How Does War Change Ordinary People

Throughout the book, O’Brien repeatedly states his struggles in telling “a true war story.” One of the obstacle he faces in telling “a true war story” is the readers’ misconception that “truth” must be an event and not an emotion. To begin, O’Brien claims “A true war story is never moral… If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted… then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie… you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil” (68-69) and “All of us… like to believe that in a moral emergency we will behave like the heroes of our youth” (38). In these two statements, O’Brien has shown us that people want not a

| A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. (pg. 65)

People both today and back then have been traumatized by war’s brutal combat, fallen victim to cruel soldiers, and had war cause sorrow and grief to them. Through characters seeing death, characters that are soldiers, and characters that are not in combat, Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See demonstrates that war affects individuals negatively, even if they are extremely

“Everybody get down!!!” He freezes for a second and then it suddenly strikes him--his heart beats almost out of his chest, and his hands are shaking uncontrollably; this is war. This is Vietnam, a cruel war between the Americans and Vietnamese that takes place in a jungle. War is undoubtedly frightening and may seem like the number one threat for the soldiers, but it is not; it is not remotely close. The true threat at a time of war, especially in a place such as Vietnam is isolation. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien illustrates the danger of isolation and why it is the greatest danger in Vietnam. Soldiers are aware that they are detached from society; this continuously haunts them, and as a result, they damage themselves emotionally.

This is illustrated by the epigraph, War is inherently paradoxical. One of the first paradoxes that Tim O’Brien introduces in the book is the matter of fact and fiction. This is shown through the individual stories that comprise the book. One that is very potent and hard for the reader to get through, is that of Rat Kiley and the baby water buffalo. It shows how in grief and anger, Kiley acts out, “ He shot it into the hindquarters and in the little hump at its back.

For countless of people today, the Vietnam war is just something from the past, but for Tim O’Brien, the Vietnam War will endlessly be with him. This one year in Vietnam changes the lives of this platoon from emotional pain, physical pain, as well as muscle pain will commence to cloud their vision. The weight of the things that they carried takes great effect on them that they have to continue to endure on this one year trip in Vietnam and remember these memories for the rest of their lives..

Imagine one day you receive a mail from the government that you been draft to go a war at a different country. How would you feel if you know that purpose of this war is unreasonable in any senses? Angry, anxious or even confused. Vietnam War was “a personal failure on a national scale” (Hochgesang). There are many videos, documents and movies about the Vietnam War that show different angles of the Vietnam veterans’ experience and how the war really changes their life. In “The Things They Carried” written by Tim O’Brien, he argues about how the Vietnam War affect the soldiers in many ways, not only physically, but more important is the psychological effects before, during and after the war.

Wars are a difficult place to be. “THE VIETNAM WAR transformed a generation” (Roberts 1). With all that happened during the war such as exposure to

The Vietnam war was an absolutely brutal time in American history. The war lasted for the majority of the 1960s and left many young men dead. The short story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien and the film Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam give us just a glance into the war by giving using the three themes of fear, pressures, and blame/guilt to embody the concept of war and how it absolutely changes a person. War not only destroys countries, but it destroys people.

War is often thought about as something that hardens a soldier. It makes a person stronger emotionally because they are taught not show it and deal with it internally. People say that death in war is easier to handle because it is for the right reasons and a person can distance themselves from the pain of losing someone. However, there is always a point when the pain becomes too real and it is hard to maintain that distance. In doing so, the story disputes the idea that witnessing a traumatic event causes a numbing or blockage of feelings. Rat Kiley’s progression of sentiment began with an initial concern for the buffalo, transforming into an irate killing of the animal, and then ending with an ultimate acceptance of death. These

In the mental setting, “search[ing] the villages, . . . kicking over jars of rice, frisking children and old men, blowing tunnels, [and] sometimes setting fires” (O’Brien, 399) along with the constant reminder that it was kill or be killed wore down and weighed heavily upon the American soldiers. “They are asked to violate social norms, [to carry] out orders to fire upon the enemy [,] (MacLean, 564)” and commit other atrocities that corrupt their moral code. However, more daunting than the mental strife is the physical challenges the soldiers must overcome. O’Brien describes how on a daily basis the men could catch disease like “malaria and dysentery . . . [and] lice and ringworm (399)” and how the monsoons and the jungle threaten them. The physical setting is perhaps a secondary antagonist, respectively following the enemy soldiers and the war. The physical setting challenges the American soldiers and attacks in ways that differs from the enemy soldiers; the monotonous, never-ending jungle and terrain drains their energy, the monsoons threaten to drown them, and the threat of disease is almost as terrifying as a gunshot wound. The physical and mental challenges in Vietnam create insurmountable burdens for the soldiers to try to cope

The Vietnam War was a controversial conflict that plagued the United States for many years. The loss of life caused by the war was devastating. For those who came back alive, their lives were profoundly changed. The impact the war had on servicemen would affect them for the rest of their lives; each soldier may have only played one small part in the war, but the war played a huge part in their lives. They went in feeling one way, and came home feeling completely different. In the book Vietnam Perkasie, W.D. Ehrhart describes his change from a proud young American Marine to a man filled with immense confusion, anger, and guilt over the atrocities he witnessed and participated in during the war.

In war, the characteristics of a soldier, civilian, and the nation as a whole can change drastically due to the nature of war. A person introduced to war is physically and mentally changed because of the traumatic experiences they encounter. Tim O’Brien uses contrasts and contradictions in his novel, The Things They Carried, to reveal how the characters are affected by the war in Vietnam and how their personalities shift through it. The characters who are impacted by the war are exposed to its horrors and are traumatized forever. While in the vicious jungles of Vietnam, the soldiers in war get weary and homesick.

The same men that enter the war are not the same men that exit. Their human spirit is lost when their boots hit the foreign soil. Soldiers are portrayed as strong, rigid individuals that through all war and conflict still remain composed and unaffected. Throughout the book, O’Brien broke down that stereotype to hone in on the reality of the men who risked everything in Vietnam through his characters.

It can be hard to fully comprehend the effects the Vietnam War had on not just the veterans, but the nation as a whole. The violent battles and acts of war became all too common during the long years of the conflict. The war warped the soldiers and civilians characters and desensitized their mentalities to the cruelty seen on the battlefield. Bao Ninh and Tim O’Brien, both veterans of the war, narrate their experiences of the war and use the loss of love as a metaphor for the detrimental effects of the years of fighting.