Green Beret Ho Thhien Analysis

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A poem which arouses a strong emotion in me is “Green Beret” by Ho Thien. The poet has written the poem to show the brutality of the Vietnamese War and to show that the Americans are not always the good ones. He also shows the Vietnamese point of view on how the Americans treated innocent Vietnamese civilians. The poem is divided into two verses. In the first verse Ho Thien describes the weakness of a young Vietnamese boy as the American soldier in charge, Green Beret commands him to reveal the location of the Viet Cong. He is given only one minute to tell Green Beret the location of the Viet Cong or his father will be shot dead. This arouses a feeling of disbelief in me. The boy doesn’t tell the Green Beret anything so his father is murdered.…show more content…
This creates the feeling that the boy and his father are isolated from the outside world and makes it seem as if they cannot get help. I can understand how scared and afraid they must feel because usually bad things happen in isolated places. A good metaphor that Ho Thien uses is “The father was taken away behind the forest’s green wall”. This makes me feel sympathetic towards the boy and his father because they are separated by a wall of trees so thick and dense that they cannot speak to each other. To create an image of the boy, Ho Thien uses words like “frail” which makes me think that the boy is weak and vulnerable. I feel sad and sympathetic for him as he has “the eyes of a hurt animal... Against a face all eyes.” This makes me picture a small, frail boy, looking up at the Green Beret, terrified. Direct speech is employed to make the incident seem more vivid and to create the impression that the Green Beret is a despicable and disgusting character. Green Beret says: “Right kid tell us where they are, tell us where or your father –…show more content…
It appears that he is shouting at the boy, making the boy feel intimidated. At this point, I felt sorry for the boy as he is being put under imense pressure by Green Beret to give him the information he wants. Green Beret also says: “You’ve got one minute kid. Tell us where or we kill father... tell us where or your father – dead.” Green Beret speaks to the boy incorrectly, as you would speak to a foreigner to make sure the boy understood him. Even though, Green Beret is speaking to him using simple and easy to understand English, the boy may not have understood him, so this makes his father’s death even more shocking. I also feel sympathy towards the boy when Ho Thien repeats the words “in silence” after the boy’s father is shot. “And the sky and trees and soldiers stood in silence, and the boy cried out. Green Beret stood in silence...” This emphasises the fact that everything was silent and all that could be heard were the boy’s cries. I feel sympathy for the boy here because of how upset he was that his father had been killed. However, in the second verse, we see we were
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