In Tim O’Brien’s “Where Have You Gone Charming Billy”, the contrasting moods of the nightmarish rice patty and rejuvenating sea show that you can never leave your trauma behind when you come of age. Paul Berlin is a new soldier, fighting in the Vietnam War, afraid of being caught out, Paul and his troops had to head to the sea, but on their way, they had to pass a rice patty, it was all “mud and algae and cattle manure and chlorophyll, decay, breeding mosquitoes and leeches as big as mice, the fecund warmth of the paddy water rising up to his cut knee”. The use of imagery to describe the rice patty illustrates the effect of the disgusting rice patty have on Paul Berlin which create a nightmarish mood. Disgusted and afraid, Private First Class
In this chapter, O’Brien contrasts the lost innocence of a young Vietnamese girl who dances in grief for her slaughtered family with that of scarred, traumatized soldiers, using unique rhetorical devices
In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been” by Joyce Carol Oates, Connie is a normal teenage girl who is approached outside her home by a guy named Arnold Friend who threatens to harm her, and she obeys, if she does not get in the car with him. Connie is the main character in this story who teaches us that sometimes we might search for adult independence too early before we are actually ready to be independent and on our own. Connie is so focused on her appearance that she works hard to create a mature and attractive adult persona that will get her attention from guys. This search for independence conflicts with Connie’s relationship with her family and their protection of her. Connie’s insecurity and low self-esteem is triggered by her fear of intimacy. Connie confuses having the attention of men with actually having them pursue her in a sexual way.
Critics of Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato have examined its narrative technique (see Raymond) and its position in literature as metafiction (see Herzog). Still other critics have commented on the motif of time (see McWilliams) and the theme and structure (see Vannatta). On the last point, critics find the structure of the novel is fragmented to reveal the nature of the United States' involvement in Vietnam. Unfortunately, this fragmentation makes the novel appear structurally weak. Critics have found no unifying element to the parts to affirm the sense of wholeness readers feel after completing O'Brien's novel. Nevertheless, the reader senses that the seemingly random construction of the novel serves to underscore the random nature of the Vietnam war. However, to lightly dismiss O'Brien's organization as simply fragmentary does great disservice to this American author. A critical examination of a traditional element found in American Literature since its inception--the symbolic use of Nature--unifies Going After Cacciato and places the work firmly in the Romantic tradition. Just as Romanticists have always relied upon Nature to unify and add substantial depth to their novels so, too, has O'Brien. Specifically, a different element of Nature appears in each of the sections of the novel. The novel divides into three distinct parts: the observation post chapters, the recollected history chapters, and the chasing Cacciato chapters. In the observation post chapters, Nature is represented by the sea. In the recollected history chapters, Nature is represented by the land and the fresh water. In the chasing Cacciato chapters, Nature becomes ...
In Vonnegut's novel, Galapagos, the narrator, Leon Trout, attempts to understand humanity's cruelty after witnessing the Vietnam War's brutality and lack of purpose. As a marine in "...a nearly endless, thankless, horrifying, and, finally, pointless war..." (Galapagos 254), Trout struggles to come to terms w...
A man begins to cry. Not because of sorrow or joy, but because he’s terrified. The man who once enjoyed viewing the firework show that symbolized the freedom of his nation now cowers, because of the hardships he endured to maintain the freedom of his nation. Like many war veterans, the man suffers from PTSD. Billy Pilgrim, a WWII veteran, also suffers from PTSD. While Kurt Vonnegut wrote his novel Slaughterhouse-five before PTSD became an official diagnosis, the protagonist of his story, Billy Pilgrim, displays the disease’s symptoms. Vonnegut uses Billy Pilgrim’s non-linear voyage through time as symbol to reflect his theme of the destructiveness during and after war.
The story is riddled with death; all of the dead he’s has seen: Linda, Ted Lavender, Kiowa, Curt Lemon, the man he killed, and all the others without names. Through his memories of them he relives his time in Vietnam. By telling their stories he “keeps dreaming dreaming them alive.” to try and restore his
Tim O'Brien uses many interesting literary devices in his collection of short stories about his experiences in Vietnam. One of the most striking, yet understated, is his fleeting reference to M&M's. O'Brien allows them to be seen as something of a mystery, an enigma. O'Brien transforms M&M's into a symbol of America: mystical, powerful, and incredible. O'Brien also uses the simple image of a yo-yo to explain the necessity of American GI's to transform their mental attitudes to something different in order to survive the war. M&M's and yo-yo's are two very powerful symbols that O'Brien uses to explain the mentality of American soldiers in Vietnam.
The three narratives “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, “Song of Napalm” by Bruce Weigl, and “Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen all have the same feelings of war and memory, although not everyone experiences the same war. Zabytko, Weigl, and Owen used shifting beats, dramatic descriptions, and intense, painful images, to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the devoted awareness of those who fantasize war and the memories that support it.
