Don Wulffson: Summary

I read this book in high school, and I really enjoyed it. After we were finishing reading the book we had a guest speaker who was a Vietnam war vet come into our class and speak on different parts of the book. I picked this short story to do my paper on because I felt like I had the most connection to this story because of my prior knowledge from reading the book. I do think I am getting some parts confused with the short story and the book. I know when I read the book in high school some chapters were very dull and boring but others were exciting and interesting. After reading the short story it was just a refreshment of the interesting things that happened in the book.

Choose a character out of the novel; describe the characters personality and placement in the novel.

Already while reading this book I felt closer and more understanding of the, because I too left college in the fear that if I didn’t join now, I would never have another chance to serve my country.

Given that this book is written similarly to how a story would be written, it is easy to become absorbed into its pages. I really appreciated that it was, for the most part, structured on a timeline. Russell does an outstanding job of conveying the hardships, dreams, and emotions of those she writes about. Following the lives of different families from the beginning of their misfortune until the very end of the war (for many, the end of their lives), it is incredibly effective in stirring up emotion in all but the most heartless of

I know I can’t even imagine what type of problem that these kid soldiers had to overcome not just to survive but to become normal people again. Although things didn’t go as well as Ishmael Beah planned for his life. I was amazed by his courage and inspired that someone who could go through all that crazy stuff and fight through it to still be successful. I think you should read the book also it’s a good reminder that if he can go from kid soldier to a New York author then our possibilities are limitless

This quote in the first chapter of the book sets the overall tone. The author Tim O’Brien uses his language through out the book in an extremely straightforward manner. He does not sugar coat the way going to war and being in a war is. He does not use stories of heroes,

Richard Wagamese’ expertise in the realm of story telling unlocks a dream world where he has the ability to accurately portray the protagonist’s emotions directly to the reader. Wagamese is able to flip in between current events and past stories to ultimately immerse the reader into a world of imagination. Additionally, he perfects the order in which these stories are being told. By doing so, it allows the reader to take pity upon the protagonists at hand in an utmost flawless succession. Lastly, through effective and clever story telling, Wagamese is able to engage the reader by placing them in both the shoes and minds of his protagonist. It is the profound ability of story telling Wagemse possesses that allows him to create intriguing protagonists who drive the plot of the novel through the stories told.

Reading this book I found it to be very intriguing. It is a story about men from the 101st Airborne Division’s legendary 502nd Infantry Regiment known as “the Black Heart Brigade. These men were deployed to the country’s worst and most unfavorable location at the most dangerous time. The platoon the book talks about the most would be the Bravo Company First Platoon. They were constantly in a rough patch throughout the entire book, facing constant leadership changed and trying to survive the Triangle of Death. Being in this hostile environment caused many of the soldiers to lose discipline and not even care about life or death for their own sake. Their mentalities were at an all-time low, causing them to do crazy things like rape a fourteen year old Iraqi girl and murdering her and her family cold blooded. It was a tragic deployment and we can clearly see and feel the motions they had during their time in Iraq.

When I first started reading the book I was very excited because the first few pages were very detailed and made me want to read the rest of the book as soon as possible. The only thing I really didn't like was when he flashed back to his time back in his hometown in Minnesota. "Late at night, the town deserted, two or three of us would drive a car around and around the town's lake, talking about the war" (16). I can see why he puts this in the book because it has a lot of relevance to his life in that time. He was a protestor of the war and didn't think that it was right. What O'Brien signifies by flashing back to this time before he was drafted it shows the major conflict in the book, being drafted into a war that he wanted no part in. Other than that I really never lost focus in the book, partly because as his time in Vietnam progressed the action grew and his experiences were growing more and more exciting. "Then the RPG fire resumed. Our own return fire stopped as everyone ducked and sweated. Men were shouting. Running" (152). The whole second half of the book was mostly action packed like that quote. It is pretty hard not to get into a book when there is that kind of action going on.

In the opening chapter, Paul Baumer, the narrator, recalls how schoolteachers, such as his own, persuaded their bright-eyed students to put on the German colors. Paul’s teacher, Kantorek, taught his students the importance of the war as he instilled in them the values of nationalism and patriotism. Everyday, he sprouted war propaganda at them in “long lectures” (Remarque 11). He glamorized the war telling his students that they were “the Iron Youth” (Remarque 18) and that “duty to one’s country is the greatest thing” (Remarque 13). Consequently, his students left class enlisted in the war one by one “until the whole of the class went” (Remarque 11). When the students left the comforts of home to volunteer for the war, they valued their country above all else and were prepared to face their own death as doing so lined up with what they believed in.

I would definitely recommend this book because it is about the logistics of the war and not

In this essay, I will discuss how Tim O’Brien’s works “The Things They Carried” and “If I Die in a Combat Zone” reveal the individual human stories that are lost in war. In “The Things They Carried” O’Brien reveals the war stories of Alpha Company and shows how human each soldier is. In “If I Die in a Combat Zone” O’Brien tells his story with clarity, little of the dreamlike quality of “Things They Carried” is in this earlier work, which uses more blunt language that doesn’t hold back. In “If I Die” O’Brien reveals his own personal journey through war and what he experienced. O’Brien’s works prove a point that men, humans fight wars, not ideas. Phil Klay’s novel “Redeployment” is another novel that attempts to humanize soldiers in war. “Redeployment” is an anthology series, each chapter attempts to let us in the head of a new character – set in Afghanistan or in the United States – that is struggling with the current troubles of war. With the help of Phil Klay’s novel I will show how O’Brien’s works illustrate and highlight each story that make a war.

As a reader you get a broad picture of the many different personalities of the soldiers and what kind of human beings they are.

Combining all these serious themes into a very entertaining book should attract many readers. However, there was some confusion with the story line. Since this book is a collection of interviews, it wasn’t a conventional story. When I first started the book, I wasn’t sure why I was jumping from country to country and why each story was completely different. As I continued to read the book, I was able to understand that these were a collection of eyewitness accounts of the war. Also, Max Brooks uses a rife amount of vulgar language which I think could have been kept out. However, it made it real and that’s what this book is about.

Technically, there are multiple different authors in this book with two editors. The book is set up so that each chapter is a new story from a separate author. These chapters each have their own distinctive author, and writing style. The editors of the book decided to set up the book this way in order to give it an authentic feel. Each chapter comes from a discrete location, with its very own divergent story to tell.