In the book “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien writes about his experience before and during the Vietnamese War, tells stories about his troop, and their lives before and after the war. He illustrates about how his life changed because of the war, and emphasizes on how the war is so cruel and has no moral at all. His stories involve a lot about Vietnamese War. If people read his story superficially, they will say it is definitely a war story, but he argues that his book is actually about love (81). Although his story looks like a war story, it is actually a loved story because his stories are either about his loved ones or dedicated to his loved ones.
These stories show the harsh realities of the Vietnam War communicated by Tim O’Brien’s memory. O’Brien does not shy away from the importance of friendship during the war. Soldiers are
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.
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a collection of essays, all centered on anecdotes of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. The seemingly straightforward recollections slowly reveal dense layers of personal and metaphorical meanings upon closer inspection, with the exploration of the characters’ emotions and the underlying motif of love creating the opportunity to trace how war changes a person in the realm of his emotions. The Vietnam warfare acts as a catalyst for all of the unsettling changes in the soldiers’ minds, raising the question whether the battlefield is actively responsible for this result or merely accelerating the inevitable manifestation of these personal issues, inherent in every person. In the collection of essays
I have never wanted to be out of a place more than Vietnam. The place filled me with dread and I have never known the kind of fear I felt there any place else.” (The Vietnam War: A History in Documents, Document
Individuals upsurge their powers in society by developing their skills in speech that will eventually empowering over others and stimulating sense of powerlessness in individuals. In the case of Weapons Training, Dawe alerts responders the power of authority in a Sergeant’s potent speech with pejorative language, ‘unsightly fat between your elephant ears open that drain you call a mind’ as it insults the troops with graphic visual imageries as the brain been metaphorically personified and juxtaposed to the drain. This, combined with the assonance of the hyperbole, the persona is allowed to adapt a faster pace and to promote the intensive tone that hence, further accentuating the persona’s power. Moreover, the poem ends dramatically as Dawe states ‘you’re dead, dead, dead’, in which it foreshadows the recruits’ deaths and yet, reinforcing the crudity of wars and reality through the repetition of ‘dead’.
Chris Hedges, a former war correspondent, has a memory overflowing with the horrors of many battlefields and the helplessness of those trapped within them. He applies this memory to write War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, where he tutors us in the misery of war. To accomplish this goal, Hedges uses impactful imagery, appeals to other dissidents of war and classic writers, and powerful exemplification. Throughout his book, Hedges batters the readers with painful and grotesque, often first-hand, imagery from wars around the globe. He begins the book with his experience in Sarajevo, 1995.
Challenges at War Robert E. Lee once said, “What a cruel thing war is… to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors”. The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien takes place in Vietnam. He and a handful of other men experience things only one can image and hope they will never have to experience again. They learn how death among them can greatly affect them, and many others. War is not an easy task to get through and these men all had different coping methods.
Men went through so many tasks during the Vietnam War physically and mentally. The beginning chapters focus on training for war and being prepared for the worst. For example, when there is a sergeant in a room with the marines. The sergeant walks to the chalk board and writes “AMBUSHES ARE MURDER AND MURDER IS FUN” (36-37). The
We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight. John Lennon. Based on his own reading and reflection, Bruce Dawe constructs his attitudes towards war in his poems, Homecoming and Weapons Training, believing it to be lacking sense historically and ultimately futile. By specifically addressing an Australian cultural context, the poet exposes a universal appeal in that the insensitivity and anonymity are common attitudes towards soldiers during war. Dawe clearly expresses his ‘anti-war sentiment’ through his use of language and imagery as he examines the dehumanising aspects of war and its brutal reality.
Conceptions of exploit and exposibility is constant in his text as he verbally expresses the truth, or what the public can receive. The poem, Homecoming, communicates the horrible aftermaths of war, categorically the Vietnam war and the effects on Australia, and our adolescence. Homecoming prospers in addressing the quandaries that the regime do not addressed in the promotional posters and propaganda spoon victualed to society, which we victual up expeditiously. Dawe, through this poem was to make us cognisant about the quandaries of war. On the Death of Ronald Ryan, alternatively was rather a homage to the last man executed in Australia, rather than being an exposing piece of text, though it does contain aspects that do explicate the powerlessness of society and the authentic power of the regime.
Drifters by Bruce Dawe “Why have hope?”, is the question raised in the poem “Drifters” by Bruce Dawe. Bruce Dawe’s poem explores how change can damage a family 's relationship and cause them to drift apart. This poem has underlying and straight forward themes depicted about change. Straight forward depiction is the physical movement of the family from place to place and not everyone is in favour of this change. The very first line of the poem, “One day soon he’ll tell her it’s time to start packing”, supports the inevitable change that no one else has a say in except the man.
I find Ho Chi Minh’s letter far more persuasive than Lyndon B. Johnson’s. Using ethos, pathos, and logos, he forms a solid argument that supports Vietnam’s stance on the war. He appeals to one’s emotions by expressing the injustices faced by his people, writing, “In South Viet-Nam a half-million American soldiers and soldiers from the satellite countries have resorted to the most barbarous methods of warfare, such as napalm, chemicals, and poison gases in order to massacre our fellow countrymen, destroy the crops, and wipe out villages.” Words such as “massacre” and “barbarous” highlight the severity of these crimes, and invoke feelings of guilt and remorse in the reader. Chi Minh uses ethos to support his logos, or logical, views on the
War causes more than destruction it also causes a person to be separated from the people they love in this world. The short story “The Sniper” by Liam O’Flaherty takes the reader inside the world of a sniper in war showing the dangers they go on a daily basis from having bullets fly over their heads to taking out the enemy in order to live. The poem “Thoughts of Hanoi” by Nguyen Thi Vinh tells the reader the story of brothers separated by war scared of meeting each other on the battlefield against each other. The article “On the Bloody Borders:Mexico’s Drug Wars” by Tim Padgett reveals just how dangerous the war of drug dealing in Mexico is by taking the reader inside the war. The common theme in all genres is war only finds new problems trauma,destruction, and death of loved ones.
In the poem “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” the author, Randall Jarrell discusses the darkness and brutality of war, as well as the role of a soldier during wartime. Jarrell uses an extended metaphor, as well as informal diction towards the end of the poem, to convey his meaning that war is wasteful to some lives and during wartime soldiers are viewed as expendable or disposable. Jarrell contrasts between the darkness and light of the life of a soldier with a metaphor in the first two lines. Jarrell says, “From my mother’s sleep..”, which is viewed as the birth of the gunner, in a normal life, not during wartime, but Jarrell compares the mother to the bomber jet that the gunner sits in, saying he falls into “the State”, which could be
