Blog Four NC

The form of flash fiction benefits the ideas of the novel by keeping things simple and allowing the reader to focus in on individual ideas through each chapter/story. Using a child character, his writing explores the Vietnam experience through the perception of light. The use of light is made to show contrasts and give detail of the experience, but he does not romanticize about it. This explains the title "Fatal Light," that the experience of light, often a symbol of life, meant often death in Vietnam.

The use of flash fiction also allows for brutality to be better explored, as instead of being nested into a bigger collection of paragraph, he simply states things how badly things were and aims for the reader to try to comprehend the harshness of the war. The detail is well-written in each chapter and in seeing the style of flash fiction, it made the book what it is. Chapter 2 of malaria is a great example where the chapter itself is no more than a paragraph but if not written in flash fiction, that paragraph may have taken 10 pages. This method saves us reading times and delivers a more powerful message.