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mental and physical consequences of war for soldiers
Vietnam wars effects on veterans
mental and physical consequences of war for soldiers
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book, and by the end of the book we feel like we know exactly how Perry feels, and we have a understanding of some of the hardships that the soldiers faced in Vietnam. In this book, Perry kills a Vietnamese man in a hut he was supposed to check out, and from this point on he does a lot of thinking about why he is fighting in the war. From experiences like this Perry changes both physically and mentally. Also he does a lot of thinking about himself, and he asks himself what kind of person he is. Then Perry looks deep inside and asks himself with “all the dying around me, all the killing, was making me look at myself again, hoping to find more then the kid I was. Maybe I could sift through the kid’s stuff, the basketball, the Harlem streets, and the find the man I would be.” In the beginning of the book Perry is very different than he is at the end. In the beginningof the book Perry goes into the war a little scared, because he doesn’t know what to expect. After
Perry is wounded and sent back to war he becomes horrified by the thought of going back to war, and throws up. Another difference between Perry before an after the war is the fact that before the war he had never killed anyone or had been around death that much. After the war you know that he will never forget these tragedies, because these are very traumatizing things to see, and they scar for life. One example that probably scared Perry for the rest of his life were the sounds he heard after Brew, and himself had been shot. He saw them trying to help Brew, but then “ I heard the zipper. I didn’t have to see it. I heard the zipper (208).” This sound, you can only imagine, is one of the scariest things you could hear, because you hear them working on him, but then to hear them zipping up the body bag has to make you wonder if your next.
Another thing different about Perry from the beginning of the war and till the end of the war is that in the beginning of the war Perry spends a lot of his time being concerned about the people killed in combat, and the feelings and thoughts of the opposing Vietnamese soldiers. After almost being killed Perry realizes what Peewee said was right.
returned from the war, he was not the same. His spirit had been taken away. He was
...uage in the book was vulgar and depicted gruesome visuals and Terry made no attempt to polish these veterans’ words. This overall made the experiences of the veteran’s that much more realistic. Even though there is no order in which the stories are told, there still is a sense of cohesiveness. Each individual story is different but yet they all go along with one another due to the themes of the stories. This book was historically correct and would be recommended to anyone who is unaware of the details of the Vietnam war since the first-hand stories would provide a better insight on what was actually experienced. Wallace Terry’s purpose in writing this novel was to seek out “a representative cross section of the black combat force.”(p. XV) Terry achieved his purpose by showing his audience that black war veterans endured the same as whites and perhaps even more.
He is the character that most sympathized with because of his past. He never had a connection with his alcoholic mother and siblings. His parents never gave him the love, direction, and the moral values that children need from their parents. This contributed to his behavior. While Perry was testifying, Dr. Jones characterized him with severe mental illness. He mentions that Perry has “paranoid orientation toward the world,” (Capote 297). He goes into further detail by mentioning that Perry “is suspicious and distrustful towards others, tends to feel that others discriminate against him, and feels that others are unfair to him and do not understand him,” (Capote 297). It is completely understandable why Perry would think like this. He was treated horrendously by the nuns in the orphanage and when he lived with his family. Since Perry never had anything good happen to him growing up, he feels like he has to take out his frustration on people who are good. Vengeance for what he did not receive. While in court, Perry mentions why he killed the Clutter family, “It wasn’t because of anything the Clutters did. They never hurt me. Like other people. Like people all my life. Maybe it’s just that the Clutters were the ones who had to pay for it,” (Capote 290). Dr. Jones diagnosis Perry as a paranoid
In the book, “In Cold Blood”, Perry’s childhood was discussed on pages 125-128.It was a letter written by his father to help Perry obtain parole. This is where you learn the possible roots of
Perry Smith’s past proves to be highly influential his psychological state of mind. He grew up in an unstable home as his mother was an alcoholic and his father remained absent for long periods during his life. His home life was very insolvent as a child until his parents divorced when he was six years old. After that, he was sent to a Catholic orphanage where he was punished by the nuns. Whenever Smith would wet the bed, the nuns would beat him. Perry states, “I had weak kidneys and wet the bed every night. I was severely beaten by the cottage mistress, who had called me names and made fun of me in front of all the boys” (275). First signs of his disturbed psychological state were brought up around this time. “She was later discharged from her job. But this never changed my mind about her and what I wish I could have done to her and all the people who made fun of me” (275). His father then came, ...
...ting in the war is not a tragedy, a victory, a win, nor a loss but that it is no better then the real world. It is discriminatory, dishonest, and inefficient. He then notices that war is in some way unethical and irrational and that dying and living is just pure luck. Ultimately, Richie understands that there is no distinction between bad or good in the heat of battle, which caused him to realize that war taught him to him to reevaluate the understanding between life and war on his way back home from Vietnam.
