“The Sacred Willow” portrays four generations of a Vietnamese family that stretches from the traditional mandarin culture of northern Vietnam, the French occupation, the Vietnamese war, to life in the US. A main portion of this book is centered around the narrator Mai’s father Duong Thieu Chi and his struggle of working in the government while raising a family during the time of French Occupation. Throughout Mai’s accounts, her father’s internal conflict between good and bad as well as modern and traditional are highlighted to symbolize the 20th century Vietnamese sentiments towards their country and their call for independence.
Regret is a powerful emotion that has the ability to scar someone for the rest of their life. Moments of regret can come from relationships, self-made decisions and life changing events. The idea of regret also applies to “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh and “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien. Although these two literary pieces are very different in many ways, both authors describe the experience of the Vietnam War as a time of regretful decisions that negatively impacted people of both the American side and the Vietnamese side. Both authors tell a story about a character that recalls of flashbacks of the war, where they grieve over the past decisions that have affected them for the rest of their life.
In school, we are taught certain things that the schools’ want us to learn, but there are certain things they don’t teach us. Every person in this world, has the right to know about things and learn, whether it’s in school, or they teach themselves things that we aren’t taught in school. In the story, “Fahrenheit 451”, every person is censored and they aren’t allowed to read books, because the government does not allow them to, and there are firemen that burn all the books so no one will get a hold of them. In our time, the 21st century, we are censored from certain things the government does not want us to know, which is unfair because something could be going on in the world and only the government knows about it, so how are we supposed to
Originally published in 1990, The Things They Carried is a collection of war stories that took place during the Vietnam War. Due to its accurate and honest depiction of war, it has been banned for crude language, violence, drug use, and sexual innuendo.
How is your feeling when you are falling in love? Most of the people say “it is awesome” because they “fall in love with the most unexpected person at the most unexpected time.” How do show your love? Every person has his or her own ways to show his or her love; therefore, Erdrich’s character – Grandma Kashpaw in Love Medicine also has her own ways.
Trauma is a many layered thing. There are many ways to cope with it, and many ways people can experience it. In war there is obviously a lot of suffering, and many ways to deal with the aftermath of being in war. In “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O’Brien, the narrator repeats the story of the death of one of his comrades several times within it, changing the details with each telling. This story is less about how to tell a war story, and more about how to cope with life after facing war and how to cope with death in war. In this story the narrator tells the story of the gruesome death of a fellow soldier, Curt Lemon. In the many tellings of the story it can be gathered that Lemon died by stepping on a boobytrap, while he was playing
This chapter “The Ghost Soldiers”, showed us how Tim O’Brien and the other soldiers were dealing with the war both physically and psychologically. It also shows us how the Tim O'Brien behaved and felt when he was shot, wounded and had a bacteria infection on his butt and how the war changed the way he thought, and viewed the other soldiers around him.
Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.
In the novel Jasper Jones the ideas of racism, family and friendship are greatly influenced by the context of the novel. This essay will explain how an understanding of the time, setting, context of the author and my own context influences each of these ideas.
The purpose of a ghost story is to leave the reader feeling frightened and unaware of what the truth of reality is. Nguyen's Black-Eyed Women flips all our perceptions of what a ghost is and why they visit the living. The ghost stories told in this story affect the narrator by forcing her to confront the discomfort of her reality. The narrator realizes she has been ignoring discomfort about her brother dying for her, and s the guilt and that she lived. She loses her identify, and sense of security, however her brother's ghost arrives to mend this disconnect. Her brother's ghost is the, "living embodiment of a disturbing possibility: that human privileges are quite fragile" (213). The presence of the ghost forces the narrator to realize that
Ghosts, in the monograph written by David Jones, are described by Sanapia, the Comanche medicine woman, as beings that “get jealous because [humans] are living and [they have] died” (Jones 66). The Comanche cultural connotation of ghosts is one that characterizes ghosts as either mischievous, or pernicious entities. Therefore, ghost sickness, as described by Jones, occurs when a ghost(s) comes into contact with a human being(s) and because of its malevolent/ jealous nature uses its supernatural ability to “[cause] contortions of the facial muscles and in some instances [paralyze the] hands and arms” (Jones 66). In essence, the ghost(s) harm the human being(s), and ghost sickness is the physical manifestation in the human being of that ghost-to-human interaction. It would be more accurate to say, that ghost sickness manifests itself in the human being after the human being has come into contact with the ghost and has failed to exert courage, or to, as detailed by Sanapia, “turn around and… show it [that they weren’t] afraid of it” (Jones 67).
I think the ghost dance makes perfect sense. Many people believe that dancing is spiritual. This dance, at least in my eyes, is a spiritual dance. It makes them feel better and gives them hope. They were getting their culture, children, and rights taken away from them. Therefore, it’s understandable to assume they were deeply saddened and distraught. If dancing brings them hope for the future, they should part take in the dancing. However, some individuals danced until they lay unconscious on the ground. This shows how some Native Americans were completely affected by this change. That they thought dancing until you can’t dance anymore would bring back the old times, and if it didn’t they’d die trying. The government, later, banned the dance. They were scared of the dance, but the Native Americans were just very unhappy. This is very sad turn of events for the Indians. They’re last ray of hope is token
Throughout the characters of her first novel Wise blood, O’Connor depicts what kind of living has those who pass through spiritual suffering. Their spiritual dilemma will lead them to struggle from displacement during their lives. Beside the displacement suffering, their lives will end in a very tragic way. For example, Insoon Choi marks the main character of wise Blood Hazel Motes “a quintessential displaced person” (174) because he has spiritual suffering. Choi mentions that he was not only displaced from his native land, but also from the whole
The Vietnam War in the late 1970s lead many of refugees including children attempting to attain better living condition relative to those in war-torn Vietnam. Escaping from a war torn nation and arriving to America meant getting accustomed to the much different western culture, while simultaneously facing the challenge of retaining your traditions. Le Thi Diem Thuy presents the story, “The Gangster We Are All Looking For,” to demonstrate her struggle as a migrant. Thuy discusses through her first- hand experiences the arduous struggle that was assimilating into American culture. Migration makes it difficult for individuals to adjust to their new American home, but this initial disadvantage is a blessing in disguise because it provides
In the book “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien admits to killing only one man during his war career, and relays it in the chapter “The Man I Killed”. In this chapter, O’Brien surveys the mangled body of the Vietnamese man he has just murdered, and desperately attempts to humanize the dead man as a coping method for his guilt. The chapter embodies a unique, and extremely detailed repetitive writing style which serves as a symbol of O’Brien’s scrutiny over his irrevocable action.