Blog #6: The Bees

 I'm doing option 1 from our possible blog prompts, which means I get to choose what I do! Saying this, I'm simply giving out ideas of who started the fire in the house that night and why.

Taking into consideration that Gene had a past life with a different woman and a son, DJ and Mandy, they both could've started the fire. I feel like the chances are greater that DJ started the fire because Karen, Gene's current wife, was receiving drunken phone calls earlier that week from what she heard to be from a guy named DJ. I think that it's not surprising that DJ would do something like this either. He grew up without a father figure in his life, which has to be hard for a young boy. Also, the way Gene described Mandy to be probably didn't help out the lack of discipline with DJ.

DJ could've started the fire for plenty of reasons, one being the resent he feels towards Gene. Gene just got up and left his son and wife when the going got rough. Mandy and Gene didn't have the healthiest relationship anyway. There was a lot of verbal and physical abuse between the two. This didn't set a great example for DJ in the first place. Another reason why DJ might have set the fire was because he felt replaced by Gene's new life, child, and wife, Frankie and Karen. Because DJ is grown now, he sees the family that he could've has and gets extremely envious. He doesn't feel that Gene deserves that life after everything he did to DJ's family.

In contrast, maybe Mandy had set the fire. She could be mad that Gene hadn't been paying child support all of DJ's life. The lack of money could've really gotten to her. Saying this, setting Gene's house on fire wouldn't have solved any problems. She could've also had a jealous side of her. Mandy could've went ballistic on Gene for starting a new life with a new woman and a child.

In conclusion, nobody really knows who set the fire, but putting minor details like these together could solve a whole mystery. Did Mandy set the fire? Did DJ burn the house to flames? Was it a freak accident? Things don't add up correctly, especially since it almost seemed as though Gene saw all of this coming. He was having bad dreams about it, and waking up naked in his living room the next day. It was also strange that Frankie's dreams that woke him in him hollers throughout the night. It's almost like Frankie and Gene knew something was going to happen soon, but didn't know what, or how to even handle it.

Blog #5: On the Rainy River

For this week's blog, I chose to find a poem online that sets a mood for the story. I found this poem on http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/is-man-really-courageous/

I feel that this poem really sets a nice feel for this story because the story is completely based around Tim O'Brien finding the courage to go fight instead of run away from the war. Although he does not like the war, he felt that it would be more courageous to go and fight than to stay and hide from it. My favorite quote in the story that relates to this theme is "I would go to the war. I would kill and maybe die, because I was too embarrassed not to" (O'Brien 59).

Is man really courageous? by: Mohammad Akmal Nazir

Is man really courageous? He who says so Must be lunatic. Man fears life, He fears death, He fears disease, He fears failure And sometimes his success also, He fears the truth, He fears honesty, He fears God But on his terms, And above all He fears himself. So why should he be called A courageous?