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Summary Of The Article 'The Grunts' By David Woods

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"The Grunts," is a Nonfiction article by David Wood. Woods discusses the idea of moral injury that war caused to soldiers. Tim O'Brien demonstrates in his book “The Things They Carried” that he was familiar with these things long before Wood wrote "The Grunts.” they both depict or throw the light on the life of soldiers who had no choice, but to be in war, how they try to cope with their traumatic past, carry the emotionally & physical burden.

Woods' article “The Grunts” depicts the idea that soldiers had no choice, but to participate in war. This sentence refers to Tim O’Brien’s book where he says “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 …show more content…

This is related to The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien when O’Brien says By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain. (O’Brien 107). The quote was significant at the time that Tim O'Brian was attempting to talk to Norman Bowker about his guilt over the death of Kiowa and to stop him from believing that he needed to continue telling war stories after the war. The letter O'Brien received from Bowker vividly depicts his struggles with depression and traumatic events. This demonstrates how the author is attempting to deal with the traumatic events from his time serving in the Vietnam War. Because this was the first war that America lost and because it can be used to illustrate how people suffered, it demonstrates how difficult it is for soldiers to talk about their experiences. They are telling stories in hopes that we can understand the world through their eyes and show some empathy for these veterans. They are sharing their experiences to help us see the world from their standpoint and to demonstrate compassion for these

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