Jessica Blanton: Outside Reading 2 (February 23, 2010)

We started watching Cold Fever in class today, discussing how Japanese culture and Icelandic cultures are similar and different beforehand. A reading in class stated that the Japanese are typically afraid of elements in nature, such as fire, earthquakes, floods, etc. The supposed fears that the Japanese character had in the movie would make his trip to Iceland that more meaningful, because he would be afraid of the wild and untamed landscape. It made me think of the book The Things They Carried. The book has very little to do with sacred landscapes; more, in my opinion, to do with the harshness of landscapes and how they can affect you. But perhaps there is a false positive connotation to the term sacred landscape. Perhaps, even though the jungles of Vietnam, where terrible wars took place, are sacred simply because they are storied and they have a profound effect on people.
The characters in The Things They Carried describe what they went through during the Vietnam War. The thick, moist jungle sank into every inch of their disposition. The soldiers used the thick jungle for their benefit, knowing at the same time that their enemies did the exact same thing, only better because this jungle was their home; they were used to it. Americans are not used to landscapes like that, making the harshness of their experiences all the more hard to bear. Even then, there was a sense of the American Dream, and the American way of life. The majority of people lived in pristine towns and cities, not mud shacks and lean-tos in the middle of the jungle. They worked well-paying jobs, in offices or machineries, not in rice-paddies or for sweatshops. The American culture made the soldiers less prepared for the harshness of the Vietnam landscape.