Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  sluggishness, οὔτε τί με δέος ἴσχει ἀκήριον οὔτε τις ὄκνος Il. 5. 817 (answering to κάματος in 811) ; οὔτ᾽ ὄκνῳ εἴκων οὔτ᾽ ἀφραδίῃσι νόοιο 10. 122, cf. 13. 224, Aesch. Theb. 54, Soph. Ant. 243; ὄκνος καὶ μέλ- Anos Thuc. 7. 49; ἀμαθία μὲν θράσος, λογισμὸς δὲ ὄκνον φέρει Id. 2. 40, cf. I. 142 :—hence 2. simply alarm, fear, Aesch. Ag. 1009, Soph. Ph. 225: in pl., ἀναβολαὶ καὶ ὄκνοι Plat. Legg. 768 E, cf. Dem. 308. fin. 3. c. gen., Tod πόνου “γὰρ οὐκ ὄκνος ἧι I grudge not labour, Soph. Ph. 887 ; 3 TOU μάλιστ᾽ ὄκνος σ᾽ ἔχει Id. Ο. Ο. 652, cf. Isocr. 2C. 4. c. inf., πάρεσχεν ὄκνον μὴ ἐλθεῖν made them hesitate to . Thuc. 3. 39; s0, ὄκνος ἦν ἀνίστασθαι Xen. An. 4. 4, 11 :—so, ὄκνος πρός τι Plat. Legg. 665 Ὁ. (Curt. suggests a connexion with the Root of Lat. cune-tari, Skt. Sank, Sank-é (dubitare, metuere), Sank-a (dubitatio), Sank-us (timor).) II.”Oxvos, an allegorical picture by Polygnotus, of a man twisting a rope which a she-ass gnaws to pieces again, Paus. Io, 29. 2, Plin. H. N. 35. 31 (11), an emblem of labour in vain, Lat. Ocnus spartum torquens, Burm. ‘Propert. 4. 3, 21; συνάγειν Tov” Oxvov τὴν θώμιγγα Paus. 1. c., who says that Polygnotus meant it for the symbol of a bad housewife, who wastes her husband’s gains, cf. Diod. 1. 97; cf. πόκος II. III. ὄκνος χαλκοῦς, a seat used by women in Bithynia, Suid. IV. a name for ¢he heron, ἐρωδιὸς ἀστερίας, Arist. H. A. 9. 18, 2, Ael. N. A. 5. 36. ὀκνό- -pidos, ov, fond of delay, Cyril. δὁκοδαπός, δκόθεν, Skotos, ὁκόσος, OKOTE, SKdTEPOS, ὅκου, in Ion. Prose for ὁποδαπός, ὁπόθεν, ὁποῖος, ὁπόσος, ὁπότε, ὁπότερος, ὅπου. ὀκορνός, ὃ, --ἀττέλεβος or πάρνοψ, Hesych., Phot., cf. Aesch. Fr, 250. ὀκριάζω, to be rough or angry, Soph. Fr. 918. ὀκριάομαι, Pass. (uepis) to be made rough or jagged: metaph., like τραχύνομαι, Lat, exasperari, πανθυμαδὸν ὀκριόωντο they grew furiously angry with each other, Od. 18.33; ὠκριωμένος enraged, Lyc. 545. ὀκρίβας [t], αντος, 6, (ὄκρις, βαίνων) a kind of tribune on the Tragic stage, from which the actors declaimed, like ἴκριον or λογεῖον, Lat. pul- pitum, Plat. Symp. 194 B; supposed by some to have been in the early wooden theatre what the θυμέλη was afterwards, its invention being re- ferred to Aeschylus, Philostr. 245, 492, Themist. 316 D; cf. Ruhnk. Tim., Schol. Plat. 1. ο., Horat. A. P. 279:—in pl., Philostr. 195, Luc. Ner. 9. II. generally, like κιλλίβας, 1. a painter’s easel, Poll. 7.129. 2. the raised seat of the chariot-driver, Phot., Suid. (where for σχῆμα ἡνιόχου should be read ὄχημα, v. Bachm. Anecd. p. 315). ΤΙ1. acc. to Hesych.,=«iAAos, an ass or goat: he also has ὀκρίβατον, τό. ὀκριο- ειδής, és, of a pointed shape: jagged, projecting, Hipp. Art. 862.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  Kevayyns, és, (xevds, ἄγγος) emptying vessels; hence, breeding famine, ἄπλοια Aesch. Ag. 188. Kevayyia, 7, emptiness of vessels: esp. hunger, Plat. Com. Supp. το; x. ἄγειν to fast, Ar. Incert. 30 Meineke (quoted as Aristotle by Poll. 6. 31).—See the Ion. form xeveayyin. kevavopta, ἡ, lack of men, dispeopled state, Aesch. Pers. 730. κένανδρος, ov, (ἀνήρ) empty of men, dispeopled, ἄστυ, πόλις Aesch, Pers. 119, Soph. O. C. 917. Kevauy7s, ἔς, Vv. the poét. κενεαυχής. κένδῦλα, τά, also κένδῦλα or κενδύλη, 7, dub. 1. for σχενδύλα. κενεαγγέω, (κενεός, dyyos) to have the vessels of the body empty, to be fasting, to hunger, be exhausted, Hipp. Acut. 382, etc.:—Ib. 390, it seems to be used as trans., to make to fast. κενεαγγίη (in Mss. mostly --εἰη) 9, Ion. for κεναγγία, hunger, exhaus- tion, Hipp. Acut. 389, Aph. 1242. κενεαγγητέον, verb. Adj.one must leave the vessels empty, Hipp. Acut. 385. κενεαγγικός, 4, dv, having the vessels empty, exhausted, k. σημεῖον Hipp. Acut. 392. Adv. -- κῶς, also cited from Hipp. κενεᾶγορία, 7, empty talk, Poét. ap. Plat. Rep. 607 B. keve-Gyopos, Ion. kevenydpos, ov, vainly talking, Greg. Naz. κενεαύχημα, τό, empty boasting, Eust. Opusc. 275. 21, in pl. keveauX ns, és, (αὐχή) vain-glorious, κενεαυχέες ἠγοράασθε 1]. 8. 230; κενεαυχέα πλοῦτον Zenod. ap. Diog. L. 7. 30:—later κεναυχής, és, Anth. P. 12. 145, Plut. 2. 103 E. κενέβρειος, ον. --νεκριμαῖος, dead, esp. of dead cattle: κενέβρεια, τά, carrion, dog’s-meat, Ar. Av. 538, cf. Fr. 559. 