Coming home from the grueling experience of being a soldier in World War I, he felt ecstatic when he saw a trout swimming in the stream. The perils of war took a devastating toll on Nick, as he suffered from a physical wound while in action. The camping trip here is like an oasis, which will let Nick to recover from all the distress. “Nick looked down into the pool from the bridge. It was a hot day. A kingfisher flew up from the stream. It was a long time since Nick had looked into a stream and seen trout. They were very satisfactory...Nick’s heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling.” (178) The healing process begins here with Nick re-acclimating himself with one of his favorite hobbies: fishing. “He started down to the stream, holding his rod...Nick felt awkward and professionally happy with all the equipment hanging from him...His mouth dry, his heart down...Holding the rod far out toward the uprooted tree and sloshing backward in the current, Nick worked the trout, plunging, the rod bending alive, out of the danger of the weeds into the open river. Holding the rod, pumping alive against the current, Nick brought the trout in...” (190,193,195) Nick finally reels in a trout after the big one got away, getting to the feeling of relaxation and washing away the horrors of war. By pitching his tent out in the forest and being able to function by himself so smoothly, Nick shows how he represents the trait of stoicism. He did not complain or stop living, coming back with the trauma of war. Going camping, he is able to relieve himself through using all the nature around him, showcasing his
In the short story “Chickamauga”, the author Ambrose Bierce uses a young boy to connect to his audience with what is the disillusions of war, then leads them into the actuality and brutalities of war. Bierce uses a six year old boy as his instrument to relate to his readers the spirits of men going into combat, then transferring them into the actual terrors of war.
Lalage Snow’s Photographic Triptych is three photos of Private Chris MacGregor, a US soldier, taken during his time at war, showing the degradation of his physical features with an accompanying quote from the soldier for each photo presenting his emotions. Tim O’Brien’s short story is about his experiences as a soldier which emphasises the emotional impacts of war more than the physical impacts. The Photographic Triptych is more effective as it presents both the emotional and physical implications of war equally whereas O’Brien’s short story focusses heavily on the emotional impacts with a lesser focus on physical impacts.
The author, Tim O'Brien, is writing about an experience of a tour in the Vietnam conflict. This short story deals with inner conflicts of some individual soldiers and how they chose to deal with the realities of the Vietnam conflict, each in their own individual way as men, as soldiers.
War is cruel. The Vietnam War, which lasted for 21 years from 1954 to 1975, was a horrific and tragic event in human history. The Second World War was as frightening and tragic even though it lasted for only 6 years from 1939 to 1945 comparing with the longer-lasting war in Vietnam. During both wars, thousands of millions of soldiers and civilians had been killed. Especially during the Second World War, numerous innocent people were sent into concentration camps, or some places as internment camps for no specific reasons told. Some of these people came out sound after the war, but others were never heard of again. After both wars, people that were alive experienced not only the physical damages, but also the psychic trauma by seeing the deaths and injuries of family members, friends or even just strangers. In the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh about the Vietnam War, and the documentary film Barbed Wire and Mandolins directed by Nicola Zavaglia with a background of the Second World War, they both explore and convey the trauma of war. However, the short story “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” is more effective in conveying the trauma of war than the film Barbed Wire and Mandolins because of its well-developed plot with well-illustrated details, and its ability to raise emotional responses from its readers.
Throughout Tim O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, a plethora of stories are told concerning the lives of a select number of soldiers in and out of the Vietnam War. In his writing, O’Brien also conveys his own thoughts on the art of storytelling and the nature of stories themselves. In these passages, O’Brien provides a detailed analysis of the challenges of storytelling, the effects of time on memory, the role of imagination in storytelling, the reason for retelling a story, and a story’s purpose and process for the reader.
“And then one morning, all alone, Mary Anne walked off into the mountains and did not come back” (110). Tim O’Brien’s short story “The Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” presents an all-American girl who has been held back by social and behavioral norms – grasping for an identity she has been deprived the ability to develop. The water of the Song Tra Bong removes Mary Anne’s former notion of being as she, “stopped for a swim” (92). With her roles being erased Mary Anne becomes obsessed with the land and mystery of Vietnam and is allowed to discover herself. Through the lenses of Mark Fossie and the men in the Alpha Company, Mary Anne becomes an animal and is completely unrecognizable by the end of the story. Mary Anne, however, states she is happy and self-aware. The men of the Alpha Company argue for virtue in that Mary Anne was “gone” (107) and that what she was becoming “was dangerous… ready for the kill” (112). They did not want to accept a woman becoming something different from what women always were. In “How Tell to a True War Story” we are told that a true war story “does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior” (65). Mary Anne did not truly become ‘dark’, because to her this is not a story about war; this is a story about a woman attempting to overcome gender roles and the inability of men to accept it.