The Trauma of War Conveyed in Ninh's Short Story, A Marker on the Side of the Boat and the Film, Barbed Wire and Mandolins

War leads to oppression and leaves negative implications on all people and societies by impacting the poor, women, children, and nations as a whole. "War is a state of violent conflict between one or more groups" (Rasenberger 3). Rasenberger defines war as a state of conflict between one group within itself or several groups in combat with each other, what is not mentioned are the after-effects of war. War itself leads to many civilian and military deaths, an estimated 1.5-3.8 million people died during the Vietnam War and an approximate 500,000 people died in the Iraq war. The biggest tragedy of War is that it always results in fatality, but another key, negative, factor to understand is that after the War many adverse implications arise. Post-war ramifications in the nation fall upon the poor, women, and children, making them weaker and less motivated leading to the downfall of a society. Regardless if a nation wins or is defeated in war they have to deal with consequences of war and find solutions to the impacted people and society. It is essential to understand that there is never a true victor in war because regardless of the outcome, fatality and a fall of morale within society on both sides are inevitable. War has often been the solution to situations that required force or violence, but in recent times this has

When people talk about war it tends to be a sore subject. Although I stated what I thought on the outlook of how the war tells the story of those whose lives were lost in it the outlook on war can vary an unlimited amount. My first reasoning on my argument is that war consumes those involved. By involved I mean anyone who has been directly

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

“War does not determine who is right - only who is left.” ~ Bertrand Russell. The famous quote from Bertrand Russell describes the reality of war. War only lets the powerful and the wealthy side win and not the righteous side. On an average 378,000 people die each year at war while 1,450,000 people died in the Vietnam war. The Vietnam war started on 1 November 1955 and lasted until 30 April 1975. The war was fought between the North Vietnamese Communist government and the South Vietnamese Communist rebels known as the Viet Cong against the non-Communist South Vietnamese government and their ally U.S.A. The war destroyed the life of both, the North and South Vietnamese along with the other nations that took part in it. More than 1 million people were killed including civilians and over 3 million injured. Thousand were wives were left widows and hundreds of kids orphans. After consistent protests by the Americans, U.S.A withdrew from the later stages of war. The Vietnam War is a depiction that wars are murky and filthy and should be circumvented as they bring agony and desolation to the people. To show this I used three different mediums which are - Political Cartoon “Name a

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.

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.

The War not only affected those in Vietnam, but those still at home in America. Americans had split into two groups, known as the hawks and the doves. The hawks were people who supported the war and wanted the country to be victorious in its fight with Communism. The doves were the people that disagreed with the war. These were traditionally students, and people of the younger generation. Many veterans when they would return home, would join in these mass protests. One popular protest, which took place at Kent State University, resulted in 9 wounded people with 4 dead. The police at Kent State took action against a mass protest by opening fire. This is the evil that is created through war. Without the Vietnam war, there is no protest at Kent State. Without the Vietnam war, the college kid’s lives are spared. Without the Vietnam War, thousands of lives could have been saved. Neil Young said it best in his song Ohio. Ohio discussed the brutality of war but mainly the police brutality against the kids at Kent State. Vietnam was a tragic stain in American history.

The Vietnam War started in 1945, resulting in almost 60,000 American deaths and nearly two million Vietnamese deaths, according to Mintze. Years after combat countless Vietnam veterans suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder in every aspect of their lives (Price). Posttraumatic stress disorder is an illness that can happen to anyone who has gone through a horrifying experience. It has been documented in all forms of literature and films the brutality of the war and the side effects it came with. The history of Vietnam is quite long and winding and leaves one to question its purpose (Mintze).

Along with not seeing the bigger picture soldiers lost their ordinary lives due to the war and the contrast was so different between pre and post war that it was hard to cope with life for the men fighting in the war. “For Kien, the most attractive, persistent echo of the past is the whisper of ordinary life, even though the sounds of ordinary life have been washed away by the long storms of war. It is the whispers of friends and ordinary people that are the most horrifying.”(63) The strongest emotions occur as the story unfolds and life takes over from childhood fantasies, destroying individuals and their families as a whole society is remade for instance Kien’s sweetheart before the war. Kien abandons his lover and instead spends the next years plodding through the jungle where everything dies. "no jungle grew again in this clearing. No grass, no plants" (26). He had no true friends and he learned not to fear death but rather wish it. When war ends he has a struggle to rebuild that was once loss, he can no longer see the good of things while he slowly goes insane with out love and hope and of course no sweetheart to aid him. A very sad and classical effect of a war that was worthless to its soldiers and people.

The psychologist Sigmund Freud once said, “Because every man has a right over his own life and war destroys lives that were full of promise; it forces the individual into situations that shame his manhood, obliging him to murder fellow men, against his will.” He initially stated this when he was corresponding with Albert Einstein via letter. This quote is also a great explanation of the events that take place during war that people chose to not recognise. War is terrible, and no matter how hard we try, nothing will change that. Erich Maria Remarque shows us that soldiers have endured dreadfully throughout World War I in his book “All Quiet on the Western Front”. The character in the book, Paul Baumer, endures through the tragedies of war with some of his old schoolmates as well as new comrades that he meets along the way. They survive through all of the tragedies together, but in the end, the war made them lose their friendships as well as their lives. The reality is that war comes with consequences while it destroys people, and there is nothing that will ever be able to change that. The book “All Quiet on the Western Front” shows how war comes destroys people's lives with its consequences through three of its themes: the importance of comradery, the loss of innocence, and the horrors and brutality of war.

War, the principle cause of pain and loss, not only affects an individual, but also the land on which it is fought. Soldiers, both men and women who take part in this type of action undergo changes that completely transform them into a distinct person to the one they were before the war. This sort of combat also affects the normal civilians and their ways of living in such a zone since they must find ways to survive, which was the case of the people who lived in the Vinh Moc Tunnels along the demilitarized zone of Vietnam.

Howard Zinn says it best when he writes that “from 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny peasant country – and failed” (Zinn, 460). Zinn does not mince words when expressing his thoughts about the Vietnam War, because as Zinn says, Vietnam was basically a modern portrayal of David vs. Goliath. One could even go as far as to say that Vietnam was in essence a case of mass genocide in Vietnam. Thousands and thousands of Vietnamese and America soldiers were killed along with thousands upon thousands of innocent, Vietnamese citizens. War is an infectious disease and the Vietnam War is a perfect example of how deadly of a disease war can be. Everybody involved in the Vietnam War was affected, whether it was Vietnamese citizens, Vietnamese soldiers, American soldiers, or even American citizens back home. The disease that was the Vietnam War infected the hearts and minds of two countries half way across the world from each other.

The Vietnam War started in 1945, resulting in almost 60,000 American deaths and nearly two million Vietnamese deaths, according to Mintze. Years after combat countless Vietnam veterans suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder in every aspect of their lives (Price). Posttraumatic stress disorder is an illness that can happen to anyone who has gone through a horrifying experience. It has been documented in all forms of literature and films the brutality of the war and the side effects it came with. The history of Vietnam is quite long and winding and leaves one to question its purpose (Mintze).

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.

War makes all its soldiers its victims. It strips them of their innocence; all had dreams for their future. Their future will become a lost life or a life full of memories that will continue to haunt them. The memories of killing, friends being killed, almosts, etc. War contains many horrors like these.