Tragic Techniques In The Film Two Days In October

In his short story, O’Brien uses words and phrases that help to create the intended setting of the work. The author establishes the setting by describing the social atmosphere around him. “The only certainty that summer was moral confusion.” Tim O’Brien uses this quote to explain the mood in America during the Vietnam War. Many details were not known, such as the type of war the country was fighting, whether a civil war or a national liberation, or who caused the war. The United States could not agree, and citizens did not know who or what to believe. The setting also depicts O’Brien’s personal atmosphere. “In the morning, after gassing up, I headed straight west along the Rainy River, which separates Minnesota from Canada , and which

On September 11th, 2001 the Twin Towers in New York City fell victim to a terrorist attack that left thousands dead, thousands more injured and millions in fear. Later that day George W. Bush, the President of the United States of America, created a speech to help calm the public about the events that occurred earlier that day. The speech was shown on national television the United States from the White House. The speech was effective because President Bush did help calm down the public with his speech.

In 2013 when Viet Thanh Nguyen began to write The Sympathizer, it had been 40 years since the Vietnam War. It had been 40 years since French and American military involvement ravaged a once beautiful countryside and littered lush forests with napalm. It had been 40 years since 2 million people were displaced from their country and left to die in the Pacific Ocean. In those 40 years, many works were published about the Vietnam War. These stories came from many, contrasting, perspectives. Young or old, male or female, the war was told differently by every person who was involved in the battle, no matter how small their role. Despite the cacophony of standpoints vying to tell the definitive tale of what happened in Vietnam, the perspective of

In A Viet Cong Memoir, we receive excellent first hands accounts of events that unfolded in Vietnam during the Vietnam War from the author of this autobiography: Truong Nhu Tang. Truong was Vietnamese at heart, growing up in Saigon, but he studied in Paris for a time where he met and learned from the future leader Ho Chi Minh. Truong was able to learn from Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary ideas and gain a great political perspective of the conflicts arising in Vietnam during the war. His autobiography shows the readers the perspective of the average Vietnamese citizen (especially those involved with the NLF) and the attitudes towards war with the United States. In the book, Truong exclaims that although many people may say the Americans never lost on the battlefield in Vietnam — it is irrelevant. In order to understand this mindset, we have to understand how the NLF

The three movies – Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and The Green Berets – are all movies based on the same historical event – the Vietnam war and US’s involvement in it. Yet, they all presented us with different and narrative point of view and authority figures in order to paint their individual values.

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.

American Novelist, Tim O’brien, in his book, Going After Cacciato, illuminates the daunting effects of the Vietnam War by delving into the mind of a young soldier, Paul Berlin. The theme of discontinuity and trauma is revealed as the novel jumps back and forth from reality and fantasy. The book focuses on Berlin, on guard at the observational post as he recounts the tragic deaths of members in his squad and imagines a story of him and his squad chasing after Cacciato. The sudden change of scenes in each chapter creates discontinuities, contributing to a feeling of confusion. This is the author’s attempt to emulate the influence of war onto a soldier — disorientation.

In the essay The View from the Midwest (2001 issue of Rolling Stone), novelist David Foster Wallace gives a detailed account and explores a different angle of the September 11 attack. In this passionate piece of writing, he discloses personal experiences and vividly describes what he goes through on the day of attack and the day after, piece by piece through a labyrinth of narratives. He talks about his next door neighbor, a retired CPA and vet, and about his best friend’s mother, Mrs Thompson. Through his essay, Wallace tries to spotlight the patriotic stigma and the terrifying undaunting faith people have in the system. In this paper, I confer about Wallace’s view that is, the failure of the general public to follow through with the transformation

Every American knows of the horrifying terror attacks that took place on September 11th, 2001, in New York and Washington, DC. The terrorist organization al Qaeda hijacked four airlines and flew two of them into the World Trade Center in New York, and one of them into the Pentagon in Washington.The fourth plane was stopped mid ­flight by its brave passengers and did not reach its intended target. Innocent civilians were now the casualties of war waged by an extremist muslim terrorist group based out of Afghanistan. The United States had never witnessed any terrorist attack of this size on its own soil previous to 2001. This was a day that American citizens would remember forever, not only because of the events themselves, but because of the

In the autobiography, a Rumor of War, Philip Caputo, talks about his experience in the Vietnam War. He tells us why he joins the Marines until the day he was released from active duty. A rumor for the story about war and how it changed men like Phillip Caputo, John Kerry Silvio Burgio and Tim Carey. This paper is based on Philip Caputo and how the Vietnam War changed him through his time before the war, during the war and after the war.

The media were ashamed because of their blame on Muslim terrorist on the bombing of Oklahoma City. People were also scared because international terrorism took place, meaning more attacks could happen easily and more

Within the areas of Homeland Security and Homeland Defense lie specific primary missions, tasks, duties, and responsibilities of each. The primary missions, tasks, duties, and responsibilities of Homeland Security and Defense include preventing terrorism and enhancing security, securing and managing our borders, and enforcing immigration laws. Additionally, some primary tasks of Homeland Security also include safeguarding cyberspace and protecting ourselves from natural disasters (DHS, 2014). In order to achieve these goals, there are certain resources that play an integral part in accomplishing the mission.

The idea is constructed and told partly from O’Brien as a soldier, reliving stories from his experience in Vietnam, and partly from his manipulation as a storyteller, and his ability to deliberately construct a view about an event. There is a dominant thought that stories about a war time, are written from facts and personal experiences, exploring the realities about war and constructing a truthful image for the readers. However O’Brien contradicts this argument, by blurring the distinction between fact and fiction. He describes how to “generalise about war is like generalising about peace. Almost everything is true” yet “almost nothing is true.” O’Brien’s role as a storyteller illustrated how he has the power to shape the readers experiences and opinions through his deliberate form of writing. His purpose in combining fact and fiction in the story is to illustrate that the unbiased truth about a war story is less significant than the act of storytelling. “In any war story, but especially a true one, its difficult to separate what happened from what seemed to happen.” Ultimately the prevailing ideology that all war stories are constructed to the objective truth is challenged in ‘How to tell a true war story’ as O’Brien reveals the importance of storytelling and the impact it can play on the ideas

America’s war heroes all have the same stories to tell but different tales. Prescribed with the same coloring page to fill in, and use their methods and colors to bring the image to life. This is the writing style and tactic used by Tim O’Brien in his novel, “The Things They Carried”. Steven Kaplan’s short story criticism, The Undying Certainty of the Narrator in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, provides the audience with an understanding of O’Brien’s techniques used to share “true war” stories of the Vietnam War. Kaplan explains the multitude of stories shared in each of the individual characters, narration and concepts derived from their personal experiences while serving active combat duty during the Vietnam War,

The surprise nature of America’s attack coupled with the warfare inexperience of many journalists present in Vietnam saw many of them change their perspectives on their countries involvement in the war. During the war, medias role in the war was changing and this then became another “check and balance” for the United States’ government. (Source B) The Vietnam war was considered as a “living room war” in the sense that the battles and casualties were being shown everyday on American television screens as daily television programs. Source B states that the fact that violence was viewed in the homes of many Americans made the anti-war protests to follow “extremely personal and surreal”. This affected many Americans in their views of the war and the public started to doubt the success of America in Vietnam. (Source E) The newspapers initially published by the New York Times demonstrated that the government had “systematically lied” (Source A) to the public about the entire