{"id":244,"date":"2008-09-09T11:36:27","date_gmt":"2008-09-09T15:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/?p=244"},"modified":"2008-09-09T12:10:06","modified_gmt":"2008-09-09T16:10:06","slug":"on-my-boyfriend-came-back-from-the-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/2008\/09\/09\/on-my-boyfriend-came-back-from-the-war\/","title":{"rendered":"On My Boyfriend Came Back From The War"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s difficult to determine exactly what a piece of digital media is really trying to say. With \u201cMy Boyfriend Came Back From The War,\u201d it seems as though the author is giving readers a fragmented view of a sort of post war loss of innocence. This piece reminded me of Hemingway\u2019s short story \u201cSoldier\u2019s Home,\u201d Both seem to deal with the psychological effects of war (PTSD) and how it can affect one\u2019s personal relationships. The disjointed nature to this narrative of this story is reflected in the structure of the page: the hard contrast of black and white, and the separation of the text into different boxes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The story doesn\u2019t exactly unfold the way a regular story would, with a set beginning\/middle\/end, but rather works with a more flexible structure. There are a few beginning links that must be clicked on first, and the order of links inside each box is always same, but the reader is given the opportunity to manipulate the order of how the \u201cmiddle\u201d events occur. What makes this so interesting is that, in reading this way, different parts of the story are highlighted each time, and likewise different parts are downplayed. Because of this I think that it could be argued that, to a certain extent, order determines relevance.<\/span><\/p>\n

It seems like there really is so much going on in this piece. Instead of attempting to sum up the entire narrative, I wanted to try to focus in on the theme of sight. There were a lot of interesting visual references running through the dialogue, including: <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I can\u2019t see you<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t you see?<\/span><\/p>\n

You don\u2019t trust me, I see<\/span><\/p>\n

Look!!!<\/span><\/p>\n

Look it\u2019s so beautiful (x2)<\/span><\/p>\n

Please look at me<\/span><\/p>\n

They never saw the snow<\/span><\/p>\n

Haven\u2019t you seen tigers there?<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe you look at me?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

On a broad level, I thought that maybe this meant that the boyfriend\u2019s change could have been a physical loss of sight, but it could also stand as metaphorical; eyes being the \u201cwindow to the soul\u201d sort of thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

I think that this idea of having two fronts, in sense, is expanded on in the line:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRed<\/span><\/p>\n

Green<\/span><\/p>\n

Blue\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On a scientific level, the way that the human eye receptors work is through perceiving light through three different color channels. The three color channels are red, green and blue. Using the combination of how each of these three primary channels perceives an object, subtleties in hue become apparent; kind of like a complex system of mixing and un-mixing the three different colors (Most electronic devices with color displays are based on this model). <\/span><\/p>\n

This line is the only part of the page that contains color other than black, white and gray. This gives the sense that there is some sort of loss of color, either physical or metaphorically in the life of the boyfriend; some sort of deficiency.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if any of what I have gotten out of this piece was put in purposefully or not, and I don\u2019t know if I should care.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s difficult to determine exactly what a piece of digital media is really trying to say. With \u201cMy Boyfriend Came Back From The War,\u201d it seems as though the author is giving readers a fragmented view of a sort of post war loss of innocence. This piece reminded me of Hemingway\u2019s short story \u201cSoldier\u2019s Home,\u201d … Continue reading On My Boyfriend Came Back From The War<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244\/revisions\/249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2008\/343\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}