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Dehumanization In The Things They Carried

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1990, when The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien was published the reality of Vietnam was still a much recent memory for most. The fear of being drafted, the heartache that came with losing your friends and family in the war, and not to mention the mental scarring it did to those who came out of Vietnam alive. The Things They Carried highlighted some of these things and even showed a bit of what life was like after coming out of something as emotional and traumatic as a war like that. However, from the point of view of a Vietnamese veteran the book could make it appear as if the Vietnamese were being dehumanized and disgraced, and it can also seem like it tries to make people sympathize with the American soldiers who invaded Vietnam. Throughout …show more content…

How the war affected them physically, as well as mentally. Many of the soldiers suffered from PTSD, some were haunted by the terrible things that had happened to them or others while in the war, and some even committed suicide because of the pain they felt after the war. From the perspective of an American this could just be seen as something that is natural that comes from war, and with such a devastating and traumatic war cases like this are to be expected. Although; to look at this from the point of view of the Vietnamese it could just be seen as a way to sympathize with the soldiers who invaded Vietnam. To be Vietnamese and to interpret the text in this way would be outrageous and could probably infuriate them to no extent. The north Vietnamese at the time were trying to raise a new country under communism that would have connected all parts of Vietnam, but because the United States of America was afraid of the spread of communism they decided to invade Vietnam and prevent this from happening. They evidently failed and the war was lost, so this book could be seen as a way to forget about how horrible the loss in Vietnam was and how terribly the U.S. soldiers suffered from having to fight in the

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