Haie is not doing well. Paul is pretty nervous about being back from his leave. He feels something bad is going to happen. Coming so close to death after a bomb landing right next him he finds a soldier suffering in pain. He calmed the soldier to fight for his life but Paul know he won’t last very long.
Tim O’Brien, having experienced the Vietnam War, addresses the violence of war and its hellish, inherent effects on the people’s mind through portraying Paul Berlin as fearful and mad. Throughout the story, Paul was always seen expressing fear. At the beginning of the story, as Paul and the other soldiers were on their way to the ocean, he became too fearful and started regressing Paul pretended he was not a soldier, but an innocent boy doing a campfire while chatting with his father (page 131). Another example would be the time Paul started counting his steps and pretending they are dollar bills to fight fear, which shows he was fearful (page 134). The fact that Paul regresses and starts counting his steps, which shows before entering the war he was carefree and wasn’t used to fear, explains how the violent war poses such inherent effects on Paul’s mind by turning him from such a carefree, to a fearful person.
While “honor” and “self-realization” may be ideological terms often associated with a war cause, “brutality” and “self-scarification” are perhaps more realistic descriptors. The brutal and ferocious atmosphere of war often forces its young soldier constituencies to sacrifice any childish views of life, and mature. Walter Dean Myer’s novel, Fallen Angels, details the tragic loss of innocence of group of young soldiers who, surrounded by the unspeakable horrors of the Vietnam War, are forced to prematurely journey into manhood. Though initially and wholly innocent, the tense atmosphere of war forces Richie Perry and his fellow soldiers to leave behind former romantic views of war and realize its moral ambiguity. A truly unfortunate byproduct
Some learn to laugh and joke about it in order to lighten up the situation. For instance when Curt Lemon is killed while tossing a grenade in a game, his remains are left all over a tree, which some of the soldiers proceeded to call, “The Lemon Tree”. Though dealing with people dying around them is hard, dealing with the fact that they may have killed someone themselves is even harder. O’Brien talks about how he killed a man with a grenade. It is hard for him to deal with throughout the story because it causes him to think of many different things, not only about what he did, but about the man he killed.
Non-commissioned officers were needed to ensure the health of soldiers. Soldiers would become casualties due to poor hygiene and food poisoning while in camp. NCOs ensured that soldiers were equipped with proper clothing and given healthy food needed to sustain them. Fighting in the Revolution was very risky for the common soldier. A man would leave his home risking life and limb for the sake of freedom.
In Tim o’ briens “the man I killed” the authors concept on dehumanization was a sense of fantasy.as protagonist in the short story tim dehumanizes his victim by killing him with a grenade in the villages of my khe. As tim starts to describe the wounds that the dead soldier inflicted, he starts to build upso much guilt and confusion for the guy. Foretelling an entire life for his victim as if he knew the dead soldier beforehand. For example “He was not a fighter,his health was poor, his body small frail. He liked books.
We see fragmentation in their respective relationships through the structure. The Manhunt is written in couplets which suggest a relationship between two people. However, there is little rhyme in these couplets which shows us that there isn’t harmony in their relationship. Perhaps the war in which Eddie was in has made his mind focus on the destruction of war to the extent that he can’t think of his relationship. After all, he suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Nobody likes the war and nobody wants to fight but for some reason the world had a problem and it needed to be fixed. The war has its positives but there are a lot more negatives such as, the draft, people leaving their family, death, etc... The point that rash tries to prove about the war in this essay, is when the farmer talks about losing his own boy in the war. “He fought for Mr. Lincoln do he?” the boy asked “not no more” the farmer replies. Whether the farmer is an antagonist or protagonist in this story, Rash still portrays him to be sad and pissed that his son died in the
“..Father’s silence was infinitely more menacing than a flood of threatening speech. That night the old man did not eat,” (pg.260) Pain was obviously felt by the father even though he did not show it because of his pride. The father also experienced pain when his son sent him a letter explaining that his grandchildren want to see him. “That night he hardly slept, from remorse—and a vague fear that he might die without making it up to them.” (pg.262) Besides fear, he also has pain because a thunderstorm is coming in the small village and he starts picturing his grandchildren and he says to himself he
This can be interpreted as Owen attempting to illustrate the voice of many soldiers, through a poem. The line, “…Waiting for the dark” indicates that soldiers were simply waiting for death to come, either because they were critically injured, or because they were waiting to go into battle. Another interpretation of this is that soldiers cannot bear the day, as the sight of their injuries, and their comrades’ injuries is too big of a strain for them, therefore they would rather choose isolation over companionship. The rest of the first stanza, Owen describes how war had changed everything. He writes that “voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn” which indicates that laughter of children saddens him as he isn’t capable of laughing, because of the war.