2. τὰ κενέβρεια, also, the dog’s-meat market, Erotian., Phot., cf. Ael. N. A. 6..2: κεν-εγκράνιος [ἃ]. ov, brainless, Schol. Juven. 15. 23. κέν-ελπις, δος, 0, 7), cherishing empty hopes, Eust. Opusc. 302. 90. κεν-εμβἄτέω, to step on emptiness, Plut. Flamin. 10: ¢o step into a hole, Luc. Somn, 26. II. of the probe, to reach so as to find a cavity, Paul. Aeg.; hence κενεμβάτησις, ὃ, Galen. κενεός, ή, ov, Ep. for κενός, q. v. KeveoT ys, ητος, 7, =KevdTns, Hipp. Acut. 394. κενεό-φρων, ov, empty-minded, 'Theogn. 233, Simon. 75, Pind. N. 11. 38 :—neut. κενεόφρονα φῦλα, Apollin. V. T. κενεών, ὥνος, ὃ, (κενός) the hollow between the ribs and the hip, the flank, Od. 22. 295, etc.; νείατον és κενεῶνα, ὅθι ζωννύσκετο μίτρην Il. 5. 857, cf. Hipp. Progn. 39; of horses, Xen. Eq. 12, 8; of dogs, Poll. 5. 593 ν. sub λαπάρα. II. any hollow or hole, Nonn. Jo. 20. 8 :—also periphr. οὐράνιοι, χθόνιοι «., much like mrvxat, Anth. P. 9. 207, Nonn. D. 13. 453 or 9. 82; κενεὼν ἀρούρης, κελεύθου Id. D. 41. 3, Jo. 13. 375. x. τάφου a cenotaph, Epigr. Gr. 234. κενέωσις, ews, 7, poet. for κένωσις. κενήριον, τό, an emply monument, cenotaph, Euphor. 81., Lyc. 370, etc. κενο-βουλία, ἡ, vain counsel, Eccl. κενογάμιον [a], τό, (γάμος), an empty, unreal marriage, coined after (sc. € ἰέναι) 16, 382,:—rarely of things, iaivero κηρός, ἐπεὶ HERETO ὦ κενοτάφιον by Ach, Tat. 5. 14. a q ’ κενοδοντίς ὉΞΞΞΞ κεντρικος. κεν-οδοντίς, ίδος, ἡ, toothless, Anth. P. 6, 297.

• From Shunned (2018)

  However, it had never occurred to me until that moment that he could die. This horrific possibility wrapped around me like a weighty shawl. A hollow crater formed in my chest as I visualized the foretold army of winged black horses, their eyes filled with fire, ridden by faceless hooded riders, descending from heaven in droves. That was how I always imagined the Great Battle would begin. These fierce, righteous avengers had x-ray vision into everyone’s heart. They knew whom to strike and whom to spare, even if you were sitting in tidy rows at school or in line at the grocery store. Dad didn’t stand a chance, even reading the morning paper at our kitchen table. Randy grabbed both my ankles and yanked them back to his lap. “Don’t be such a baby,” he said, continuing to buckle my shoes. “Do you really, really believe that, Randy? Really?” “Sure.” He was nonchalant, having somehow already worked this reality out for himself. The bathroom door flew open and Lory emerged in the hallway wearing a bright pink dress. It was the first time we had seen her in high heels and panty hose. She twirled in feminine triumph, then disappeared down the hall, toward the living room. Mom clapped her hands briskly as she rushed into her room. “Okay, kids. It’s my turn to get dressed. Randy, put that tie away and go get one of your clip-ons. Have your father help you, and then ask him to get out the camera.” He hung his head but obeyed. “You, young lady, come here so I can comb your hair.” She sat down next to me, in the spot Randy had left warm. “Why the long face?” “Randy said Dad is going to die at Armageddon.” She froze in place for a split second, then pulled a hairbrush and band from the dresser and sat down on the bed. “He did, did he?” I came to stand with my back to her, facing the mirror. I watched the reflection of her face, expecting to see some hint of outrage at my brother’s damning suggestion. “How could he say something so terrible?” I said. Her face held matter-of-fact restraint as she looped my long hair through the rubber band, right, then left, like a jockey gently whipping a horse. “Lindy, that is completely up to your father. He is a wonderful dad and a good provider, but until he becomes a true Witness for Jehovah, there are no guarantees.” She paused and looked me in the eye. “You know that.” She pulled a ribbon from the dresser drawer and started tying it around my pony-tail. “We don’t know when Armageddon will strike, but it could happen any day, any moment. We must ‘keep in expectation of it.’ [She loved this quote from the minor prophets.] All you and I can do is be a good example for your dad, behave, and let him see how happy The Truth makes us.”

