Blogging Around

Jenna's best of the week was about Margot's comment on how Hosseini used sugar in tea as a metaphor for worldview/outlook in The Kite Runner. She also commented on how she'd like to use this technique too.
I commented:

Jenna,
I think that the tea metaphor is very interesting as well. I've noticed that a lot of different authors use similar techniques to help with characterization.
These can range from the type of clothes someone wears representing their personality to the weather taking on someone's mood.
It's very useful for someone to be able to feel stormy without it explicitly being said.
I've noticed that in my own writing when I try to use these types of mechanisms to show mood and emotion, as well as reflect characteristics, they appear painfully obvious, and only later, when blended in with the story do they feel natural.
Better luck to you, and nice post.
Mitch


Kyle wrote about weapons manufacturing and distribution and the accompanying moral conflict, as well as whether it saves lives and how wars should in fact be fought.
I commented:

Kyle,
Gatling, the inventor of the first automatic gun, the Gatling Gun, thought that by creating a better weapon he would save lives by reducing the need for as many soldiers. Little did he know...
I think you touch on two very different ideas when dealing with the same umbrella title "weapons manufacturers."
First are the domestic weapons manufacturing giants with big time Department of Defense contracts. Companies such as these, domestically and internationally, manufacture most of the weapons across the world. Iron Man creates a fantastical character based on weapons developers and the like who work on creating the weapons of the future. Although some men like the character probably do exist, there's a reason it's a comic book superhero movie and not a documentary.
Second are the illegal arms transporters and states, such as China, who ship large amounts of weapons to rebels and insurgents, in places such as Darfur, to promote or protect US interests. The US of A has a long history of such activities, the first example I thought of being the Kennedys and Cuba. In to this category fall underground dealers in high-grade uranium and other potentially catastrophic weapons and weapons-grade materials. These people do not manufacture weapons, but do make them deadlier.
Certainly there is some moral conflict in creating things to be used to kill, but often having a better weapon is a matter of life or death for the good guys, and they make more than a pretty penny. It's immaterial whether better weapons save lives, the bottomline is that weapons are inevitable, as are people who will try to use them against us. We just have to stop those people from getting weapons in the first place, and fantastic weapons help us do that.
Mitch