Analysis Of Last Night I Dreamed Of Peace : The Diary Of Dang Thuy Tram

Every individual in this world faces some type of problem through out their lives, and everyone overcomes them in different ways. People sometimes release their stress and problems through writing what they feel, and by writing they feel they go somewhere else. Amy Tan, a Chinese American, struggled with her true identity which influence her works which mainly focus on identity, the Chinese American dream, and family struggles. Amy Tan had a childhood full of ups and downs, and they are all part of her stories and poems. She overcame many obstacles in her life and learned many lessons that are all reflected in her works. Many of Tan’s works are about personal experiences she had and about her family.

Gonyea, D. (2014). LBJ Legacy: Vietnam War Often Overshadows Civil Rights Feat. Retrieved from: http://www.npr.org/2014/04/09/300836769/civil-rights-act-anniversary-may-polish-lbj-s-image

In her text Tseng uses the formal element of the text effectively to communicate her experience regarding ‘home’. Each stanza of her poem is formed with 2 lines: 1 print, and 1 italics. Tseng goes back and forth between the print text and the italics to communicate how she communicates her home to others, and how she remembers her own home. Through this action she seems to counteract her perception of her home between how she tells others and how she remembers. Tseng starts off the poem with a line that seems to give no importance to her birthplace, “My birthplace is incidental.”(Tseng) She then continues under in italics and state, “Never forget your Mother Country”(Tseng) which hints her true feelings towards her birthplace and reveals a sense of nostalgia. Throughout the poem she accepts the stereotypes that americans, and outsiders place on the chinese in print text. She simplifies her journey to United States, and life in United States and then she continues to reveal the truth behind the first statement. The poem is a constant battle between the facade she puts on, and the actual author behind the facade. In her poem she talks of her experiences and homeplaces as if they are of no importance in the print text, but you can see that in the italicized text that they are the foundation of who she is today. In the last three stanza of her poem Tseng discards the Print text and stresses her true experience of her hardships, and the journey. In these last texts she creates a very vivid images of couple of her nights on the boat that she was on to get to United States. The last lines of the poem shows that her journey was truly a life or death

Communism as a political philosophy has had both its critics and nationalist proponents throughout recent history. As a tool for nationalistic movements in recent, one of the most compelling examples is how communism was introduced and used by Ho Chi Minh to help Vietnam become a unified and independent nation in the 1970s. Ho Chi Minh, a Marxist Leninist, charismatic and populist leader, adopted communism through his experiences, struggles, and challenges. Communism came to play an important role in bringing Vietnam independence and freedom from the French and subsequent colonialist rulers. Ho Chi Minh used communist to help the Vietnamese develop feelings of patriotism and nationalism toward the country. Ho Chi Minh created several

In the novel, “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles, the seasons develop actions and characters in the story. The story takes place at an all-boys boarding school in New Hampshire during World War II based off of the author’s previous experiences at a boarding school. The two main characters, Finny and Gene, experience character development alongside different seasons. In written works, seasons are commonly used to symbolically represent a change in the character’s personalities. The nature or setting of the story is used to specifically evolve Finny and Gene in seasons such as the summer, autumn, and winter. Each season change also generates an entirely different mood.

Many of the wives talked about the letter their husband/boyfriend sent home, and their inability to talk about anything other than the "weather". One particular wife stood out though for her husband's story. She said he husband left her a simple note that read “I love you sweetheart, but I can't take the flashbacks", before he went in to the garage and killed himself. In this case, it is obvious that whatever the soldier witnessed in Vietnam greatly affected him. He was unable to take seeing the atrocities that he witnessed in Vietnam anymore, he was willing to go to the extreme of taking his own life- dismantling not only his own life, but also his whole families- just to avoid seeing the visions anymore. This would lead many to assume that events the soldiers saw were horrific, and continued to affect them even after they had already returned home. One soldiers wife said "he lost his soul in Vietnam but it took 7 years for his body to catch up", soldiers were dehumanized by the things they had to in Vietnam and this cause them to "die" even though their hearts were still technically beating.

Happenings and the memories they bring about cause people’s emotions to be evoked, and notebooks are one way in which they can be recorded. In “On Keeping a Notebook”, an excerpt written by Joan Didion, the narrator talks about keeping a notebook that simply describe the main acts to express her feelings caused by it rather than recounting it. A notebook and its constituents represent the person’s character and denote the significant effect a certain occurrence has on them. Didion uses numerous rhetorical strategies to suitably reinforce her point and to appeal to her readers.