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Meanwhile Christian Döring and Lucas Cranach, members of the council since 1519 and very close to the Elector’s court—the Elector was Cranach’s main patron—were likely to see things the Elector’s way. Eventually a meeting of representatives of the university, the foundation of All Saints, the mayor, and the Elector’s advisors managed to reach an agreement on the reforms to be introduced in Wittenberg. It stipulated that the words of consecration of the sacrament would be said in German; part of the canon of the Mass would be omitted; the elevation would be reintroduced as a sign, but it would be explained that the Mass was not a sacrifice; the priest should give the sacrament to the communicant “according to their wish”; and the poor-law provisions would remain in place. There was no mention of whether Communion should be given in one kind or two, and the images that had been destroyed were not ordered to be replaced. 43 Karlstadt volunteered to stop preaching so as to broker a compromise, safeguarding the provisions of the ordinance. It looked as if the Reformation in Wittenberg would be secure. 44 However, the Catholic side had not been idle, either. Duke Georg, alarmed at what was happening in electoral Saxony, successfully campaigned for strong action at the Imperial Council, which was sitting at Nuremberg. On January 20, 1522, an imperial mandate was issued giving the conservative Catholic bishops with jurisdiction in Saxon areas—those of Mainz, Naumburg, and Merseburg—authority to carry out “Visitations” and punish all those guilty of innovations. The Elector was deeply alarmed and now unilaterally rejected the Eilenburg compromise since he knew that if he were to disobey the mandate, he would find his rule imperiled. 45 It would be easy for his dukedom and electoral honors to be transferred to his cousin Duke Georg—and indeed, this is exactly what happened after the Schmalkaldic War of 1546–47. 46 Surprisingly, Luther now backtracked from his previous support for the Reformation in Wittenberg and came to the Elector’s aid. On or around February 22, having heard about what was afoot in town, he wrote an extraordinary letter to the Elector, congratulating him on his new “relic”—“a whole cross, together with nails, spears, and scourges,” which he had secured “without cost or effort.” He was referring to the religious changes in Wittenberg: “Satan” had come “among the children of God.” “Stretch out your arms confidently and let the nails go deep,” he wrote. “Be glad and thankful, for thus it must and will be with those who desire God’s Word.” Luther teased the Elector for his fondness for relics but while making light of the unrest, he assured him that “my pen has had to gallop” because he had no time: He was already setting out for Wittenberg. 47 It is not clear what role Spalatin played in the course of events but much of Luther’s political advice, when he was in the Wartburg, must have come from the Elector’s right-hand man.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  1 Even after the Augsburg discussions, when Staupitz had released Luther from his vows, he still found it hard to give up this duty, as if it were a burden he could not put down. At some point in 1520, however, he stopped altogether. He recalled in 1531, “Our Lord God pulled me by force away from the canonical hours in 1520, when I was already writing a great deal, and I often saved up my hours for a whole week, and then on Saturday I would do them one after another so that I neither ate nor drank anything for the whole day, and I was so weakened that I couldn’t sleep, so that I had to be given Dr. Esch’s sleeping draught, the effects of which I still feel in my head.” 2 In the end, a “whole quarter-year” of hours had mounted up: “This was too much for me, and I dropped it altogether.” 3 The resulting liberation—and the amount of time it freed up—may have played a great part in the burst of creativity he experienced in 1520: Now he could devote himself to writing and thinking without interruption or guilt. All this grew only more intense, since the more radical his positions became, the more likely was a summons to Rome and a trial for heresy. As all those around him knew, such a trial would end with him being burned. With every theological departure he became bolder, because there was less and less to lose—and this made him think through all the logical consequences of the theological positions he had adopted. On June 24, 1520, the bull condemning Luther’s doctrine was published, and he was given sixty days from the date he received it to recant or be banned as a “notorious heretic.” The language is chilling and it is crammed with animal and hunting metaphors—the “foxes have arisen, trying to destroy the vineyards,” a wild pig is trying to attack Peter, the sheep need protecting—which may owe something to the fact that Leo approved the bull on May 2, 1520, when he was watching a sow hunt at his castle in Magliana, southwest of Rome. 4 Luther had rejected the compromise attempts of Cajetan and of the papal envoy Karl von Miltitz, so there was no going back in his fight with the Curia.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  syrup over pound cake. Dave Jensen, who practiced field hygiene, carried a toothbrush, dental floss, and several hotel-sized bars of soap he'd stolen on R&R in Sydney, Australia. Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried tranquilizers until he was shot in the head outside the village of Than Khe in mid-April. By necessity, and because it was SOP, they all carried steel helmets that weighed 5 pounds including the liner and camouflage cover. They carried the standard fatigue jackets and trousers. Very few carried underwear. On their feet they carried jungle boots—2.1 pounds—and Dave Jensen carried three pairs of socks and a can of Dr. Scholl's foot powder as a precaution against trench foot. Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried 6 or 7 ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RTO, carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother's distrust of the white man, his grandfather's old hunting hatchet. Necessity dictated. Because the land was mined and booby-trapped, it was SOP for each man to carry a steel- centered, nylon-covered flak jacket, which weighed 6.7 pounds, but which on hot days seemed much heavier. Because you could die so quickly, each man carried at least one large compress bandage, usually in the helmet band for easy access. Because the nights were cold, and because the monsoons were wet, each carried a green plastic poncho that could be used as a raincoat or groundsheet or makeshift tent. With its quilted liner, the poncho weighed almost 2 pounds, but it was worth every ounce. In April, for instance, when Ted Lavender was shot, they used his poncho to wrap him up, then to carry him across the paddy, then to lift him into the chopper that took him away. They were called legs