Blog 5 AZ

Flash Fiction is a type of writing that consists of short, concise works. It is a very short story that ranges from around 300 to 1,000 words. In this form of writing every single word is significant. Although the story may seem to rush to an end it does not mean that it is any less powerful. The tiniest details are what matter and are usually what put the whole picture together.

In his book "Fatal Light" Richard Currey uses flash fiction to tell the stories of all soldiers who served in Vietnam. He intentionally does not give the narrator a name in order to emphasize the universal emotions and feelings that all young soldiers went through during the war. It also emphasizes the emotional core of this novel which is based on "a young combat veteran's sad, disapirited, convoluted, muted rage" (xiii).

We learn in the introduction that the book is highly fictionalized but also partially based upon some of Currey's own experiences. Currey states that "Fatal Light" is a novel sheared down to the primary essentials of the story it tells and the spiritual predicament it describes, one that has no resolution, no solution, that joins the texture of a life and, as the unnamed young narrator of "Fatal Light" says at one point, sticks there 'like a photograph on the spine'" (xiv). This quote summarizes how all the chapters in the story although extremly short, are there solely to bring out the main points and messages.

For example, chapter 12 consist of only two sentences. But those two sentences paint a clear image in the readers mind of what the narrator's first impressions were of seeing Vietnam for the first time. The coastline of Vietnam was described as being "pure green into pure blue, innocent, mysterious, dreaming into the sun" (29). This description of Vietnam can also be compared to a description of the young innocent soldiers entering the war. They are pure and innocent at first and then the mysteries of war grab a hold of them and drastically change their lives and dreams.
In the section titled 'Malaria', the last few simple lines of chapter 5 paint a very vivid picture. Currey says "On the road out of a northern ville I saw a dog eating the body of a man. The man had been shot in the head, eviscerated, tossed aside. The dog pulled at a dirty loop of intestine, one paw braced against the opened belly. The passing scene on any ordinary day". This description emphasizes the level of gross and inhumane scenes that soldiers saw everyday. To an average human being this scene would be horribly disturbing and a complete shock, but to a soldier this scene was just a common everyday occurance.

There are also a few chapters that consist of just a postcard message. For example chapter 17 of In Country is a letter from the narrator to his girl, Mary. Although it is only a paragraph long, it expresses a very deep idea. He says "We will all be here still, in this moment we must live and keep living" (60). Here, the narrator was explaining to Mary how the fog seems to make things seem ghost-like and unreal but at the same time permanent and inescapable like they are going to be in that point in time forever whether they die or survive. If they die, their soul will stay there and haunt the land and if they survive, their mind will forever be reminded of that place and time.