Blog#5: Fatal Light RGV

"Flash fiction" is a literary form ranging in length from 100 to 1500 words. This style of writing is generally utilized in order to tell stories in a blunt, forceful fashion. In writing flash fiction, authors frequently write simply and focus merely on the details that are essential to the understanding of a story. Authors frequently employ flash fiction as a means to powerfully portray deep symbolic and thematic elements represented in a particular event.

In Fatal Light, Richard Currey uses flash fiction to convey the genuine obscenity seen by the average soldier during the Vietnam War. This style of writing benefits Currey's objective because it accurately represents the emotions felt by a soldier. Due to its brief nature, flash fiction demands brutal honesty rather than flowery description. A soldier during the Vietnam War experiences violence and destruction in a similar setting of brutal honesty. The eighteen year old boys fighting in the perilous jungles of Vietnam witness atrocities that most grown adults never have to endure throughout their entire lives. These boys are not granted time to adjust, though; they must deal with the war's cruelty quickly and directly. In Fatal Light, flash fiction forces the reader to view the Vietnam War through the lens of a soldier and experience its carnage as he did.

After describing the events of a particular night patrol in which the protagonist took part, Currey ends a chapter through the protagonist's words, "I had shot him in the face." This sentence is characteristic of typical flash fiction because it marks an abrupt end to a story that contains a forceful message. The passage that ends this chapter describes a severe and gruesome incident that would result in psychological repercussions for almost anyone. The reader does not have any time to fully comprehend this concept, though, because the protagonist's realization of the consequences of his actions are immediate and to the point. In the same manner that the reader cannot adjust to the actions of the protagonist, a soldier in Vietnam is exposed to pain and suffering of war.

Currey's use of flash fiction in Fatal Light illustrates the desensitization that took place amongst soldiers in the Vietnam War. Due to the obscene amount of death and destruction present in the war, the soldier naturally became less affected by incidents that are normally viewed as gruesome by the general public. Flash fiction's simplistic and blunt manner imitates a soldier's response to warfare and, thus, powerfully affects the emotions of a reader who has never experienced war.