or grunts. To carry something was to hump it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, to hump meant to walk, or to march, but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  In the evenings I'd sometimes borrow my father's car and drive aimlessly around town, feeling sorry for myself, thinking about the war and the pig factory and how my life seemed to be collapsing toward slaughter. I felt paralyzed. All around me the options seemed to be narrowing, as if I were hurtling down a huge black funnel, the whole world squeezing in tight. There was no happy way out. The government had ended most graduate school deferments; the waiting lists for the National Guard and Reserves were impossibly long; my health was solid; I didn't qualify for CO status—no religious grounds, no history as a pacifist. Moreover, I could not claim to be opposed to war as a matter of general principle. There were occasions, I believed, when a nation was justified in using military force to achieve its ends, to stop a Hitler or some comparable evil, and I told myself that in such circumstances I would've willingly marched off to the battle. The problem, though, was that a draft board did not let you choose your war. Beyond all this, or at the very center, was the raw fact of terror. I did not want to die. Not ever. But certainly not then, not there, not in a wrong war. Driving up Main Street, past the courthouse and the Ben Franklin store, I sometimes felt the fear spreading inside me like weeds. I imagined myself dead. I imagined myself doing things I could not do—charging an enemy position, taking aim at another human being. At some point in mid-July I began thinking seriously about Canada. The border lay a few hundred miles north, an eight-hour drive. Both my conscience and my instincts were telling me to make a break for it, just take off and run like hell and never stop. In the beginning the idea seemed purely abstract, the word Canada printing itself out in my head; but after a time I could see particular shapes and images, the sorry details of my own future —a hotel room in Winnipeg, a battered old suitcase, my father's eyes as I tried to explain myself over the telephone. I could almost hear his voice, and my mother's. Run, I'd think. Then I'd think, Impossible. Then a second later I'd think, Run.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  During those two weeks the basic routine was simple. They'd sleep away the daylight hours, or try to sleep, then at dusk they'd put on their gear and move out single file into the dark. Always a heavy cloud cover. No moon and no stars. It was the purest black you could imagine, Sanders said, the kind of clock-stopping black that God must've had in mind when he sat down to invent blackness. It made your eyeballs ache. You'd shake your head and blink, except you couldn't even tell you were blinking, the blackness didn't change. So pretty soon you'd get jumpy. Your nerves would go. You'd start to worry about getting cut off from the rest of the unit— alone, you'd think—and then the real panic would bang in and you'd reach out and try to touch the guy in front of you, groping for his shirt, hoping to Christ he was still there. It made for some bad dreams. Dave Jensen popped special vitamins high in carotene. Lieutenant Cross popped NoDoz. Henry Dobbins and Norman Bowker even rigged up a safety line between them, a long piece of wire tied to their belts. The whole platoon felt the impact. With Rat Kiley, though, it was different. Too many body bags, maybe. Too much gore. At first Rat just sank inside himself, not saying a word, but then later on, after five or six days, it flipped the other way. He couldn't stop talking. Wacky talk, too. Talking about bugs, for instance: how the worst thing in Nam was the goddamn bugs. Big giant killer bugs, he'd say, mutant bugs, bugs with fucked-up DNA, bugs that were chemically altered by napalm and defoliants and tear gas and DDT. He claimed the bugs were personally after his ass. He said he could hear the bastards homing in on him. Swarms of mutant bugs, billions of them, they had him bracketed. Whispering his name, he said—his actual name—all night long—it was driving him crazy. Odd stuff, Sanders said, and it wasn't just talk. Rat developed some peculiar habits. Constantly scratching himself. Clawing at the bug bites. He couldn't quit digging at his skin, making big scabs and then ripping off the scabs and scratching the open sores. It was a sad thing to watch. Definitely not the old Rat Kiley. His whole personality seemed out of kilter.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  For a while I just drove, not aiming at anything, then in the late morning I began looking for a place to lie low for a day or two. I was exhausted, and scared sick, and around noon I pulled into an old fishing resort called the Tip Top Lodge. Actually it was not a lodge at all, just eight or nine tiny yellow cabins clustered on a peninsula that jutted northward into the Rainy River. The place was in sorry shape. There was a dangerous wooden dock, an old minnow tank, a flimsy tar paper boathouse along the shore. The main building, which stood in a cluster of pines on high ground, seemed to lean heavily to one side, like a cripple, the roof sagging toward Canada. Briefly, I thought about turning around, just giving up, but then I got out of the car and walked up to the front porch. The man who opened the door that day is the hero of my life. How do I say this without sounding sappy? Blurt it out—the man saved me. He offered exactly what I needed, without questions, without any words at all. He took me in. He was there at the critical time—a silent, watchful presence. Six days later, when it ended, I was unable to find a proper way to thank him, and I never have, and so, if nothing else, this story represents a small gesture of gratitude twenty years overdue. Even after two decades I can close my eyes and return to that porch at the Tip Top Lodge. I can see the old guy staring at me. Elroy Berdahl: eighty-one years old, skinny and shrunken and mostly bald. He wore a flannel shirt and brown work pants. In one hand, I remember, he carried a green apple, a small paring knife in the other. His eyes had the bluish gray color of a razor blade, the same polished shine, and as he peered up at me I felt a strange sharpness, almost painful, a cutting sensation, as if his gaze were somehow slicing me open. In part, no doubt, it was my own sense of guilt, but even so I'm absolutely certain that the old man took one look and went right to the heart of things—a kid in trouble. When I asked for a room, Elroy made a little clicking sound with his tongue. He nodded, led me out to one of the cabins, and dropped a key in my hand. I remember smiling at him. I also remember wishing I hadn't. The old man shook his head as if to tell me it wasn't worth the bother. "Dinner at five-thirty," he said. "You eat fish?" "Anything," I said. Elroy grunted and said, "I'll bet."

