Chapter 5-”Enemies” In this chapter, O’Brien shows that men can often get far too worked up about small things being lost, and the grudges are often kept for quite a long time. Chapter 6-”Friends” O’Brien shows that though the soldiers may have made an agreement to kill each other if they were seriously wounded, that promise is often not kept once the day comes when they actually are in a near death situation. Chapter 7-”How to Tell a True War Story” This chapter shows that the perception of war people often get from the stories they hear from war veterans is typically very far from how it truly is, for they often make different endings or choices to make it seem far more moral than it often is. Chapter 8-”The Dentist” O’Brien shows how men often feel a need to show excess bravery in war, and Lemon does this in a strange way, by being excessively dramatic about his fear of dentists, then
The men and women currently deployed to these areas frequently engage in combat, and regularly witness injuries, trauma, and death. Even if a person tries not to internalize the horrific events they experience, they will likely be changed by war. Soldiers are negatively affected by combat; many return from war with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, alcoholism, and suicidal thoughts. Some soldiers return from war with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. According to the article "What Is Combat PTSD?”, Diagnosing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can be hard because soldiers view reporting their symptoms as a sign of weakness (What, 1).
Throughout history, many soldiers faced life-threatening or traumatic events during war, as it took heavy tolls on them. Some events would cause them to relive these experiences through either nightmares or flashbacks. Tim O’Brien, a veteran who has received a Purple Heart, knows how traumatic events can affect soldiers as it makes them do things “brand-new and profound” which, in his story, “How To Tell A True War Story”, shows his characters “a piece of the world so startling there was not yet a name for it”(293). There are many terms used to describe this behavior, as war has always had an impact on people, but the most common is called Post-traumatic stress disorder, otherwise known as PTSD. It was the new name for an old story, and thanks to the Vietnam War, this disorder has been examined more closely.
Throughout his book, O'Brien tells several different stories with various themes ranging from physical and emotional burdens, the deaths of Ted Lavender, Curt Lemon, Kiowa, and Linda, shame used as a motivation, Curt Lemon and the dentist, to name a few. O'Brien also recounts many other stories, the pagoda his group stayed at, the VC soldier he had killed, the trip he and his ten-year-old daughter, Kathleen, take back to Vietnam 20 years after he left there. However, how much of each story is true? Did this happen, did that happen? O’Brien didn’t remember everything that occurred while he was in Vietnam, so he added to the story to make it better, or to fill in the gaps.
Development Through Lists and Repetition In The Things They Carried The Things They Carried is a story by Tim O’Brien that is comprised of many short stories that all come together to tell a winding tale from many viewpoints of one war story through the Vietnam war. The first story in the book, also entitled The Things They Carried, is literally a story about what the soldiers carried with them, both physically and emotionally. As an introductory story to the entire novel, O’Brien uses the opportunity to introduce the setting and characters in a very non-traditional way. O’Brien uses lists and repetition to show how tedious each day of work is for a soldier, but also how the soldiers perceive what is to us extraordinary as a normal day’s work. The lists also describe the emotional baggage each soldier carried, such as First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross’s (the leader of the squad) love for a girl back home.
“The Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier as a Primary Source” History gives us the basis in which we gain the knowledge of past wars that have been fought, some of which led in victories while others resulted in great losses. However, when looking back into history one may find it difficult to really interpret and understand exactly how the people living at the time felt. It is actually nearly impossible to fully understand the hardships many people have gone through. For this reason, in order to attempt to understand, people now greatly depend on written sources such as textbooks as well as diaries and memoirs. While secondary sources, as in textbooks, interprets and analyzes what happened in the past, a primary source, which is considered an original writing as in a diary, is composed at the time of an event in the past.
Combat has been portrayed in the media for many years, especially in this day and age. Movies, books, and videogames all play a major role in portraying war and military life. Unfortunately many of these depictions tend to glorify war, and it is anything but glorious. In the film The Hurt Locker viewers are given a very gritty and realistic perspective of the life of military personnel in a warzone. Because the film takes place in modern day Baghdad, it also provides the point of view of soldiers in our own generation—something that may cause the viewer to think about how easily they could be the ones in a country at war.
Affield’s memoir illustrated the very real and raw aspects of war. Wendell’s personal account of life as a soldier started with the horrors of boot camp, eventually explained the terrors of war and finally ended with the rejection and ridicule that he and other soldiers endured on his return home. His detailed accounts helped readers better understand the situation and events that occurred during and after the war in Vietnam. Once Affield enlisted with the United States Navy he was originally stationed on a gunner Naval ship, USS Rogers, and traveled to Vietnam to aide in fighting the Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin. This West Pac cruise was difficult, yet it ended up being one of the least devastating assignments of his Vietnam experience.
This novel is a narrative of Kien, a North Vietnamese soldier during the Vietnam War, chronicling his loss of innocence, love and anguish. In this novel, the author has used many literary devices to portray to the audience the pain and sorrow Kien’s was exposed to during the Vietnam War. Bao Ninh has episodic structure and the symbolism of women in the novel to involve the audience into Kien’s inner emotions, battles and pain from the war. This structure has been by showing the present time and immediately switching back to Kien’s past, ‘flash backs’ and memories. Bao Ninh uses this structure to create the audience to have the same emotions as the character which is Kien.
In the stories “How to Tell a True War Story” by Tim O ‘Brien, and “Soldier’s Home” by Ernest Hemingway, both authors illustrate to the reader the effects of war on an average person, and how that plays out on their emotional being. Both authors served time in the army, at different points in time, and they both portray in their stories the lives of young men coming back home from the war and having to face “normal” life after being traumatized by the atrocities of war. In “Soldier’s Home”, the setting takes place in Krebs’s hometown, but it’s as if Krebs doesn’t feel home, he doesn’t feel like he belongs. He comes back home from war much later than everyone else; sounds like he is avoiding coming back after being traumatized by life-and-death situations that his family and friends back home could never comprehend entirely. Hemingway reinforces the portrayal of his felling “out of place” back home by calling him by Krebs, instead of Harold (like everyone else), which could probably be a war nickname he feels more comfortable with.