Thich Quang Duc Analysis

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.

“Whatever the motives for conflict, they are incorporated in individual attitudes and expressed in popular opinion.” (Albig 1939, 139) It has often been argued that Defence Secretary Robert McNamara “has done more to shape that conflict than anyone outside the Viet Cong” (Kennedy 1993, 93). This is an important illustration of the power of the media; through the media, “The domino theory [was] the dominant interpretation of events in Indochina” (Schulzinger 1998, 88).

On March 16, 1968, over 300 unarmed civilians were killed in South Vietnam during an indiscriminate, mass murder event known as the My Lai Massacre. Conducted by a unit of the United States Army, the My Lai Massacre ranked one of most appalling atrocities carried out by US forces in an already savage and violent war. All victims involved were unarmed civilians, many of which were women, children, and the elderly. Victims were raped, tortured and beaten, even mutilated before being killed. The massacre was forever seared into the hearts and minds of the American people as the day “the American spirit died.”

To this day the Vietnam War is still considered to be one of the most devastating wars in history and has been a topic of resentment to the American culture thirty-three years after its end. For the American public it’s marked as being the point in history where distrust in our government was at an all-time high, mainly because most of the war’s carnage was witnessed on television for the first time. For all the bloodshed American and Vietnamese soldiers suffered through, the war has left a perpetual mark not only on the United States but ultimately has left a permanent scar on the soldiers who fought and managed to survive the war. Renowned war poet, Bruce Weigl, like most young American men during the time was only nineteen when he

Mitchell writes, “He did it in Washington where everyone could see/ because/ people were being set on fire/ in the dark corners of Vietnam where nobody could see./ Their names, ages, beliefs and loves/ are not recorded” (10-15). Morrison’s self-immolation was an act of protest against the United States’s actions in the Vietnam War, and his actions directly paralleled the government’s actions as “people were being set on fire.” Mitchell’s use of paradox between “he did it in Washington where everyone could see” and “the dark corners of Vietnam where nobody could see” demonstrate Morrison’s wish to bring the immorality of the Vietnam War to the public’s attention. By committing self-sacrifice in front of the Pentagon, Morrison is ensuring that people will learn about him, which also directly contradicts the Vietnamese people who “are not recorded.” Mitchell repeats the phrase “where everyone could see” throughout his poem in order to highlight Morrison’s convictions that the United States’s actions in the Vietnam War are immoral. By including Morrison’s beliefs about morality, Mitchell indicates that Morrison’s actions were not just an act of protest but also one based on a moral dilemma. Morrison’s internal moral dilemma is also demonstrated in Ferguson’s poem: “Not an unhappy man/ but one who could not stand/in the silence of his

Confused by the explosions and machinegun fire coming from both sides, many reporters couldn’t quite tell who had the upper hand. The confusion left many reporters with the assumption that the enemy had taken over the embassy, even though it was an obvious win for American forces. It wasn’t long until a picture of three U.S. soldiers fighting for their life alongside two of their dead brothers was plastered onto the front page of the New York Times. American televisions and newspapers were being filled with the horrible images of the Vietnam War. For many Americans, this was their first glimpse at war, and it was gruesome. Even though the event at the embassy were less catastrophic than the reporters made it seem, the footage of U.S. troops fighting for their own embassy shocked many

This shows that Vietnam changes people. The land was so different, and so were the people, which both influenced craziness. The soldiers had to withstand all hardships and mental distractions while fighting for their country.

During the mid 1950’s, the Vietnam War turned to be the modern pinnacle for battles resulting in the deaths of 58,000 American soldiers and millions of Vietnamese death. It saw the viable destruction of modern technology such as the newly fashioned M-16 rifle and the Apache, a helicopter made for mass destruction. For the soldiers experiencing Vietnam, it was truly an experience which would shape their hearts and minds forever. As evidenced in Tim O’ Brien’s The Things They Carried, The Vietnam War was an emotional tremor for the soldiers as they experienced deaths and created legendary tales which would define their lives, as well as future generations indefinitely.

Because of the recentness of the Vietnam War, those who have lived through it can give testament to the time period and the emotions of the war from their first hand perspective. The Vietnam War spanned a time period of growth in fashion, music, spirituality, and human rights. But, the fear, animosity, and long term mental issues that stemmed from the war have affected all of those, in the service or otherwise, that lived from November 1st, 1955-April 30th,

The Vietnam War was not only a battle, but it also marked the lives of those involved.

Through O’Brien’s description of the Vietnamese monks, he highlights the absurdity of the effect of war on the Vietnamese people. Americans find themselves often forgetting the effect of their presence in foreign countries. The Vietnamese people and their needs were affected indefinitely by the Vietnam War. What is also underestimated is how much of an emotional toll the Vietnam War took on the average citizen.

The remembrances of the Vietnam War are often thought upon with mixed emoptions. While there are those who praise the “bravest of men in our country” (Keith 38), some are stirred by the memorial, which happens to also be the most frequently toured site in the capital of the united states. It is covered with the names of over 50,000 men and women who served and died in the war of vietnam, it is regarded as a “shrine to the dead” (Taylor 24)  reminder of the loss of too many young Americans, and of what the war did to the United States and its messianic belief in its own overweening virtue.

The My Lai massacre remains one of the bloodiest and most shocking incidents in the history of the Vietnam War and yet it is not widely known as an important episode within the context of the war. The reasons for this are the attempted cover up of the incident by the US Army and then the US government and also the complete lack of consequences that the perpetrators received. In this essay the event and the relevant instigators along with the lack of appropriate action that was taken against them will be discussed. There are various reports and articles that outline the basic blueprint for what happened in My Lai and also the conflicting stories about just who should take responsibility for the deaths of the 504 people killed that day.

On the 8th of June 1972, photographer ‘Nick Ut’ took an iconic photo of a group of young kids running away helplessly as soldiers escorted them out of the danger zone, (the danger zone was an explosion of napalm that burnt and basically disintegrates everything). Early that day Nick heard that there was fighting happening in North Vietnam near the occupied village of Trang Bang. He stopped on the nearby bridge with other soldiers and journalists. It was around 1pm when a south Vietnamese plane dipped down aligned with the highway and dropped the napalm bomb on the village, which turned out to be an accident. As thick black smoke filled the air, emerging from it was multiple civilians crying and screaming as burnt flesh fell off their fragile

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.