In a family there is a special bond, but when war becomes part of the family’s life, it slowly deteriorat what was once a loving relationship of the soldier and his/her family to an isolation between the individual and their family. Based on the short story, Where Have You Gone, Charming Billy , TIm O’Brien used imagery to help readers envisioned a soldier desired of returning home. O’ Brien constantly used the word pretend to displayed the relationship between a family and the soldier during war. “He was pretending he was a boy again, camping with his father in the midnight summer along the Des Moines River… He pretended his father would be there by the campfire and they would talk softly about whatever came to mind and then rolled into their sleeping bags, and that they’d wake up and it would be morning, and there would not be a war…” (O’Brien 622) According to O’Brien, soldiers seek for his/her family during stressful circumstances of the war. …show more content…
But he faced an obstacle between war and family; when war separated Paul from returning home with his family. In addition, readers can determined the tone of Lily Lee Adams’ poem, The Friendship Only Lasted a Few Seconds, when Adams encountered a soldier who is dying and the first thing he mentioned was, “Mom.” (Adams _ ) This corresponds to war affecting family, by demonstrating how the dying soldier searched for his mom’s presence before he passed away after being exposed to the horrifying war. The fact that a nurse pretended to be the soldier’s mom, makes readers sympathized the soldier for not being able to die near his family or see them one last time.Given these points, both Tim O’Brien and Lily Lee Adams used imagery and tone to distinguish the effect war had on family. Mainly, tearing away soldiers from their
Many war stories today have happy, romantic, and cliche ending; many authors skip the sad, groosom, and realistic part of the story. W. D. Howell’s story, Editha and Ambrose Bierce’s story, An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge both undercut the romantic plots and unrealistic conclusions brought on by many stories today. Both stories start out leading the reader to believe it is just another tpyical love-war senario, but what makes them different is the one-hundred and eighty degrees plot twist at the end of each story. In the typical love-war story the soldier would go off to war, fighting for his country, to later return safely to his family typically unscaved.
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
Promises that men make have been connected with man since the beginning of time, and are the rocks for many human bonds. Breaking these covenants, disregarding the promise made to one’s family or going against ones’ word can be seen as a potential character flaw. One emotional and physical trauma of wartime is the choice to disregard a prior family commitment. Evidence of broken bonds can be seen through news articles on the Texas Revolutionary War, books on the Civil War, letters about World War I, textbooks including information on World War II, and journals from Vietnam. Discovering the existence of broken promises for self-preservation exhibits the importance of understanding the depth of wartime and the emotional trials placed on soldiers and victims of war rather than their family.
The dramatic realization of the fact that the war will affect a member of the Chance family is apparent in this quote. The amount of sorrow and emotions felt by the Chance family, and for that matter, all families who had children, brothers, husbands, or fathers, drafted into what many felt was a needless war. The novel brings to life what heartache many Americans had to face during the Vietnam era, a heartache that few in my generation have had the ability to realize.
In Hemingway’s short story “Soldier’s Home”, Hemingway introduces us to a young American soldier, that had just arrived home from World War I. Harold Krebs, our main character, did not receive a warm welcome after his arrival, due to coming home a few years later than most soldiers. After arriving home, it becomes clear that World War I has deeply impacted the young man, Krebs is not the same man that headed off to the war. The war had stripped the young man of his coping mechanism, female companionship, and the ability to achieve the typical American life.
honest with and this demonstrates the decline of family life that the war causes. Later in
From sunrise to sunset, day after day, war demolishes men, cities, and hope. War has an effect on soldiers like nothing else, and sticks with them for life. The damage to a generation of men on both sides of the war was inestimable. Both the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, and the poem “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” by Alan Seeger, demonstrate the theme of a lost generation of men, mentally and physically, in war through diction, repetition, and personification.
In the poem, The Friendship Only Lasted A Few Seconds written by Lily Lee Adams, the overall tone is consistently solemn. The narrator conveys her tone about war through her relationship with the soldier when she states, “After all the friendship only lasted a few seconds” (Lines 30-31, Adams). This demonstrates the limited time the speaker has to encounter the moribund soldier. This line makes light of the speaker's tone as gloomy due to the fact that she has nearly acquainted this soldier, yet he is at death's doorstep. Another example is when the speaker exclaims, “I felt I was in second place” (Lines 14-15, Adams). The nurse feels like a replacement for Mary, and cannot help but feel downhearted that the actually person cannot be there
Following negative feelings from close individuals in a Veteran’s life, a person taking part in war can become detached.
In many of Joyce Carol Oates short stories, she expresses her emotions from dealing with a tragic childhood, and trying to combine the natural world to what it really means. She wanted her stories to feel real by writing about society and people today, that others could connect with.
Friends and relatives are forced to watch one another die in combat and are left with nothing but the feeling of helplessness. As a soldier in Vietnam, Tim O’Brien’s character, Norman Bowker, experienced this feeling when a fellow soldier, named Kiowa, died in front of his eyes. Norman had thought about “How he had been braver than ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be” (147). As he lay in a field of manure being bombarded with shrapnel and bullets, Norman watched Kiowa slowly sink into the mud, barely alive but still living. It had crossed Norman’s mind that Kiowa still had a chance of surviving if he was pulled out of the line of fire. However, the fierce attack by the Vietnamese army forced Norman to retreat and made him leave his friend behind in the process. When Norman came home from war, he began talking to his dad about everything that had happened. He explained that he had felt brave for living and fighting in the war but felt an immense guilt for not being brave enough to save a fellow soldier. This was surprising to hear because when someone tells a story of war, typically they make themselves out to be a hero. However, Norman describes himself to be almost a coward and puts himself down for his actions. This guilt was something that he may have never had to deal with before if it wasn’t for the war. Norman now carries the weight of his friend’s life on his shoulders. Another example of this was demonstrated with an additional character in the novel, Dave Jensen. When the war began, Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk made a pact that included a promise to kill the other person if something were to happen to them that may make them suffer. One day when they were walking through Vietnam, Lee stepped on a mine and took his own leg off. According to the pact, Dave Jensen was supposed to kill Lee but when Lee begged
The story, “Soldier’s Home,” is an appropriately titled story, that explains the trials and tribulations of a soldier that had been to war and is now returning home. Throughout the story, the main character, Harold, is struggling significantly to re-adapt his lifestyle from what he was before leaving for the war, and what he is as he returns from the war. Harold repeatedly compares the lifestyle of people in his society, in America, to the lifestyles of people in Germany and France. The complications that Harold struggles with every day, are the same struggles that soldiers returning from the war still face today.
Tina Chen’s critical essay provides information on how returning soldiers aren’t able to connect to society and the theme of alienation and displacement that O’Brien discussed in his stories. To explain, soldiers returning from war feel alienated because they cannot come to terms with what they saw and what they did in battle. Next, Chen discusses how O’Brien talks about soldiers reminiscing about home instead of focusing in the field and how, when something bad happens, it is because they weren’t focused on the field. Finally, when soldiers returned home they felt alienated from the country and
...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.
Stories involving a predator and prey have been prevalent throughout time, and those stories usually involve attractive young girls. Attractive unassuming girls are stalked by older men that pretend to be someone that they are not. One prominent example of a predator and prey story occurs in Joyce Carol Oates story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” was based off an article that Oates had read, about a twenty-three-year-old man who would hangout around young girls, pick them up, and take them for rides in his gold convertible, and he was convicted of murdering three of them (Hirschberg 773). In her story, Oates uses a suspenseful plot line, characters Connie and Arnold Friend, and imagery