Imagery And Symbolism In 'The Dead Young Vietnamese Soldier'

2009. A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. In literary works a symbol can express an idea, clarify meaning, or enlarge literal meaning. Analyze a symbol in George Orwell's 1984, and write an essay demonstrating how that symbol functions in the work and what it reveals about the characters or themes of the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.

Hundreds of battered and bruised bodies littered the floor. Sounds of fiery explosions and endless gunfire filled the air. Soldiers, whose uniforms were splashed with crimson, fought viciously and ruthlessly. Their aggressiveness stemmed from a newfound desperation to stay alive, which in turn, was caused by the war: The Vietnam War. The Vietnam War had claimed over thousands of lives and left survivors haunted by its atrocious events. The Vietnam War had an especially huge impact on Terry Erickson’s father and George Robinson, two fictitious characters from the short stories “Stop the Sun” and “Dear America.” The differences and similarities between the two men are striking, and they merit rigorous scrutiny.

The Vietnam War had a life changing effect on the soldiers, including O 'Brien. They came into the war as boys as young as seventeen and left either in body bags made of their own poncho or they came out alive. But were they ever really alive? No, they had their innocence ripped out. They weren 't young boys anymore. Their young selves were killed out in that jungle and all that was left was a carcass of gruesome memories of the tragedy of war, the deaths of their fellow soldiers. They changed as people. O 'Brien came into the war as a young man against war. A young soul believing that the Vietnam War was wrong and there was no need for fighting or killing. However, toward the end of the book he tells us the story of how he got revenge on a fellow soldier. This soldier, while in the middle of war, took too long in treating O 'Brien for a bullet wound and also should have treated him for shock. O 'Brien almost dies on the field but fortunately

Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War is a novel that is a personal view of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a Vietnamese soldier. Like the American novel “The things they carried”, this novel brings about the effects of war on people, and especially how it defeats the human capacity for things such as love and hope. Bao Ninh offers this realistic picture of the Vietnam War’s impact on the individual Vietnamese soldier through use of a series of reminiscences or flashbacks, jumping backwards and forwards in time between the events most salient in memory, events which take on a different theme each time they are examined. His main protagonist Kien, who is basically Bao himself, looks back not just at his ten years at

A symbol is someone or something that represents someone or something else. Symbols are used in literature because they represent a character, object, or place in a story. Similarly, there are plenty of symbols throughout the book Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. Some examples of symbols in the book are Melinda’s tree projects, Maya Angelou, and Melinda’s report for Mr. Neck.

In Catherine Halloway’s critique, she takes notice to the young Vietnamese soldier who looked around 20 and had a hole in his face. She mentions the fact that the death of this young man “. . . still haunts the narrator long after the end of the war” (251). Although O’Brien stated that this was not a true story, he did say that when he was in war, he saw piles of bodies. Even though it has been twenty years, he is still left with “faceless responsibility and faceless grief” of seeing these “real bodies with real faces” (252). Twenty years have gone by, and O’Brien is still plagued with the guilt of seeing dead bodies even though his actions were not the cause. Since there were a large number of soldiers in the Vietnamese army were very young, some even in their early teens, this could also be a factor in why O’Brien is living with this immense

Through the course of the Vietnam War, guilt relentlessly haunts soldiers that either killed someone or believed that an ally died because of their actions. During the chapter “The Man I Killed,” O’Brien faces the guilt of killing an enemy soldier. One day, O’Brien threw a grenade at an enemy, and the enemy died. Although comrades told O’Brien that the kill proved necessary, he stared at the dead man for a long period of time. While he stared at the corpse, the thoughts of the dead man’s possible future flowed through O’Brien’s head (118-124). Most drafted men began the Vietnam War with a clean conscious; therefore, when a soldier kills someone for the first time,

According to the definition given by google, the term symbol is defined as “a thing that represents” (Google.com). Laura Esquivel, author of Like Water for Chocolate incorporates symbols to give her novel an in depth meaning for her characters rather than the glass mirror told upon each page. Esquivel uses symbolic morals of self guidance to seek the inner flame in every individual in society, Biblical reference such as the comparison between Tita and The Virgin Mary, and imagery from the premonition Tita had of her “White Wedding” (Billy Idol). These symbolic references create a living novel in the worlds between fantasy and reality.

A symbol is anything that stands for, or represents, something else. Many everyday objects we see symbolize or stand for something deeper; our wedding rings represent love and commitment, teams like the Sharks or Giants are named after animals and mythical creatures that symbolize strength, power, and stability. Similarly, in literature, symbols are used to give an object, character, or situation a deeper and more significant meaning. In literature, symbols can be ambiguous and difficult to understand because the same symbol can have different meanings; therefore, it is very important to know when and where to use symbolism in a story. For example, the color red can mean love, anger or danger depending on the context of the text.

Throughout war literature, fiction or nonfiction, almost every character comes face to face with death. There is no easy way around it, death will always happen. In Tim O’Brien’s, The Things They Carried, death is woven within various stories narrated by the main character, O’Brien himself. Of all the death that O’Brien is surrounded by, the one that may appear to some as “just another kill”, surprisingly leaves the biggest impact. It can be seen as ironic, but after O’Brien had thrown the grenade that killed this enemy soldier, he finally received the reality check of the Vietnam War. Not only was there a reality check, but O’Brien’s storytelling about this soldier gave a whole new meaning to death itself.

Twenty years after the war. Kathleen, O’Brien’s daughter asks if he had ever killed anyone. Kathleen represents a reader that can communicate to the author. He insists that he had never killed anyone however this is a lie. O’Brien killed a young vietnamese soldier with a grenade. O’Brien struggles with this guilt, insisting that it was not a life or death situation. Had he not pulled the pin, the man would have just passed by. Twenty years later he still imagines the young man walking, or sitting reading the

Symbol——The word originates from the Greek symbolon (σύμβολον) meaning token or watchword.A symbol is a person，a object or a conception that indicate, express some implys and another idea, visual image, gospel, action or physical entity. Symbol in the form of voice, gestures, signs,ideas or sense of sight images for passing on other ideas and beliefs.In considering the psychological impact of a symbol,Meaning Joseph Campbell camed up with the following definition: A symbol is an energy evoking, a directing agent.（Campbell, Joseph）

A symbol is a person, place, or thing in a narrative that suggests meanings beyond its literal meaning. It is also related to allegory, but it works more complexly. A symbol usually contains multiple meanings and associations. In the story "The Chrysanthemums," the author John Steinbeck portrays the meaning of chrysanthemums in a realistic and symbolic way. Chrysanthemums are simply flowers but a strong central symbol in a way that, chrysanthemums shows some other characteristic such connecting with a stranger, her childlessness, and social.

A symbol is an object, action, or event that represents something or that creates a range of associations beyond itself. There was three different symbolizes that explains everything Kien went through love, war, and death.

A symbol is literary device that contains several layers of meaning, often concealed at first sight, and is representative of several other aspects, concepts or traits than those that are visible in the literal translation alone. Symbol is using an object or action that means something more than its literal