Things They Carried Reflection Essay

“The Man I Killed” was the chapter I chose to do my The Things They Carried project on. This chapter is extremely different than the other chapters in the book because it truly shows what it is like to take the life of another in a war. The murder of someone is almost always gruesome, especially when that person who has been killed was killed by grenade.
When creating the face of the vietcong man I used a heated-up plastalina clay had the ability to be molded and carved out into the shape necessary for the victim. Using a tool typically used to shaping and smoothing down rough edges of clay, I was able to carve out the “star” shaped hole where an eye was supposed to be, the hole of the mouth, and a shallow indent where skin would later be peeling from. To make the wounds as realistic as possible, a thin layer of liquid latex was applied to each of the wound sites, and then to build up the sides and give a “fleshy” look, liquid latex soaked cotton strips were layered on top of the previous latex layer. Once the latex is dried I would use my hands and detail brushes to add oil-based cream paints to create depth, irritation, and a light bruising affect. After the paints were finished I added a thick and sticky …show more content…
The back cardboard cover was cut in equal halves, and the pages were carefully torn out and folded together to create four-page width signatures that would later be sewed together and to the cardboard covers using a coptic-stitch. For the coptic stitch an awl was used to puncture the signatures, and a thick needle and hemp thread were used. Once the book was painted and together and x-acto knife was used to create face-shaped holes so that the man's face would be visible whenever someone would open the book. Direct quotes from the chapter, “The Man I Killed”, were used on the opening pages and small blue flowers were placed in representation of the ones described in the chapter and to show the fragility of