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  There it is, they'd say. Over and over—there it 1s, my friend, there it is —as if the repetition itself were an act of poise, a balance between crazy and almost crazy, knowing without going, there it is, which meant be cool, let it ride, because Oh yeah, man, you can't change what can't be changed, there it is, there it absolutely and positively and fucking well is. They were tough. They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment. They crawled into tunnels and walked point and advanced under fire. Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move. They endured. They kept humping. They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards. By and large they carried these things inside, maintaining the masks of composure. They sneered at sick call. They spoke bitterly about guys who had found release by shooting off their own toes or fingers. Pussies, they'd say. Candy-asses. It was fierce, mocking talk, with only a trace of envy or awe, but even so the image played itself out behind their eyes. They imagined the muzzle against flesh. So easy: squeeze the trigger and blow away a toe. They imagined it. They imagined the quick, sweet pain, then the evacuation to Japan, then a hospital with warm beds and cute geisha nurses. And they dreamed of freedom birds.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  ended, they would blink and peek up. They would touch their bodies, feeling shame, then quickly hiding it. They would force themselves to stand. As if in slow motion, frame by frame, the world would take on the old logic—absolute silence, then the wind, then sunlight, then voices. It was the burden of being alive. Awkwardly, the men would reassemble themselves, first in private, then in groups, becoming soldiers again. They would repair the leaks in their eyes. They would check for casualties, call in dustoffs, light cigarettes, try to smile, clear their throats and spit and begin cleaning their weapons. After a time someone would shake his head and say, No lie, I almost shit my pants, and someone else would laugh, which meant it was bad, yes, but the guy had obviously not shit his pants, it wasn't that bad, and in any case nobody would ever do such a thing and then go ahead and talk about it. They would squint into the dense, oppressive sunlight. For a few moments, perhaps, they would fall silent, lighting a joint and tracking its passage from man to man, inhaling, holding in the humiliation. Scary stuff, one of them might say. But then someone else would grin or flick his eyebrows and say, Roger-dodger, almost cut me a new asshole, almost. There were numerous such poses. Some carried themselves with a sort of wistful resignation, others with pride or stiff soldierly discipline or good humor or macho zeal. They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it. They found jokes to tell. They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness. Greased they'd say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping. It wasn't cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors. When someone died, it wasn't quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their lines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself. They kicked corpses. They cut off thumbs. They talked grunt lingo. They told stories about Ted Lavender's supply of tranquilizers, how the poor guy didn't feel a thing, how incredibly tranquil he was. There's a moral here, said Mitchell Sanders. They were waiting for Lavender's chopper, smoking the dead man's dope. The moral's pretty obvious, Sanders said, and winked. Stay away from drugs. No joke, they'll ruin your day every time. Cute, said Henry Dobbins. Mind blower, get it? Talk about wiggy. Nothing left, just blood and brains. They made themselves laugh.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  We waited another ten minutes. It was cold now, and damp. Squatting down, I felt a brittleness come over me, a hollow sensation, as if someone could reach out and crush me like a Christmas tree ornament. It was the same feeling I'd had out along the Song Tra Bong. Like I was losing myself, everything spilling out. I remembered how the bullet had made a soft puffing noise inside me. I remembered lying there for a long while, listening to the river, the gunfire and voices, how I kept calling out for a medic but how nobody came and how I finally reached back and touched the hole. The blood was warm like dishwater. I could feel my pants filling up with it. All this blood, I thought—I'll be hollow. Then the brittle sensation hit me. I passed out for a while, and when I woke up the battle had moved farther down the river. I was still leaking. I wondered where Rat Kiley was, but Rat Kiley was in Japan. There was rifle fire somewhere off to my right, and people yelling, except none of it seemed real anymore. I smelled myself dying. The round had entered at a steep angle, smashing down through the hip and colon. The stench made me jerk sideways. I turned and clamped a hand against the wound and tried to plug it up.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  "No," I said. "All that's finished." The Ghost Soldiers I was shot twice. The first time, out by Tri Binh, it knocked me against the pagoda wall, and I bounced and spun around and ended up on Rat Kiley's lap. A lucky thing, because Rat was the medic. He tied on a compress and told me to ease back, then he ran off toward the fighting. For a long time I lay there all alone, listening to the battle, thinking I've been shot, I've been shot: all those Gene Autry movies I'd seen as a kid. In fact, I almost smiled, except then I started to think I might die. It was the fear, mostly, but I felt wobbly, and then I had a sinking sensation, ears all plugged up, as if I'd gone deep under water. Thank God for Rat Kiley. Every so often, maybe four times altogether, he trotted back to check me out. Which took courage. It was a wild fight, guys running and laying down fire and regrouping and running again, lots of noise, but Rat Kiley took the risks. "Easy does it," he told me, "just a side wound, no problem unless you're pregnant." He ripped off the compress, applied a fresh one, and told me to clamp it in place with my fingers. "Press hard," he said. "Don't