The Vietnamese war and the policies of the government during the 1970’s were chaotic enough, yet against the protests of left wing radicalists, such as Nick and Lucy in COSI, protagonists of the Vietnamese war, society had descended into anarchy, the madness of society comparable to that of a mental institution. War is mad enough yet after the development of nuclear technologies and policies of Mutually Assured Destruction, war, the Vietnamese war was pure inconceivable madness. It was no wonder that protests for the war to cease began, seen in COSI as Nick leads the moratorium against the government” 1,2,3,4 we don’t want your fuckin’ war. Radicalise the nation”, his readiness to implore violence utter lunacy, “barricades and bombs, why not?” The…
There is a reason horror films are rated R. While people may want to see the terror, killing, crime, violence and blood, there is a sense of revulsion underlying it. It is even more so when movies are based on true stories. While the movie itself is entertaining, somewhere deep inside there is a sense of wrongness. The movie “The Killing Fields” is one of these. Directed by Roland Joffe, a London born producer, the movie is compelling, drawing the viewers into the story and into the lives of the characters, but the story is almost revolting: the Khmer Rouge killed over one million Cambodian people and forced many more than that into slave labor, complete with very little to eat and forced re-education.…
In this chapter Stack describes the effects of conflict on the lives of both people who have experienced war and people who have not experienced war. Stack provides an example in the form of her relative, John a former American marine. John was sent to Beirut to combat the Hezbollah and whilst fighting there he experienced the true nature of war. He returned later however “he wasn’t all right”. He committed suicide due to the effects of war and the conflicts that he experienced. Thus Stack came to the conclusion that after being in a war zone, “you could survive and not survive, both at the same time”; she realises that you can mentally die from war but physically survive. War places a strain on the minds of people and breaks it down. Additionally, Stack states that after her travels in various warzones; she had aged not just physically, but mentally due to the conflicts that she experienced. She further comes to the realisation that the United States created the war on terror and that terror itself if essentially created by the media. This terror creates fear in normal civilians and it is what causes America and the other western countries to be on one side and all other countries to be on another side.…
The story is told by an omniscient narrator focusing mainly on the character First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross. Lieutenant Cross is in charge of a company of men who go on daily marches through Vietnam in search for the enemy, their sympathizers and supplies. He often daydreams of a college girl he is fond of back in New Jersey. Mitchell Sanders is the radio and telephone operator and known for being the ladies’ man. Kiowa is a Native American Baptist who carries an Illustrated New Testament with him. He also carries his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet given to him by his father and his grandmother’s distrust for the white man. Dan Jensen practices field hygiene by having with him a toothbrush, dental floss and bars of soap stolen from a hotel while on R&R. Henry Dobbins is a large man who carried extra rations and was excused from searching tunnels due to the size of his frame. He carries the M60, is especially fond of canned peaches, and wears his girlfriend's pantyhose around his neck as god luck. Rat Kiley is the medic, carrying a canvas satchel containing morphine, plasma, malaria pills and various medical supplies and comic books. Norman Bowker is a gentle guy, he keeps a diary with him and carries a thumb from a VC corpse that Mitchell Sanders had cut off and presented to him. Lee Strunk has a…
War creates many different versions of a person after being a soldier. A person can become stronger and more focused on the important things in his or her life. Most people come back changed more for the worse though. War can make a person paranoid, cold and withdrawn. The Vietnam War is the most well known for this fact. The war also can make a person learn about life. Thus in Daly Walker’s “I Am the Grass,” the narrator deals with the struggles of life from coming home after the war in Vietnam, finding something to do with his time and life, and returning to Vietnam.…
Most authors who write about war stories write vividly; this is the same with Tim O’Brien as he describes the lives of the soldiers by using his own experiences as knowledge. In his short story “The Things They Carried” he skillfully reveals realistic scenes that portray psychological, physical and mental burdens carried by every soldier. He illustrates these burdens by discussing the weights that the soldiers carry, their psychological stress and the mental stress they have to undergo as each of them endure the harshness and ambiguity of the Vietnam War. One question we have to ask ourselves is if the three kinds of burdens carried by the soldier’s are equal in size? “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” (81). This quote illustrates how these three burdens, when combined, could cause immense pressure on the soldiers, and one has to ask how the soldiers manage to cope with the pressure. An example of this pressure is according to the 1990 Veteran’s administration report one in every three Vietnam veterans suffer from post traumatic stress; this includes thirty percent of soldiers who went to Vietnam, or nearly one million troops, who succumbed to post-traumatic stress. Unlike physical burdens that can be eliminated in various ways, psychological and mental burdens cannot be rid of so easily and so in turn outweigh the physical burdens as well as take their toll on the soldier.…
