The Lake Of The Woods And The Vietnam

When Kathy and John first got married they enjoyed each other?s company ?they had fun shopping together, picking out cheap furniture, and old rugs.? Kathy was John?s first priority; he seemed more relaxed and content in her eye. That was until politics took a role in their life. ?Kathy despised it all. Every *censored*ty minute. The political wifey routine. She used to get the shakes out in public.? He is the link to her disappearance. His Vietnam secrets and betrayals pushed Kathy towards the edge. ?Kathy got pretty scared sometimes. The detective act. The stuff you?d yell in your sleep. It gave her the heebie-jeebies.? When Kathy thought about his spying games, and how politics seemed to be more important then her, it gives the reader the impression he is no longer a loving man in

The Vietnam War began in 1954, consisting of many extensive, horrific years of battle that seemed to create more harm to the United States and its soldiers rather than to North Vietnam. The 500,000 United States military personnel returned home with the loss of the war and the loss of their friends on their minds. Although the physical and emotional experiences that the men went through is unfathomable, Tim O’Brien does a great job portraying what life as a soldier was truly like in the Vietnam War. In the book The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien depicts the unstable emotional and psychological condition of the American soldiers through the symbolism of their belongings and personal anecdotes from their lives.

Unlike most war stories, in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” the war in Vietnam is not glorified and instead, the story is believable and raw. The horrors of war that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his squadron experience in an unfiltered, yet emotionally detached way that molds the structure and the language. This story, through its structure and techniques, displays the idea of how disillusionment and loss of innocence create unimaginable burdens for the American soldiers. O’Brien portrays the characters’ burdens with a monotonous and lulling tone through the use of flashbacks, setting, imagery, and metonymy.

Imagery, detail, and symbolism play a crucial role in this work. Imagery has the function of painting a picture of the situation in the reader’s mind so that he or she is able to develop a version of the story individually. It makes the reading a more personalized experience that helps the reader to understand what’s going on. When O’Brien was just about to escape to Canada to avoid being drafted, he described the scene that was presented in front of him. “The shoreline was dense with brush and timber. I could see tiny red berries on the bushes.” In this quote, the reader can visualize the setting of the lake where he has to make his life-changing decision. It appeals to the visual sense by describing the shoreline and even the sense of

The reports in this novel are prefaced with a quote by Robert Shaplen, which sums up the feelings of those Americans involved in the Vietnam conflict. He states, "Vietnam, Vietnam . . .. There are no sure answers." In this novel, the author gives a detailed historical account of the happenings in Vietnam between 1950 and 1975. He successfully reports the confusing nature, proximity to the present and the emotions that still surround the conflict in Vietnam. In his journey through the years that America was involved in the Vietnam conflict, Herring "seeks to integrate military, diplomatic, and political factors in such a way as to clarify America's involvement and ultimate failure in Vietnam."

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.

The short story that will be discussed, evaluated, and analyzed in this paper is a very emotionally and morally challenging short story to read. Michael Meyer, author of the college text The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature, states that the author of How to Tell a True War Story, Tim O’Brien, “was drafted into the Vietnam War and received a Purple Heart” (472). His experiences from the Vietnam War have stayed with him, and he writes about them in this short story. The purpose of this literary analysis is to critically analyze this short story by explaining O’Brien’s writing techniques, by discussing his intended message and how it is displayed, by providing my own reaction,

The chapter “On the Rainy River” from the book The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien follows a young college graduate who is drafted into a war he does not believe in. In an effort to dodge the draft by fleeing to Canada, he is inevitably stopped by his internal struggle. The author uses diction to demonstrate this struggle through the tone revealed. O’Brien’s tone in this chapter is ashamed, which is conveyed through the narrator’s driving emotions, others’ perception of his actions, and in his ultimate decision to go to Vietnam.

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.

Tim O’Brien wrote many novels including the mysterious fiction novel, In the Lake of the Woods but is mostly known for his most popular novel The Things They Carried. In the Lake of the Woods is a novel about a couple who recently rented a cabin that is near a lake to get away from everyone and everything that is wrong with their lives. John Wade, who was running for U.S. Senate, lost the election due to his past actions in the Vietnam War at My Lai. Kathleen Wade is the spouse of John Wade, who supported john in every way for his dream of becoming a U.S. Senate. The story shows the struggle a Vietnam veteran has to go through to live a normal life. O’Brien, once again, brought the repugnant Vietnam War back into one of his novels but this

This novel features fifteen short stories each about Vietnamese immigrants living in the United States. Their stories are experiences of the war, the effects it had on them and their families, or their lives after moving to a new country. As a reader of Louisiana literature, at first glance, this book did not seem to identify with this subset of literature. Butler surprises his readers with these different short stories bout the Vietnamese people. The blend of Vietnamese folklore and traditional American realities, create this overlapping. Not only does he show another voice in Louisiana literature, but one that would not normally be considered a voice to be heard. Tobey C. Herzog asked Butler, “What is your chief asset as a writer?” Butler’s

In “The Things They Carried” he shares his stories that happened in Vietnam, and the book paints one of the most realistic pictures of the Vietnam War. “The Things They Carried” shows us what the soldiers experience in the war, and it also reflects how the war can have a profound impact on human life. Therefore, the dominant theme Tim O’ Brien reveals in “The

People say that when a story unfolds chronologically, then it is boring. It becomes predictable, which makes it boring. Form my personal experience, I do not like books or movies that are straight forward. Twist and turns are what grabs my interest, and I am sure that is true for some other people. So, any story that has a series of unexpected things occurring, you will find me read it. In the novel, “In the Lake of the Woods,” Tim O’Brien provides a series of these twists and turns. The story is about a Vietnam Veteran, John Wade, whose wife Kathy Wade is missing. John suffers from PTSD and has many unusual behaviors which makes us suspicious of him. O’Brien implies many possibilities that could have

The United Stated entered the Vietnam war in 1954, the United States joined the war to end the spread of communism. In The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien some of the protagonists are Kiowa and Tim, some antagonists are… the novel is about O'Brien's time in the Vietnam war and how it has affected him and his friends after the war. O'Brien's intended audience for the novel is anyone interested in learning about war and he developed the novel by using morality and storytelling and memory.

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.