A Spin on Time

     In Tim O'Brien's passage "Spin", he provides different situations he may or may not have experienced in war. His writing style is nonlinear, he jumps from one incident to another and attempts to give an explanation as to why he does so. O'Brien mentions, "You take your material where you find it,... at the  intersection of past and present. The memory-traffic feeds into a rotary [in your head]...soon imagination flows [to create] a thousand different streets... all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride"(33). Although he is forty-three at the time, he cannot help but imagine the details of Curt Lemon's and Kiowa's deaths as he sits at his typewriter. He writes as different parts of his memory reveal themselves to him; possibly because living in the actual time of his traumatic experiences and remembering his experiences feel the same. In war, time was broken, therefore his resurfaced memories are broken like glass. Also, when he proclaims that he his about to talk about one topic like war not being all bad, yet mentions something sad after instead of just talking about what he said he would."Sometimes things could almost get sweet"(30). After that he talks about a boy with one leg that wanted chocolate and mentions Azar's comment about running out of ammo. The most peaceful things he mentions that did not end in a horrible way is the game of checkers and the old man helping them survive; everything else in the chapter is either a difficult situation or a happy situation that turned sour, such as, the murderous boredom or Lavender's puppy being murdered. It seems as if he is trying to say that no matter what past experiences do not change, just like war; if you try to change it all you can do is make it interesting.