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...
Throughout the novel, Tim O’Brien illustrates the extreme changes that the soldiers went through. Tim O’Brien makes it apparent that although Vietnam stole the life of millions through the death, but also through the part of the person that died in the war. For Tim O’Brien, Rat Kiley, Mary Anne and Norman Bowker, Vietnam altered their being and changed what the world knew them as, into what the world could not understand.
...ome aspect of war, from battling with enemies to how battle spiritually destroys young men. The one positive point of this novel is how friends cared for one another when going through tragedies and stressful experiences. It also portrays how strong a soldier needs to be, in order for them to be in the war.
Perry carries an interesting personal dictionary, a snake belt, and letters received in jail, to represent his defining characteristics. Perry values the intelligence found in him, and envies that in others. His heterogeneous personal dictionary shows he celebrates intelligence, but does not understand it fully. Perry searches for a stable environment, because he was deprived of one as a child. Perry’s belt symbolizes a stable time in his life, where he was happy. His search for forgiveness from his mistakes is apparent throughout the novel. He keeps the letters his family wrote him in jail because he hopes to find forgiveness in them. Examining the important objects people keep is telling to their personalities.
When Perry contemplates if he should lose sleep over this conflict, he replies “Why? Soldiers don’t lose much sleep. They murder, and get medals for doing it” (Capote 291). First off, this statement is inaccurate as countless soldiers come home with PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and their lives are changed forever. Perry, on the other hand, made jokes about the murder just thirty minutes later. Soldiers have motives behind their killings, whether it was an order from a commander or self defense, they have a legitimate reason. Concerning the Clutter family case, a motive is never discovered by anyone, including Perry. The fact that Perry thinks that since soldiers kill people means it is okay for him to murder is absurd. He believes they feel nothing after, therefore it is okay for him to have no emotion. Even if this were true, it does not validate his murders and lack of remorse, his tendencies of a “cold blooded
Miranda is currently 4 months, 16 weeks pregnant. Miranda and her significant other both knew the doors that would open after having
Again, Capote downplays Perry’s mental stability, referring to Perry’s suicidal thoughts as “musings.” This implies that Perry’s true issues go significantly deeper than Capote states, leaving the exact depth to the reader’s imagination. After discussing Perry’s mental situation, Capote goes on to describe the particular means by which Perry planned on killing himself. “I felt ill breath and light leaving me...The walls of the cell fell away, the sky came down, I saw the big yellow bird” Perry describes in a dream he had in which he executed his plans for suicide (Capote 265). His description of this big yellow bird is particularly significant when considering Perry’s mental health. He claims to have seen it all his life, “as a child, poor and meanly treated, as a foot-loose youth, as an imprisoned man” and that this bird was an “avenging angel who savaged his enemies or, as now, rescued him in moments of mortal danger” (Capote 265). This symbol of escape for Perry demonstrates how he is not capable of getting to a better place on his own, further proving that he is not mentally
Many negative experiences during Perry’s childhood influenced the man he became. Perry was a son of two rodeo performers who divorced when he was young. He lived with his mother who was an alcoholic she died before Perry became an adult. As a result of his Mothers death Perry was put into an orphanage where he was abused because he would wet the bed. When he was a teen he moved around constantly with his father. Two of his siblings killed themselves, and the last sister cut off all contact with Perry. In Perry’s childhood he dealt with a lot of traumatic experiences which lead up to his behavior as an adult. Perry’s Dad believed he was a “normal kid”, and was very “good hearted” but only if h...
He has so much anger from his life and has never been in complete control of himself that when he is about to kill four people, he does because his anger has made him lose control. Even Dewey says that “When Smith attacked Mr. Clutter he was under a mental eclipse, deep inside a schizophrenic darkness” (Capote 302). Perry claims that he was not in control of his actions when he killed the Clutters and according to his criminal customs and clinical determination his reason is legitimate. Perry’s mentality issues go back to him as a child, for example, is an altercation Perry encounters when he is being beaten by a nun from his Catholic school. He goes into a trance while he sleeps to cope and it says, “It was after one of these beatings, one [Perry] could never forget…[where] the parrot appeared, [and] while he slept, a bird taller than Jesus, yellow like a sunflower, a warrior-angel… blinded the nuns with its beak, fed upon their eyes, slaughtered them as they pleaded for mercy, then so gently lifted him, enfolded him, winged him away to paradise. (Capote 197). Perry is trying to cope with himself and his abuse by creating a fantasy where he can be alone and happy. Craving this happiness his entire life and not receiving it makes him depressed and begins his mental illness. In an interview with George Plimpton, Capote says “Perry never meant to kill the Clutters at all. He had a brain