I misunderstood this assignment. You told me it should be a draft of actual project. Then I wrote it again and came to your office hour for the first time. I also put the peer review in the comments.

Genre: documentary

Purpose: prove The Things They Carried is based on the author’s real war experience, since it’s already hard for Tim O’Brien to write his stories down to tell people who ignore or don’t understand the cruel of wars, many people still don’t believe it.

Audience: people who don’t believe the novel is based on truth (mostly because of the war is a dark topic for many people even think about)

First part: introduce of the background (the Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina War, was a war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and the government of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese army was supported by the Soviet Union, China and other communist allies and the South Vietnamese army was supported by the United States, South Korea, Australia, Thailand and other anti-communist allies and the war is therefore considered a Cold War-era proxy war. Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962. U.S. involvement escalated further following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which a U.S. destroyer clashed with North Vietnamese fast attack craft, which was followed by the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave the U.S. president authorization to increase U.S. military presence. Regular U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations crossed international borders: bordering areas of Laos and Cambodia were heavily bombed by U.S. forces as American involvement in the war peaked in 1968, the same year that the communist side launched the Tet Offensive. The Tet Offensive failed in its goal of overthrowing the South Vietnamese government, but became the turning point in the war, as it persuaded a large segment of the U.S. population that its government's claims of progress toward winning the war were illusory despite many years of massive U.S. military aid to South Vietnam. Direct U.S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973. The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese Army in April 1975 marked the end of the war, and North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities. Estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed vary from 966,000 to 3.8 million. And 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict.) to show the cruelty and authenticity of the war.

Then introduce the author, and his experience of attending the war.

Showing evidence of letters, novels, pictures, videos, all the evidence that are reliable and can be found, to prove that the author actually experience the war and write the novel based on his experience.

I think my genre is particularly well-chosen and meaningful, but I’m not sure whether it can explore some issues and ideas identified in the class. I’m still thinking and keeping working on that. Since it’s documentary, and will show a lot of evidence to prove the novel is based on real war experience, it might not be very interesting. I may read more times of Yellin’s article to see how I can make it more attractive.

My project has a specific and well-chosen audience: people who don’t believe that the novel is based on truth. These people are mostly who deny the authenticity of the novel because the war are too dark and bloody for them to even think about, so they just avoid this topic. However, they need to know the cruelty about the war. The novel tells people the worst thing of the war is not people dying, instead, it’s the darkness in the people alive, and these people who don’t believe need to understand that.

I do have a clear purpose and well-designed messages.