The prompt that will be the basis to a Masterpiece ^_^ … hopefully haha!!!
This is straight off of the Common App which I have to fill out for Stanford.
“Indicate a person who has had a significant influence on you, and describe that influence.”
I shall speak of my brother! …
Blog Post #10 March On the Insects (Response to War Dances)
The motif of bugs is very prominent. Constantly the speaker uses either references to bugs, talks about bugs, or uses verbs that are bug-like. It is mainly cockroaches that are used. “How many cockroaches were in my head” & “How do you like them cockroaches?” (pg6) are both referenced after the initial mentioning of cockroaches on the first page. Also, the speaker feels “the first sting of grief” after comparing the surgical hall to “a beehive with colony collapse disorder.” These bugs are symbolic of problems we face in life. Some can be minor and annoying like a bee that won’t go away, or you can have big problems like a cockroach in your ear. The author is trying to say we all face hardships that can be as tough to dodge as a “swarm of locusts”, and we can take the generic, unhelpful, provided fix like the hospital blanket or seek out a true solution like the Pendleton Star blanket.
I may be seeing patterns that aren’t there or intended to relate to one another, but I see “War Dances” as a piece of literary fiction. It has motifs and symbols as evidently pointed out above. These details have a unity of purpose like most literary fiction which is to convey the differences in the options we face with the result we get.
