a literary revelation
A rather random morning, following a mostly sleep-less night due to ill family members requiring care, which remained sleep-less due to the early morning's NBA matches (where i live, the evening games of the u.s meaNS 3:00 and 5:00), and developed into a morning of family-care & maintenance which brought the mid-morning without much a-do, found me,while contemplating some recuperation before my day actually starts, reading about the Conley family (Think Memphis Grizzlies Guard Mike Conley Jr ).
Afterwards, I found myself (as the net sometimes does) reaching a List of the United states' medal of Honor recipients for World War II and there, jumping to the end of the list, I had a literary revelation.
Not something big. Something that will not excite most. But for me, it was a small discovery of the working process of a literary giant, and this made the morning very special.
Whoever read Robert Heinlein's starship troopers, recalls the star ship named after "Rodger W. Young".
I always wondered why Heinlein chose this war hero to commemorate, and why in the naming of a carrier ship.
Now, it is most probable that Heinlein was influenced by the popular song The Ballad of Rodger Young (which can be found on youtube):
My little revelation was that if one goes over the list of Medal of Honor recipients in reverse, the last marine on the list is Young, and if you continue a little earlier, you run into deceased war hero Howard Woodford, and that hero was commemorated in the following manner -
A transport ship was named in his honor.
And everything clicks together.
Can you imagine the author collecting materials for his work, going over the list of recipients, adding the bits together ?
Can you get the feel of how such stories of heroism were collected together, to become components of the creation he was working on?
Heroism can come in many forms, as the stories of the recipients of the medal of honor tell, as the stories of people who struggle in their everyday lives tell, as Heinlein tried to tell, in his own ingenious way. What makes one arise in such circumstances ? And how does it echo the reason for the beginning of my search?
Further reading
Can you get the feel of how such stories of heroism were collected together, to become components of the creation he was working on?
Heroism can come in many forms, as the stories of the recipients of the medal of honor tell, as the stories of people who struggle in their everyday lives tell, as Heinlein tried to tell, in his own ingenious way. What makes one arise in such circumstances ? And how does it echo the reason for the beginning of my search?
Further reading
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