Rumor of War Book Review

The Vietnam War that commenced on November 1, 1955, and ended on April 30, 1975, took the soldiers through a devastating experience. Many lost their lives while others maimed as the war unfolded into its full magnitude. The book Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam by Bernard Edelman presents a series of letters written by the soldiers to their loved ones and families narrating the ordeals and experiences in the Warfield. In the book, Edelman presents the narrations of over 200 letters reflecting the soldiers’ experiences on the battlefield. While the letters were written many decades ago, they hold great significance as they can mirror the periods and the contexts within which they were sent. This paper takes into account five letters from different timelines and analyzes them against the events that occurred in those periods vis a vis their significance. The conclusion will also have a personal opinion and observation regarding the book and its impacts.

The thought of going to war excites many young men that have not experienced or have been a part of one. Individuals want to find a way out of the routine, mundane lifestyle that plagues many suburban households. People that just want some excitement enlist in a military branch that will not benefit them or anyone for that matter. In Philip Caputo’s book titled A Rumor of War, the true side of how war demolishes the human spirit is shown. His nonfiction novel captures the nasty side to war. Philip informs us how the mentality of a young man can change with the constant thought of death and fear as a daily ritual. Men do not think about death occurring to them at a young age. This changes when death is surrounding them on a daily basis during wartime. Caputo intended to inform the young public about the horrible nature of war. Mistakes are doomed to repeat themselves if people are not well informed and Caputo is trying to avoid future mistakes. Death surrounded him and many of his comrades during the Vietnam War. When the life of anyone is on the line, one tends to do drastic and sometimes unthinkable things to cope with the fear of death.

Penned during two distinctly disparate eras in American military history, both Erich Maria Remarque's bleak account of trench warfare during World War I, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Tim O'Brien's haunting elegy for a generation lost in the jungles of Vietnam, The Man I Killed, present readers with a stark reminder that beneath the veneer of glorious battle lies only suffering and death. Both authors imbue their work with a grim severity, presenting the reality of war as it truly exists. Men inflict grievous injuries on one another, breaking bodies and shattering lives, without ever truly knowing for what or whom they are fighting for. With their contributions to the genre of war literature, both Remarque and O'Brien have sought to lift the veil of vanity which, for so many wartime writers, perverts reality with patriotic fervor. In doing so, the authors manage to convey the true sacrifice of the conscripted soldier, the broken innocence which clouds a man's first kill, and the abandonment of one's identity which becomes necessary in order to kill again.

In The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien uses the art of fabricating stories as a coping mechanism. Trying to distinguish the difference between fictional and factual stories is a challenge in this book, but literal truth cannot capture the real violence that the soldiers dealt with in Vietnam, only “story truth” can. He explains, “If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made victim of a very old and terrible lie.” (O’Brien 65). The novel illustrates that storytelling is a way to keep the dead alive, even if it may not be a true story.

The Viet Nam War has been the most reviled conflict in United States history for many reasons, but it has produced some great literature. For some reason the emotion and depredation of war kindle in some people the ability to express themselves in a way that they may not have been able to do otherwise. Movies of the time period are great, but they are not able to elicit, seeing the extremely limited time crunch, the same images and charge that a well-written book can. In writing of this war, Tim O'Brien put himself and his memories in the forefront of the experiences his characters go through, and his writing is better for it. He produced a great work of art not only because he experienced the war first hand, but because he is able to convey the lives around him in such vivid detail. He writes a group of fictional works that have a great deal of truth mixed in with them. This style of writing and certain aspects of the book are the topics of this reflective paper.

A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo, is an exceptional autobiography on a man's first-hand experiences during the Vietnam War. Philip Caputo is a Lieutenant during the Vietnam War and illustrates the harsh reality of what war really is. Caputo's in-depth details of his experience during the war are enough to make one cringe, and the eventual mental despair often experienced by soldiers (including Caputo) really makes you feel for participants taking part in this dreadful war atmosphere. Giving way to the parties and the common fun associated with college kids, Caputo failed out of college and realized what he really wanted to be was a Marine. He joined the Marines and went through a

A Rumor of War is a memoir written by Philip Caputo describing his experiences as a soldier in the Vietnam War. Since one can read about his experiences first hand, one can also witness him change as a person. Throughout the text, Caputo undergoes a change in his personality. He starts off as a young man who is eager for adventure, but as he experiences through combat, a new metamorphosis of Caputo forms. The beginning of the text starts with the narrator, Caputo, describing his current life.

