Fallen Angels

808 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Mental and physical consequences of war for soldiers

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.

Show More
Related

  • Mental Illness in Truman Capote's novel "In Cold Blood"

    554 Words  | 2 Pages

    He says that Perry, who grew up without love, direction, or moral values, is “. a very oriented, hyper-alert to things going on about him, and shows no sign of confusion.

    Read More

  • In Cold Blood Analysis

    1286 Words  | 3 Pages

    Perry is also deeply developed, as the novel goes into his family background, through old letters. His entire family is in shambles, but he was always closest to his...

    Read More

  • the things they carried

    1085 Words  | 3 Pages

    I picked four instances, which truly represented how the mind changes. When Dave Jensen broke Lee’s nose, he became absolutely paranoid about every aspect of his life. The young lady who began going on ambush's with the green berets also shows how people can be reconditioned by war. Bobby Jorgensen cowardly hesitated and nearly cost Tim his life, but it was later learned that he had matured through experience.... ...

    Read More

  • Quest for Purpose in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut

    2311 Words  | 5 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Hroors of War

    861 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...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.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Vietnam Bloods By Wallace Terry

    662 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...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.

    Read More

  • Miranda And False Dilemmas

    751 Words  | 2 Pages

    Miranda is currently 4 months, 16 weeks pregnant. Miranda and her significant other both knew the doors that would open after having

    Read More

  • Sympathy for Murderer in Truman Capote´s In Cold Blood

    520 Words  | 2 Pages

    Perry Smith did not live the happy childhood that he deserved, abandoned by his family at a young age he was forced to live at a terrible orphanage. “The one where Black Widows were always at me. Hitting me. Because of wetting the bed...They hated me, too.” (Capote 132). In this specific orphanage, Perry was beaten by the nuns that own the place. The short sentences within this quote truly emphasize the dramatic and horrible conditions that Perry had to live with in the orphanage. Sympathy is created ...

    Read More

  • On "The Red Convertible"

    488 Words  | 1 Pages

    returned from the war, he was not the same. His spirit had been taken away. He was

    Read More

  • Negative Body Image Leads to Eating disorders

    587 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Many kids — particularly adolescents — are concerned about how they look and can feel self-conscious about their bodies.” Eating disorders have the power to affect everyday life. Not only in just teens but all ages. They are able to cause extreme weight changes. As well as, it could affect your health for the rest of your life. (Source 1) By having an eating disorder everything becomes based off of that, if it isn’t helped or stopped it could become serious and damage your health permanently.

    Read More

  • Cold Blood

    1000 Words  | 2 Pages

    Perry Smith was a short man with a large torso. At first glance, “he seemed a more normal-sized man, a powerful man, with the shoulders, the arms, the thick, crouching torso of a weight lifter. [However] when he stood up he was no taller than a twelve-year old child” (15). What Smith lacked in stature, he made up in knowledge. Perry was “a dictionary buff, a devotee of obscure words” (22). As an adolescent, he craved literature and loved to gain insight of the imaginary worlds he escaped into, for Perry’s reality was nothing less than a living nightmare. “His mother [was] an alcoholic [and] had strangled to death on her own vomit” (110). Smith had two sisters and an older brother. His sister Fern had committed suicide by jumping out of a window and his brother Jimmy followed Fern’s suit and committed suicide the day after his wife had killed herself. Perry’s sister, Barbara, was the only normal one and had made a good life for herself. These traumatic events left Perry mentally unstable and ultimately landed him in jail, where he came into acquaintance with Dick Hickock, who was in jail for passing bad checks. Dick and Perry became friends and this new friendship changed the course of their lives forever. Hickock immediately made note of Perry’s odd personality and stated that there was “something wrong with Little Perry. Perry could be such a kid, always wetting his bed and crying in his sleep. And often [Dick] had seen him sit for hours just sucking his thumb. In some ways old Perry was spooky as hell. Take, for instance, that temper of his of his. He could slide into a fury quicker than ten drunk Indians. And yet you wouldn’t know it. He might be ready to kill you, but you’d never know it, not to look at it or listen to it” (108). Perry’s short fuse and dysfunctional background were the two pieces to Perry’s corrupt life puzzle that soured and tainted the final “picture”.

    Read More

  • Eating Disorders : Eating Disorder

    1323 Words  | 3 Pages

    Overall, eating disorders are a very sensitive topic and can be suffered by anyone no matter their background, weight, age or gender. Anyone has the ability to be diagnosed with an eating disorder. It is important to teach children young healthy habits with eating and exercise.

    Read More

  • The Things They Carried - Themes

    972 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Role Of The American Dream In In Cold Blood

    1177 Words  | 3 Pages

    He grew up in a different environment with a broken family with no apparent dreams. As a young boy his parents separated and he was forced to go with his mother. He later ran away to be with his father who turned him down and ended up being abandoned by his family completely. He then came to stay at a catholic orphanage, where he was abused by nuns and caregivers. His father finally decided to take him into his care and together they got away and traveled, ending his education before passing the third grade which bothered him as he became older. Perry joined the marines and army, then came back to relocate his father. Him and his father had a breakthrough over starvation, leaving Perry with no one else to turn to and therefore getting involved in committing crimes. Once he got caught and jailed, his mother had died and his brother and sister had both committed suicide. By all his experiences we can say Perry definitely lived a different life and his family portrayal was very different from the Clutters. After so much abandonment and abuse, we can understand why he almost feels nothing and how growing up has affected him. The American Dream for Perry might not have been a “perfect family” but may have been to find something with order, and control. The dream Perry’s family would be focused on is reaching a decent life as their past has been

    Read More

  • Abnormal Behaviors

    905 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tyas, S. L. (2008). Alcohol Use and the Risk of Developing Alzheimer's Disease. National Istitute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Retrieved from: http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh25-4/299-306.htm

    Read More

More about Fallen Angels

Open Document