Blog 5 CJ

Flash fiction is a writing style that uses short writings in order to tell a specific story. The style helps the author to use brief language and create certain points that enhance the story. Flash fiction allows the reader to be less distracted by unneeded and extra summary. In Richard Currey’s Fatal Light, each story is brief and only contains important, necessary information. Through Currey’s writing, a piece of flash fiction, the journey of a young man’s life from his childhood to his returning from Vietnam is seen through short stories depicting the changes and horrors in his life.

Each short chapter of Fatal Light provides details into the protagonist’s life, including his thought process during times of importance. In the beginning, he describes being a child at his grandfather’s house in short descriptions. At the end of the novel, after returning from Vietnam, he returns to this place and once again discusses his experiences at his grandfather’s house. Although he discusses the same place, the innocence he held as a child has been stripped away and he cannot view the place the way he once did. With the death of his grandmother, only adding to the pain of death he has experienced in Vietnam, alcoholism and a sense of confusion invade the young man. Currey writes, “I looked forward to the beer’s chance to ease me, a night’s diversion, Earl’s run of traveling salesman and farmer’s daughter jokes” (Currey 145). Beer was his means of coping and hiding his feelings. He also rejected his grandfather, who was only trying to show love and support. Currey used stories such as this to show the effects that the war had on returning soldiers. The effects of the war on the soldiers were clearly understood because of the use of flash fiction.

Currey writes stories about the protagonist from the time he was drafted to the time he was in Vietnam, both in the bush and in the city while recovering. Each short story shows the horrors of his experience. One short story depicts the emotional connection he has with his girlfriend that he must carry with him through the war, while also dealing with the fact that she said she would not wait for him. Currey also tells individual stories about how he was wounded and how he became ill with malaria. During these times, he interacts with other characters that help depict the life of a soldier in Vietnam. He meets a man in a bar while on R and R in Saigon who says that he saved his life. The man is clearly drunk and belligerent. Just as the soldier has resorted to alcohol, so too does the protagonist in the story.

Currey’s use of flash fiction helps the reader understand the whole process of entering, surveying, and leaving the Vietnam War. It also shows the impact the war had on the young soldier’s life. Currey aids the reader in understanding the war’s impact by telling stories about the character’s young life and situations with his girlfriend as he matures out of childhood before leaving for the war. Flash fiction makes it possible for the reader to recognize and understand important implications of the war on a young man’s life without overbearing plot summary or background information.