worry about the baby." Then he took off. It was almost dark when the fighting ended and the chopper came to take me and two dead guys away. "Happy trails," Rat said. He helped me into the helicopter and stood there for a moment. Then he did an odd thing. He leaned in and put his head against my shoulder and almost hugged me. Coming from Rat Kiley, that was something new. On the ride into Chu Lai, I kept waiting for the pain to hit, but in fact I didn't feel much. A throb, that's all. Even in the hospital it wasn't bad. When I got back to Alpha Company twenty-six days later, in mid- December, Rat Kiley had been wounded and shipped off to Japan, and a new medic named Bobby Jorgenson had replaced him. Jorgenson was no Rat Kiley. He was green and incompetent and scared. So when I got shot the second time, in the butt, along the Song Tra Bong, it took the son of a bitch almost ten minutes to work up the nerve to crawl over to me. By then I was gone with the pain. Later I found out I'd almost died of shock. Bobby Jorgenson didn't know about shock, or if he did, the fear made him forget. To make it worse, he bungled the patch job, and a couple of weeks later my ass started to rot away. You could actually peel off fillets of meat with your fingernail.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  We hiked over to the EM club and worked our way through a six-pack. Mitchell Sanders was there, at another table, but he pretended not to see me. Around closing time, I nodded at Azar. "Well, goody gum drop," he said. We went over to my hootch, picked up our gear, and then moved through the night down to the wire. I felt like a soldier again. Back in the bush, it seemed. We observed good field discipline, not talking, keeping to the shadows and joining in with the darkness. When we came up on Bunker Six, Azar lifted his thumb and peeled away from me and began circling to the south. Old times, I thought. A kind of thrill, a kind of dread. Quietly, I shouldered my gear and crossed over to a heap of boulders that overlooked Jorgenson's position. I was directly behind him. Thirty-two meters away, exactly. Even in the heavy darkness, no moon yet, I could make out the kid's silhouette: a helmet, a pair of shoulders, a rifle barrel. His back was to me. He gazed out at the wire and at the paddies beyond, where the danger was. I knelt down and took out ten flares and unscrewed the caps and lined them up in front of me and then checked my wristwatch. Still five minutes to go. Edging over to my left, I groped for the ropes I'd set up that afternoon. I found them, tested the tension, and checked the time again. Four minutes. There was a light feeling in my head, fluttery and taut at the same time. I remembered it from the boonies. Giddiness and doubt and awe, all those things and a million more. It's as if you're in a movie. There's a camera on you, so you begin acting, you're somebody else. You think of all the films you've seen, Audie Murphy and Gary Cooper and the Cisco Kid, all those heroes, and you can't help falling back on them as models of proper comportment. On ambush, curled in the dark, you fight for control. Not too much fidgeting. You rearrange your posture; you measure out your breathing. Eyes open, be alert—old imperatives, old movies. It all swirls together, clichés mixing with your own emotions, and in the end you can't tell one from the other. There was that coldness inside me. I wasn't myself. I felt hollow and dangerous. I took a breath, fingered the first rope, and gave it a sharp little jerk. Instantly there was a clatter outside the wire. I expected the noise, I was even tensed for it, but still my heart took a hop. Now, I thought. Now it starts.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  "You're right," he said. "All you can do is be nice. Treat them decent, you know?" The Man I Killed His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman's, his nose was undamaged, there was a slight tear at the lobe of one ear, his clean black hair was swept upward into a cowlick at the rear of the skull, his forehead was lightly freckled, his fingernails were clean, the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless, there was a butterfly on his chin, his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that had killed him. He lay face-up in the center of the trail, a slim, dead, almost dainty young man. He had bony legs, a narrow waist, long shapely fingers. His chest was sunken and poorly muscled—a scholar, maybe. His wrists were the wrists of a child. He wore a black shirt, black pajama pants, a gray ammunition belt, a gold ring on the third finger of his right hand. His rubber sandals had been blown off. One lay beside him, the other a few meters up the trail. He had been born, maybe, in 1946 in the village of My Khe near the central coastline of Quang Ngai Province, where his parents farmed, and where his family had lived for several centuries, and where, during the time of the French, his father and two uncles and many neighbors had joined in the struggle for independence. He was not a Communist. He was a citizen and a soldier. In the village of My Khe, as in all of Quang Ngai, patriotic resistance had the force of tradition, which was partly the force of legend, and from his earliest boyhood the man I killed would have listened to stories about the heroic Trung sisters and Tran Hung Dao's famous rout of the Mongols and Le Loi's final victory against the Chinese at Tot Dong. He would have been taught that to defend the land was a man's highest duty and highest privilege. He had accepted this. It was never open to question. Secretly, though, it also frightened him. He was not a fighter. His health was poor, his body small and frail. He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics. At night, lying on his mat, he could not picture himself doing the brave things his father had done, or his uncles, or the heroes of the stories. He hoped in his heart that he would never be tested. He hoped the Americans would go away. Soon, he hoped. He kept hoping and hoping, always, even when he was asleep.