The ethical wilderness introduces the rules of engagement in many respects. Nobody wants to die in combat, especially when loss of life can be prevented. To Americans, it is nearly impossible to differentiate between Vietcong soldiers and civilians. In many instances, the two are interchangeable. A natural response is to engage anyone who is not an American or not where movement is expected. However, rules of engagement are created to prevent the slaying of noncombatants to include civilians and medical personnel in the like. These rules are not concrete, but in fact, they are very fluid so as to prevent ambiguity in changing circumstances. Marines with nervous trigger fingers make following such rules very difficult.

Tim O'Brien crafts both a compelling story of the Vietnam War in The Things They Carried and a tale about the nature of truth in stories. Blending truth and fiction intricately into a tapestry of text, O’Brien intersperses a simple Vietnam War memoir with

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.

If Philip Caputo’s memoir is meant to be the story of an American soldier, Trâm’s diary becomes the story of the Vietnamese people and their struggle. On May 7th 1970 Trâm recounts her feelings on the history of war in Vietnam, and how the people still remain undeterred. “Twenty-five years immersed in fire and bullets, we are still strong.” Not only after all this fighting and after all that Trâm herself has witnessed and endured she is still confident in her country. “We will persevere and be courageous and hold our heads high and take the offensive.” Trâm’s diary makes it clear that there was never any doubt in

Early on March 16, 1968, a company of soldiers in the United States Army’s Americal Division were dropped in by helicopter for an assault against a hamlet known as My Lai 4, in the bitterly contested province of Quang Ngai, on the northeastern coast of South Vietnam. A hundred G.I.s and officers stormed the hamlet in military-textbook style, advancing by platoons; the troops expected to engage the Vietcong Local Force 48th Battalion—one of the enemy’s most successful units—but instead they found women, children, and old men, many of them still cooking their breakfast rice over outdoor fires. During the next few hours, the civilians were murdered. Many were rounded up in small groups and shot, others were flung into a drainage ditch at one edge

Forty-two years has passed since the Fall of Saigon 1975, yet still the Vietnam War and its aftermath are not forgotten. The first of the wars that was publicly broadcasted, earned the Vietnam War the name “Television War.” Despite the public’s division on the war, young men filled with patriotism and purpose went off to battle. These men unskilled to fight in the jungles of Vietnam, would soon learn the harsh realities of war. The authors of the novels , Falling Through the Earth and Matterhorn use their characters to highlight the psychological effects of war.

Vietnam fundamentally changed how society perceives soldiers— the good guys and the bad guys were no longer who and what they claimed to be. Tim O’Brien, author of Going After Cacciato, expresses the ambiguity of Vietnam by developing characters who do not fall under traditional characteristics of “good” and “evil,” but instead seek escape from their conscription to war through their actions and their thoughts. Private First Class Paul Berlin, protagonist and antihero of Going After Cacciato, creates a vivid dreamscape in which his squad chases Cacciato, a dimwitted AWOL soldier, to Paris on foot across Asia. Berlin establishes immensely detailed fantasies during his night at the observation post, as he considers Cacciato’s journey, yet

What makes A Rumor of War an amazing read is Caputo’s ability to capture the feeling of war through text. As stated earlier, the book is separated into three parts for a total of eighteen chapters. A great aspect of each part begins with a quote as a way for the reader to understand the theme of each part; this also is used in each individual chapter to make each part of the story easy to understand. It also gives shows how Caputo has grown as person in terms of how knowledgeable he is. However, to truly understand Caputo change during Vietnam, an analysis of the content within A Rumor of War is needed. Caputo makes this task simple by dividing the book into three parts which each detailing how his mindset changes.