The main point he makes toward the last part of his story is the subject of Abu Ghraib. Though a picture he takes at a party he is able to figure out how he really feels about what happened at Abu Ghraib and how he feels toward the people in the pictures. It really makes you think about yourself, how you feel about it, and really if you were in that situation would you of got caught just posing in a picture like that.

I really enjoyed reading this and I am amazed about how he was able to present the material he want to in the way that he did. It made reading the story much easier and enjoyable.

2 comments:

Wendy said...

Good job Jacob!

cmd9488 said...

I liked your post. I understood what you were saying when it jumped around and was hard to keep up with. It was interesting to see how you could relate things in the story to that of the soldiers or of war. I think you did a good job.