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  Picking up the boy, he made as if to dash the lad to the ground, but then let him down unharmed. He told the child to tell his father that in three days he would return. Three days later Karlstadt died. It was rumored that the stranger had been the Devil, and that Karlstadt had died not of plague, as was claimed, but of fear. Even after the burial, the evil spirit could be heard making noises in Karlstadt’s house. This story flew around the Lutheran camp, and it seemed that Luther had finally won the argument. 23 As Luther wrote to a friend, “Karlstadt always was miserably afraid of death,” referring to his fear of martyrdom in the 1520s, when Luther had courageously faced the prospect of his own death. 24 It was partly because the Lutherans had played the card of the “evil death” in Karlstadt’s case, and had exploited it to the full, that they now knew they had to present Luther’s own death in the most careful manner. What made it difficult, however, was that the cause of death was obscure. Luther had been away from home, and without the advice of his usual doctors. The two local physicians who attended him did not know his medical history. They also disagreed on the diagnosis, one blaming apoplexy, the other, more senior, ascribing it to weakness of the heart. But his doctor in Wittenberg, Matthäus Ratzeberger, surmised it was the result of the closing over of the “fontanelle” in his leg, which had driven the moist humors, unable to escape, up to his chest and so constricted his heart; Luther had forgotten to take his corrosive with him to keep the wound open while he stayed in Eisleben. 25 Melanchthon was adamant that Luther had died of neither and instead insisted that Luther had been fully conscious throughout his final hours, and had therefore died well. 26 Luther’s Catholic opponents, however, did their utmost to exploit rumors that one side of his body had gone black and his mouth was distorted, all indicative of a stroke. Cochlaeus’s biography, completed in 1549, included a long account of his last days, alleging that Luther had “lolled” about on a sofa, eating and drinking to excess. Cochlaeus claimed to have gotten the details from a pharmacist at Eisleben who had sent a report to the anti-Lutheran pastor Georg Witzel. 27 Just before he died, the apothecary had been asked to apply a clyster, or enema, to his rectum. The balloon had expanded because of all the rich food and drink he had consumed. He had died of apoplexy, the Catholics insisted, the sudden death that was God’s judgment on the wicked.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  κινδυνευτέον, verb. Adj. one must venture, hazard, ἐν ἀσπίσιν σοι πρῶτα κινδ. Eur. Supp. 572, cf. 1. T. 1022. κινδυνευτήϑσ, οὔ, 6, a daring, venturesome person, Thuc. 1. 70. κινδυνευτικός, 7, Ov, venturous, adventurous, Arist. Rhet. 1. 9, 29. κινδυνεύω, fut. ow :—Pass. mostly in pres.: fut. κινδυνευθήσομαι Dem. 866. 27, or κεκινδυνεύσομαι Antipho 138. 16: for aor. and pf., v. infr. 3: (κίνδυνο). To be daring, face danger, run risk, κ᾿ πρὸς πολλούς, πρὸς πολεμίους Hdt. 4. 11, Xen. Mem. 3. 3,14; #. eis THY Αἴγυπτον to venture thither, Pherecr.”“Ayp. 5. b. absol. to make a venture, take the risk, doa daring thing, Hdt. 3.69, Ar. Eq. 1204, Thuc. 1. 20., 2. 39 :—also, to be in danger, Arist. Eth. N. 4. 3, 23, etc. ; of a sick person, Hipp. Aph. 1261; κινδυνεύοντος τοῦ χωρίου the post being in peril, Thuc. 4.8; 6 κινδυνεύων τόπος the place of danger, Polyb. 3. 115, 6. 2. that in respect of which danger is incurred is often in the dat., κ. τῷ σώματι, TH ψυχῇ Hdt. 2. 120., 7. 209; κ. πάσῃ τῇ "Ἑλλάδι to run a risk with all Greece, i. e. endanger it all, Id. 8. 60,13; τῇ στρατίῃ ld. 4.80; τίσιν οὖν ὑμεῖς κινδυνεύσαιτ᾽ ay..; in what points.. ? Dem. 115.12; κ᾿ τῷ βίῳ, TH κεφαλῇ, τοῖς ὅλοις πράγμασι Polyb., etc., cf. Kap :—often also with a Prep., κ. ἐν τοῖς σώμασι Lys. 196. 26; ἐν υἱέσι Plat. Lach. 187 B;—often with περί, «. περὶ τῆς Πελοποννήσου Hdt. 8. 74; περὶ τῆς ψυχῆς Ar. Pl. 524, Antipho 119. 40; mept τοῦ σώματος Andoc, 1. 22; περὶ ἀνδραποδισμοῦ Isocr. 166 E; περὶ τῆς μεγίστης ζημίας Lys. 109. 34, εἴς. ; also, περὶ τῆς βασιλείας πρὸς Κῦρον Dem. 197. 22; περὶ αὑτῷ Antipho 130. 3; περὶ τοῖς φιλτάτοις Plat. Prot. 314 A;—imép καλλίστων Lys. 108. 6. 8. c. acc. cogn. to venture, hazard, κινδύνους Antipho 139. 9; κινδύνευμα Plat. Rep. 451 A; μάχην Aeschin. 50. 40; κ. Wevdouaprupiay to hazard a prose- cution for perjury, Dem. 1033. I :—so in Pass. to be ventured or hazarded, μεταβολὴ κινδυνεύεται there is risk of change, Thuc. 2. 43; ὁποτέρως ἔσται, ἐν ἀδήλῳ κινδυνεύεται remains in hazardous uncertainty, Ταῦ τὶ 783 τὰ μέγιστα κινδυνεύεται τῇ πόλει Dem. 432. 26 ; τὸ κεκινδυνευ- μένον a venturous enterprise, Pind. N. 5.26; τὰ κινδυνευθέντα -- τὰ κινδυνεύματα Lys. 195. 34. 4. c. inf. to run the risk of doing or 808

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  "You're right," he said. "All you can do is be nice. Treat them decent, you know?" The Man I Killed His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman's, his nose was undamaged, there was a slight tear at the lobe of one ear, his clean black hair was swept upward into a cowlick at the rear of the skull, his forehead was lightly freckled, his fingernails were clean, the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless, there was a butterfly on his chin, his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that had killed him. He lay face-up in the center of the trail, a slim, dead, almost dainty young man. He had bony legs, a narrow waist, long shapely fingers. His chest was sunken and poorly muscled—a scholar, maybe. His wrists were the wrists of a child. He wore a black shirt, black pajama pants, a gray ammunition belt, a gold ring on the third finger of his right hand. His rubber sandals had been blown off. One lay beside him, the other a few meters up the trail. He had been born, maybe, in 1946 in the village of My Khe near the central coastline of Quang Ngai Province, where his parents farmed, and where his family had lived for several centuries, and where, during the time of the French, his father and two uncles and many neighbors had joined in the struggle for independence. He was not a Communist. He was a citizen and a soldier. In the village of My Khe, as in all of Quang Ngai, patriotic resistance had the force of tradition, which was partly the force of legend, and from his earliest boyhood the man I killed would have listened to stories about the heroic Trung sisters and Tran Hung Dao's famous rout of the Mongols and Le Loi's final victory against the Chinese at Tot Dong. He would have been taught that to defend the land was a man's highest duty and highest privilege. He had accepted this. It was never open to question. Secretly, though, it also frightened him. He was not a fighter. His health was poor, his body small and frail. He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of mathematics. At night, lying on his mat, he could not picture himself doing the brave things his father had done, or his uncles, or the heroes of the stories. He hoped in his heart that he would never be tested. He hoped the Americans would go away. Soon, he hoped. He kept hoping and hoping, always, even when he was asleep.