Imagine being suddenly drafted to war, not prepared for the death and horror. Young, confused, scared, naïve. During the Vietnam War, many young men were forced to face a war that changed them, and not necessarily for the better. Many of the men who went to war experienced terrors that changed them in a way that affected their lives after, as shown by countless war stories and poems. Norman Bowker, from Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (1990), is a perfect example of the hard-bitten war veteran archetype. Fighting in the Vietnam War and feeling as if he had a part in his friend’s death (Kiowa) caused him so much guilt and pain that he ended up hanging himself after endlessly driving around a lake when returning home. Similarly, Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem, “The Dead at Quang Tri”, emphasizes the ghosts that haunt soldiers during and after war. Overall, the haunting memories that characters deal with in war stories, like O’Brien and Komunyakaa’s, display the long lasting effects of death and war on the minds of soldiers.

“The only certain thing during the Vietnam War was that nothing was certain” the war the soldiers were going into was uncertain, the country was unknown full of jungles and diseases waiting to infect, and most of them felt uncertain that the United States should even be in the war since it was a war of politics to eliminate the worlds influence of communism (Kaplan). Of all the uncertainty, the only thing real to the soldiers was imagination; imagination became reality. “Imagination was a killer,” imagination caused the death of Ted Lavender from his drugs that departs him from reality, the burning of Martha’s uncertain love, and stricken fear into the soldiers (O’ Brien 235). Elizabeth Piedmont-Marton phrases fear as “infinitely heavy with the weighed fear,” and this fear caused a prolonged salvation. They needed to be saved from the god forsaken war and country that was out to kill them with each and every step they took into the jungle. Johnathan Tran believes that stories, “relives the lives of dead people.” O’ Brien goes on to mention a childhood memory of his nine year old friend named Linda who was bullied, and O’ Brien had no confidence to stand up to her bully and her torment right then and there. She died of cancer shortly after. But for O’Brien, she lives on to stay in his memories to be brought back to life in the power of his stories of her (Tran). The power of salvation from stories are derived from forgiveness, and to tell a story of someone that is to employ good feelings and thoughts of them. One of the objects carried by the soldiers that is infinite in abundance is the amount of stories to be told and the amount of power from these

A Separate Peace, which was written by John Knowles, has many themes. They are interconnected throughout the book. The most clearly portrayed theme is fear. It seems to be connected with the themes of friendship, jealousy, and war. As World War II was occurring, fear had taken over Gene's life through these various themes. When he visited Devon fifteen years after leaving the school, Gene claimed, "I had lived in fear while attending the school and I can now feel fear's echo" (Knowles 10). He felt like he had gained a separate peace after escaping from this fear.

In the speech “ Beyond Vietnam- A Time to Break Silence”, Dr. King speaks out on the issues brought upon by the Vietnam War and how it has a negative impact on African Americans. He displays a frustrated and irritated tone to shed light on this problem in order to entice anger within the African American community of Harlem and call them to fight against social injustice and fight for their civil rights.

In the events of Night and the Cambodian genocide, victims experienced the cruel separation from their families. On page 27 of Night, Wiesel recalls that the time he separated from his mother, was quick and simple. “Men to the left! Women to the right. Eight short, simple words spoken quietly, indifferently, without much emotion. Eight short, simple words. Yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother. I had not time to think, but already I felt the pressure of my father’s hand: we were alone” (Wiesel 27). Other than Wiesel, there must have been many other families who were torn apart during the Holocaust. In this extract, the German soldier directs the Jews to form two lines of men and women. It only took one statement for mothers for

Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is a diary composed by Doctor Dang Thuy Trâm who served as a battlefield medic during the Vietnam War. Dang Thuy Trâm was twenty –four when she volunteered to serve as a doctor in a makeshift clinic for the National Liberation Front (the Viet Cong) in Quang Ngai Province. Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is the diary Trâm kept of her experiences while serving in the field. Her diary covers the period of April 1968 until her death by American soldiers in June 1970. Dang Thuy Trâm’s diary demonstrates how the “enemy is human” yet what she is fighting for is far more substantial than what the American’s fight for. Trâm’s diary is much more than the story of one young woman on the battlefield. Last Night I Dreamed of Peace provides an insight into Vietnamese life during the war as well as the motivations of the Vietnamese people.

Bao Ninh's portrayal of postwar Vietnam also fosters a more objective viewpoint of the war. After the war, the Americans took their twisted memories back home, to an unscathed country where nearly everyone had something to go back to. For North Vietnamese soldiers, home was where the horror had been, and in many ways still was. He is plain in his message: "The recent years of war had brought enough suffering and pain to last them a thousand years." (75) Kien's slow, painful demise is brought on by the heavy sorrow of war as he is haunted by an "eternal past." (88) During the war North Vietnamese soldiers were but "insects or an ant" who

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