Rylan Gumphrey Timed Writing Rewrite Both the Vietnam War and WWI had large impacts on the United States. Despite this, similarities are expressed in the poem “Dreamer”, about WWI, and an article about the Vietnam War. They both express the universal themes of hardship and sorrow through the first-hand accounts of soldiers and civilians who were involved. In both the poem “Dreamer” and the article on Vietnam, hardship is expressed through the first-hand accounts of men. In “Dreamers”, the author writes “Soldiers…with his feuds, jealousies, and sorrows” (Sassoon), which shows that every soldier in WWI faced many hardships. The author goes on to describe these hardships when he says the men were “…gnawed by rates, and in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain…” (Sassoon). This description shows just what type of terrors the men in war faced. This feeling of hardship is also seen in the article about Vietnam. In the article, Larry Vetter talks about a …show more content…
In the poem “Dreamers” Sassoon describes the soldiers’ sorrow with the quote “…they must win. Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.” (Sassoon). This quote specifically says that the soldier’s had to give up their lives in order to win. This becomes even more sorrowful when Sassoon writes, “Soldiers are dreamers…they think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.” (Sassoon). This goes to show that the soldiers were constantly filled with sorrow since they dreamed of home, even though they knew they were going to die. This sorrow is also expressed in Sullivan’s article about Vietnam. In one story, Vo Cao Loi talks about his experience in the war. Vo said that when Americans came to his village he ran, he also said “when I returned, after the Americans left, I counted 97 dead in all-including my mother.” (Sullivan). This proves that everyday people, not only soldiers, were filled with sorrow due to the
“This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war...”
All of these hardships the soldiers faced caused an overwhelming sense of hopelessness and constant fear. To counter this sense of despair, the soldiers had many ways of coping with or avoiding the reality of the war. Tim O’Brien, with Going after Cacciato and In the Lake of the Woods, addresses th...
The soldiers that fought in the Vietnam War had to endure many incredibly horrifying experiences. It was these events that led to great human emotions. It was those feelings that were the things they carried. Everything they carried affected on them whether it was physical or mental. Every thing they carried could in one-way or another cause them to emotionally or physically break down. Pain, loss, a sense of safety and fear were probably the most challenging emotional, and psychological feelings for them to carry.
An emotional burden that the men must carry is the longing for their loved ones. The Vietnam War forced many young men to leave their loved ones and move halfway across the world to fight a ...
Soldiers on the front line in Vietnam do not have the ability to celebrate birthdays or sit around the Christmas tree or the luxury of having a yard that needs mowing. They just wanted peace, love and comfort, not a six-figure paycheck. American men were holding deep, raw, genuine feelings. “They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing – these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” (17) Every man possessed the burden of what was not the American dream, and the minor taste they may have once had. Naturally, this desire looked unique according to each being, but the universal truth was that Vietnam as an American soldier was not the aim. The American soldier was not capable of touching the American dream, while others were dying for success they were just dying. Each of them had a longing, a hope that they would see their kid’s youth, that they would experience part in a romantic love story, that they would still appreciate life when they returned. The American dream was not a option any longer; it was another false confidence that was provided for the sake of optimism and for encouraging hard work. The American dream is a card game. The cards of potential accomplishment are illusions for countless people. Following all the patience and thought
One of the hardest events that a soldier had to go through during the war was when one of their friends was killed. Despite their heartbreak they could not openly display their emotions. They could not cry because soldiers do not cry. Such an emotional display like crying would be sign of weakness and they didn’t want to be weak, so they created an outlet. “They were actors. When someone died, it wasn’t quite dying because in a curious way it seemed scripted”(19). Of course things were scripted especially when Ted Lavender died. It had happened unexpectedly and if they didn’t have something planned to do while they were coping they would all have broken down especially Lieutenant Cross. Cross...