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  We called the enemy ghosts. "Bad night," we'd say, "the ghosts are out." To get spooked, in the lingo, meant not only to get scared but to get killed. "Don't get spooked," we'd say. "Stay cool, stay alive." Or we'd say: "Careful, man, don't give up the ghost." The countryside itself seemed spooky—shadows and tunnels and incense burning in the dark. The land was haunted. We were fighting forces that did not obey the laws of twentieth-century science. Late at night, on guard, it seemed that all of Vietnam was alive and shimmering—odd shapes swaying in the paddies, boogiemen in sandals, spirits dancing in old pagodas. It was ghost country, and Charlie Cong was the main ghost. The way he came out at night. How you never really saw him, just thought you did. Almost magical— appearing, disappearing. He could blend with the land, changing form, becoming trees and grass. He could levitate. He could fly. He could pass through barbed wire and melt away like ice and creep up on you without sound or footsteps. He was scary. In the daylight, maybe, you didn't believe in this stuff. You laughed it off. You made jokes. But at night you turned into a believer: no skeptics in foxholes. Azar was wound up tight. All afternoon, while we made the preparations, he kept chanting, "Halloween, Halloween." That, plus the finger snapping, almost made me cancel the whole operation. I went hot and cold. Mitchell Sanders wouldn't speak to me, which tended to cool it off, but then I'd start remembering things. The result was a kind of numbness. No ice, no heat. I just went through the motions, rigidly, by the numbers, without any heart or real emotion. I rigged up my special effects, checked out the terrain, measured distances, collected the ordnance and equipment we'd need. I was professional enough about it, I didn't make mistakes, but somehow it felt as if I were gearing up to fight somebody else's war. I didn't have that patriotic zeal. If there had been a dignified way out, I might've taken it. During evening chow, in fact, I kept staring across the mess hall at Bobby Jorgenson, and when he finally looked up at me, almost nodding, I came very close to calling it quits. Maybe I was fishing for something. One last apology—something public. But Jorgenson only gazed back at me. It was a strange gaze, too, straight on and unafraid, as if apologies were no longer required. He was sitting there with Dave Jensen and Mitchell Sanders and a few others, and he seemed to fit in very nicely, all chumminess and group rapport. That's probably what cinched it. I went back to my hootch, showered, shaved, threw my helmet against the wall, lay down for a while, got up, prowled around, talked to myself, applied some fresh ointment, then headed off to find Azar.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  By the 1560s they were bankrupt and the fabled wealth from the Mansfeld mines was gone, turning the town into a backwater. In early 1546, therefore, Luther saw it as his duty to try to reconcile the counts. Perhaps intuiting that this would be no ordinary journey, Luther took with him his three sons—Hans, aged nearly twenty; Martin, nearing fifteen; and Paul, just thirteen. The weather was dreadful, and the river so swollen at Halle that the party did not dare to cross. As Luther joked in a letter to his wife, “a huge female Anabaptist met us with waves of water and great floating pieces of ice; she threatened to baptize us again, and has covered the [whole] countryside.” We followed what I know would have been your advice, Luther told Katharina, and we did not “tempt God” by crossing. After all, he added, “the Devil is angry at us, and he lives in the water.” 7 When they finally traveled on, he suffered from dizziness: “Had you been here, however, you would have said that it was the fault of the Jews or their god. For shortly before Eisleben we had to travel through a village in which many Jews are living, [and] perhaps they have attacked me so painfully.” 8 Apologizing for no longer being able to make love to her—“comfort yourself with the knowledge that I would love you if I could, as you know”—Luther addressed Katharina as “Mrs. Sow Market” and “Lady of Zülsdorf,” teasing her affectionately about her farming business. 9 Luther’s letters were remarkable for their warmth, frankness, and the depth of shared memories. But these final letters also displayed his propensity for hatred and gloom. At the same time as he wrote about his fears of the “breath” of the Jews, Luther mentioned that he had one major task to which he would turn next—the Jewish question. “After the main issues have been settled [in Mansfeld],” he wrote, “I have to start expelling the Jews.” 10 Count Albrecht does not like the Jews, either, he wrote, but he does nothing about them. During his four last sermons that he would preach at Eisleben in January and February 1546, therefore, he set about “helping” Albrecht, as he put it, from the pulpit, by adding an admonition against the Jews to the end of his last sermon. Like the “Italians,” Luther declared, the Jews knew the art of poisoning someone so that they die instantly, or a month, a year, ten, or even twenty years later. They were evil people who would never stop blaspheming against Christ, and those who protected them shared in their sin. As he neared death, Luther’s conviction that the Jews had to be dealt with became stronger. 11 Shortly before the party reached Eisleben, Luther became very ill, collapsing in the wagon.