Blog 5: DW

"Fatal Light" by Richard Currey is a work of flash fiction about the Vietnam War. Flash fiction is fiction of extreme brevity that gets directly to the point that the author is trying to make. This form of writing is suited very well for telling war stories because it is a a collection of abrupt memories. "Fatal Light" uses flash fiction to show snapshots of different parts of the main characters life from when he was a child, to his tour in Vietnam as a medic, to his time after the war. It depicts the abruptness of war and helps the reader understand how impactful an event like war is on a man's life. When attempting to re-live or re-tell significant and potentially traumatic events that happen to somebody, like in war, they happen like a slideshow in no particular order, but are all intertwined in the end like in "Fatal Light". He tells stories of his love interest, Mary Meade, and how much he cares for her even though she said she wouldn't wait for him, but that kind of love is what got him through the war alive. He talks about experiences in-country and on leave, and when he gets home after the war.

Short stories like those that Currey uses have less room for unnecessary details and rambling. It forces the author to get right to the point and only share the details that they think are important. This also puts an emphasis on the language that is used because they need to condense long and extremely intense stories into shorter ones that still have the same morals and get the same message across. It also makes a truly developed storyline nearly impossible to accomplish because there isn't enough space to go into great detail. The brevity of the chapters sometimes make it hard to follow along because they seem to be jumping around in time and there is no clear train of thought.