When soldiers think about commoners after a traumatic experience, they often get frustrated that no one will ever understand their plight. Siegfried Sassoon portrays this in “Suicide in the Trenches” by showing anger at the happiness of other people. Saying “You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye / Who cheer when soldier lads march by, / Sneak home and pray you’ll never know / The hell where youth and laughter go.” (Sassoon 9-12), he effectively pours his unsolvable frustrations onto other people although they are not to blame. The men he is describing are people not only who don’t care, but never had the opportunity to care because they never thought about putting themselves in the same position as these soldiers. Remarque portrays the same message, but in a different tone as he brings it to a sad end because he has no energy to fuel any more anger. He is trying to reason with himself, but then thinks aloud “And men will not understand us-for the generation that grew up before us, though it has passed these years with us already had a home…, and the war will be forgotten” (Remarque 294). The men who may be ‘remembered for their service’ will merely be remembered within their family as another human being, but not a person of strong willpower. Along with the soldier, the war itself will be forgotten
Many individuals look at soldiers for hope and therefore, add load to them. Those that cannot rationally overcome these difficulties may create Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tragically, some resort to suicide to get away from their insecurities. Troops, notwithstanding, are not by any means the only ones influenced by wars; relatives likewise encounter mental hardships when their friends and family are sent to war. Timothy Findley precisely depicts the critical impact wars have on people in his novel by showing how after-war characters are not what they were at the beginning.
Wars affect everyone in some way, especially soldiers who fight in them, like those in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. O 'Brien concentrates a lot on the psychological trauma that solders, like himself, confronted before, during, and after the Vietnam War. He also focuses on how they coped with the brutality of war. Some were traumatized to the point where they converted back to primitive instinct. Others were traumatized past the breaking point to where they contemplated suicide and did not fit in. Finally, some soldiers coped through art and ritual.
Each soldiers experience in the war was devastating in its own way. The men would go home carrying the pictures and memories of their dead companions, as well as the enemy soldiers they killed. “They all carried emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing- these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight.” These were the things that weighed the most, the burdens that the men wanted to put down the most, but were the things that they would forever carry, they would never find relief from the emotional baggage no matter where they went.
Tim O’Brien served in the Vietnam War, and his short story “The Things They Carried” presents the effects of the war on its young soldiers. The treatment of veterans after their return also affects them. The Vietnam War was different from other wars, because too many in the U.S. the soldiers did not return as heroes but as cruel, wicked, and drug addicted men. The public directs its distaste towards the war at the soldiers, as if they are to blame. The also Veterans had little support from the government who pulled them away from their families to fight through the draft. Some men were not able to receive the help they needed because the symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) did not show until a year
...ust deal with similar pains. Through the authors of these stories, we gain a better sense of what soldiers go through and the connection war has on the psyche of these men. While it is true, and known, that the Vietnam War was bloody and many soldiers died in vain, it is often forgotten what occurred to those who returned home. We overlook what became of those men and of the pain they, and their families, were left coping with. Some were left with physical scars, a constant reminder of a horrible time in their lives, while some were left with emotional, and mental, scarring. The universal fact found in all soldiers is the dramatic transformation they all undergo. No longer do any of these men have a chance to create their own identity, or continue with the aspirations they once held as young men. They become, and will forever be, soldiers of the Vietnam War.
In the novel, The Sorrow of War, author Bao Ninh looks at the events of the Vietnam War through the documentation of the protagonist, Kien. As the narrative continues, story after story unfolds as new ideas begin to emerge from the text, and early on the question is asked, why write? For Kien, it was writing that kept his mind and his body at ease. It was indeed a way to cope with the more haunting events stuck in his memories, but more than anything else, the writing became stories that touched upon both love and sorrow alike. For that reason, The Sorrow of War brings a new meaning to war: that of normality where past and present often seem to overlap.
...though people believe that, those on the home front have it just as a bad as the soldiers, because they have to deal with the responsibilities of their husbands, there is nothing that can compare to what these men have gone through. The war itself consumed them of their ideology of a happy life, and while some might have entered the war with the hope that they would soon return home, most men came to grips with the fact that they might never make it out alive. The biggest tragedy that follows the war is not the number of deaths and the damages done, it is the broken mindset derives from being at war. These men are all prime examples of the hardships of being out at war and the consequences, ideologies, and lifestyles that develop from it.
As we got further and further into the Vietnam War, few lives were untouched by grief, anger and fear. The Vietnamese suffered the worst hardship; children lay dead in the street, villages remained nothing but charred ashes, and bombs destroyed thousands of innocent civilians. Soldiers were scarred emotionally as well as physically, as