We study literature by exploring the deeper meaning of the stylistic choices, symbolism and various forms of rhetoric. We study literature in order to get a deeper understanding of various topics and learning from the writings of others. We study TTTC because it explores many topics and because the vignettes can be interpreted in multiple different ways.

2. How are we affected by literary texts in various ways? How are we impacted by TTTC?
Literary texts give us emotion, they put readers into a different world where the events of the book occur. We are impacted by TTTC because it gives us the emotion of being present in the Vietnam war as a soldier rather than a person in the future reading about it in a textbook

3. In what ways is meaning constructed, negotiated, expressed and interpreted in TTTC?
Meaning in TTTC is constructed using O'Brien's stylistic choices and symbolism to give a deeper meaning to each and every vignette

4. How does the structure of style of TTTC affect its meaning?
The structure style of being multiple vignettes allows TTTC to explore many different topics rather than elaborating on one theme or topic throughout the entire story

When we see Victory's glow,

Will you still let old Jim Crow

Hold me back?

When all those foreign folks who've waited—

Italians, Chinese, Danes—are liberated.

Will I still be ill-fated

Because I'm black?

 

Here in my own, my native land,

Will the Jim Crow laws still stand?

Will Dixie lynch me still

When I return?

Or will you comrades in arms

From the factories and the farms,

Have learned what this war

Was fought for us to learn?

 

When I take off my uniform,

Will I be safe from harm—

Or will you do me

As the Germans did the Jews?

When I've helped this world to save,

 

Shall I still be color's slave?

Or will Victory change

Your antiquated views?

 

You can't say I didn't fight

To smash the Fascists' might.

You can't say I wasn't with you

in each battle.

As a soldier, and a friend.

When this war comes to an end,

Will you herd me in a Jim Crow car

Like cattle?

 

Or will you stand up like a man

At home and take your stand

For Democracy?

That's all I ask of you.

When we lay the guns away

To celebrate

Our Victory Day

WILL V-DAY BE ME-DAY, TOO?

The structure affects the meaning because readers can be thinking different things based on the timeline of the story. For example, if the book opened with ch 16, readers would villainize Sethe rather than see the murder as an act of desperation to protect her children. The stream of consciousness is important because it gives us insight to the characters mind, in a normal story, readers gain insight into a character through their actions, but in this stream of consciousness, readers literally go into the characters' minds.

Time and Space

Context is important in understanding the purpose of the literature and in being able to uncover the deeper meanings and intricacies in a novel. It also makes novels easier to understand and more enjoyable because readers won't feel as lost if they know about the context and backstory of the novel.

kee, Paul D finally woke up and, admitting his ignorance, 

asked how he might get North. Free North. Magical North.

Welcoming, benevolent North. The Cherokee smiled and 

looked around. The flood rains of a month ago had turned 5

everything to steam and blossoms.

“That way,” he said, pointing. “Follow the tree flowers,”

he said. “Only the tree flowers. As they go, you go. You will

be where you want to be when they are gone.”

So he raced from dogwood to blossoming peach. When 10

they thinned out he headed for the cherry blossoms, then

magnolia, chinaberry, pecan, walnut and prickly pear. At last

he reached a field of apple trees whose flowers were just be-

Coming tiny knots of fruit. Spring sauntered north, but he had

to run like hell to keep it as his traveling companion. From 15

February to July he was on the lookout for blossoms. When 

he lost them, and found himself without so much as a petal to

guide him, he paused, climbed a tree on a hillock and scanned

the horizon for a flash of pink or white in the leaf world that

surrounded him. He did not touch them or stop to smell. He 20

merely followed in their wake, a dark ragged figure guided by

blossoming plums.

The apple field turned out to be Delaware where the

weaver lady lived. She snapped him up as soon as he finished

the sausage she fed him and he crawled into her bed crying. 25

She passed him off as her nephew from Syracuse simply by

calling him that nephew’s name. Eighteen month and he was

Looking out again for blossoms only this time he did the look-

ing on a dray.

It was some time before he could put Alfred, Georgia, 30

Sixo, schoolteacher, Halle, his brothers, Sethe, Mister, the 

taste of iron, the sight of butter, the smell of hickory, note-

book paper, one by one, into the tobacco tin lodged in his 

chest. By the time he got to 124 nothing in this world could

pry it open. 35

(Morrison 132-133)

It has given me a perspective of the societal norms that I don't typically see within American society, namely the gender norms that force men to be the kind of avenger and worker of the family and the idea of honor above all else.

page 1, paragraph on dreams

I found panels 1 and 2 in page 75 interesting

and splash panel 2 on page 11 interesting in response to the final Harkness