Hunt, Michael H. A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 2010. Print.…
“It was no decision, no chain of ideas or reasons, that steered me into the war. It was an intellectual and physical stand-off, and I did not have the energy to see it to an end”(O’Brien 22). This nearly sums up Tim O’Brien’s If I Die in a Combat Zone, Box Me Up and Ship Me Home. In O’Brien’s autobiographical novel of his grueling tour and duty during the Vietnam War, we constantly see him struggle with his moral and ethical beliefs while participating in a war he believes is unjust, clearly becoming the main theme of this work, along with courage and the meaning of it to Tim.…
The author’s interview introduces his PTSD caused by his service in the Vietnam War, stating through story telling he would like to release a psychological truth. The other authors within the interview describe unforgettable sights that haunt them forever. Particularly, O’Brien explains that a sense of being in the waste as a soldier, the wastage of life. This defines a hopeless tone that is set into the plot of the novel. Mr. O’Brien shows that one may never see the good in war and give up all faith.…
The documentary film, Hearts and Minds, by Peter Davis; illustrates the brutal nature and different perspectives of the people involved in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War is considered as one of the longest and horrific wars in American history. American soldiers involved in the War have diverse reactions of their experiences and encounters during the war. The Vietnamese believed that, “Americans were evil and the Vietnamese simply were fighting merely defensively”. These factors will demonstrate how the film, Hearts and Minds, helped encourage reform during and after the War.…
The United States soldiers in Vietnam experienced a war unlike any other in America’s history. One of the main reasons that this war was so different was that the conditions of the soldiers were so terrible. One soldier described what it was actually like living in Vietnam. “We lived out in the jungle and patrolled three villages. We moved from one village to another all the time. You didn't want to stay in one spot for too long. The enemy would try to find out where we were and try to ambush us. So, usually at about 2 a.m. we started to move around from one village to another” (Alex Ditinno). This man shows how terrible their living conditions are. After having a constant fear of being ambushed, having to sleep in dirty and uncomfortable environments for days, and having to wake up in the middle of the night to leave villages, the soldier’s minds are going to be effected. The average age of a soldier in the war was nineteen years old. Before their brains are even fully developed they experience such atrocities that they grow an enormous hatred inside. The only people that they can bring out that hatred on were the Vietnamese. The enemies were known to the Americans as the…
Reading the short story “The Things they carried,” by Tim O Brien, creates a mesmerizing image of a war zone. It describes the tough war times for American soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War. The story is a literary portrayal of the material and mental pressures on the soldiers, who strive to survive physically and mentally in the war.…
The history of war is what many spend time reading about in textbooks. Few, however, experience war and all that it encompasses. David Leckie, a marine during World War II, uses his book, Helmet for My Pillow, to share with readers the truth of what it was like to be a soldier. Rather than skimming the surface of his time on Parris Island and the Pacific Islands, he goes into unmatched, excruciating detail; every trench dug, every shot fired, and every fallen soldier passed was recounted by Leckie. Setting this story apart from any other, the first-hand accounts of combat, unlikely descriptions of the day-to-day actions of the soldiers, and the heart that Leckie intertwines with each part of his story all combine to make this thought-provoking,…
References: Moss, G (2010) Vietnam: An American Ordeal (6th ed ) Prentice Hall Upper Saddle River, N.J.…
Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam novel The Things They Carried was written in many respects to reflect real events and while we soon come to the realization that the actual event is in the end irrelevant, these events still provide a vital backdrop for the reader to initially absorb then realize that they don’t actually matter. The Things They Carried is not a text book nor in any respects is it an accurate historical account, it is a collection of memories, feelings and actions and with O’Brien staying clear of stereotypical themes such as heroism and bravery we are presented with a more compelling, realistic and appropriate view of an ambiguous war fought by young and unsure men. With realism being the truth and truth being a feeling Tim O’Brien successfully conveys every theme major or minor leaving us simply with one overwhelming feeling of uncertainty. As he constantly backtracks, re-writes and retells stories the facts become more and more distorted but the truth and relevance of all the stories are stronger with every page you read. While it is important to know that the soldiers were fighting a war with unthinkable consequences the fact will always remain that whether someone died in 1968 in Vietnam or 1980 in New York the feelings will always be the same and in the end with time distorted facts the only truth is the felling you have.…