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Leadership and the army profession blc essay
Vietnam War summary essay
Leadership and the army profession, pdf
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Being forced into a war he has no interest in, Tim O’brien recounts his time fighting in the vietnam war. Many of the soldiers there carried things deep to their hearts. Others carried fear, guilt, and despair of what they had done and what was to come. These physical things were a way these soldiers could cope with their feelings and try and stay sane during these times. “Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey.”(1) These letters were coping mechanisms for Jimmy and he read them when he needed comforting or just to read them to help him forget. This story illustrates how the word love can be interpreted different ways. To Jimmy Cross, he is for love, but yet against …show more content…
Jimmy Cross was one of them. As his obsession with Martha grew, he no longer had his eyes on what was important like staying alive and protecting his fellow soldiers. One day outside of the village Than Khe, in mid-April, a soldier by the name of Ted Lavender was shot in the head. Jimmy feels great guilt over Ted’s death because he is responsible for the entire team of soldiers. Due to his obsession, he ended up losing a life on his team and it was a preventable death. This put a heavy guilt on his shoulders. When Martha told him that she did not really love him, he was crushed and realized what his obsession had done to Ted and what could have happened to the rest of the …show more content…
Tim did not agree with the war. He did not think the war was justified. He believed there was no reason for the war. He contemplated going across the Canadian border so he wouldn 't have to fight in the war. But the guilt and shame from his family would push him to go in anyway. As the war went on he felt guilty because he didn 't believe in himself enough to live according to his beliefs. This book shows that in highly emotional situations you react before thinking. Two soldiers named Strunk and Jensen got into a fight. Strunk stole Jensen’s jackknife. When Jensen found out, he retaliated by breaking Strunk’s nose. This shows that people don 't always think and just react to situations. Also there is irony in this. They both are fighting on the same team in this war, but yet are fighting each other. The men in the group faced a challenge of showing bravery. They always had to “one up” each other. The soldiers were told to go to the dentist. As they were told this, Curt fainted. This showed how he was unmanly, which wasn’t very good for his reputation. So when it was his turn, he told the doctor to pull one of his teeth. This was to show how he was a bigger and better man than the rest because nothing was wrong with that tooth or any other tooth. Later, Lemon is killed by playing catch with a grenade. This showed how dumb it was to try and waste their time trying to show everyone how they were bigger
about the war and his lack of place in his old society. The war becomes
...g exclusively on the war and men of whom he is in charge of. It ends up taking the death of one of his men, Ted Lavender, for Jimmy to realize that he needed to get his priorities straight; which included, being the leader that his troops deserved. In conclusion, Jimmy’s character traits changed immensely, from several negative traits in the beginning, to ample positive traits in the end. Jimmy took on his responsibility as the First Lieutenant, and began taking the necessary steps to bettering himself, along with his troops.
In the two novels of recent war literature Redeployment, by Phil Klay, and The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, both call attention to the war’s destruction of its soldiers’ identities. With The Things They Carried, we are introduced to the story of a young Lieutenant Jimmy Cross who is currently fighting in the Vietnam War and holds a deep crush for his college-lover Martha. Jimmy carries many letters from Martha with him throughout the war, and he envisions this romantic illusion in which “more than anything, he want[s] Martha to love him as he love[s] her” (1). However, a conflict quickly transpires between his love for Martha and his responsibilities with the war, in which he is ultimately forced to make a decision between the two.
Tim O’Brien is doing the best he can to stay true to the story for his fellow soldiers. Tim O’Brien believed that by writing the story of soldiers in war as he saw it brings some type of justice to soldiers in a war situation.
Written by author Tim O’Brien after his own experience in Vietnam, “The Things They Carried” is a short story that introduces the reader to the experiences of soldiers away at war. O’Brien uses potent metaphors with a third person narrator to shape each character. In doing so, the reader is able to sympathize with the internal and external struggles the men endure. These symbolic comparisons often give even the smallest details great literary weight, due to their dual meanings. The symbolism in “The Things They Carried” guides the reader through the complex development of characters by establishing their humanity during the inhumane circumstance of war, articulating what the men need for emotional and spiritual survival, and by revealing the character’s psychological burdens.
during the war. This novel is able to portray the overwhelming effects and power war has
The story, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien is both a story of love and a story of war. But more than either of those types of stories, The Things They Carried is a story of losing one’s innocence. Innocence is the idea of not knowing the horrors of the world. The horrors of war and the horrors of heartbreak. When people are born they are born with an air of innocence, they believe in the good in the world as they do not yet know of the evils. As people grow up they lose their innocence, the learn of violence and of war and of the hate of other people because they are different, they also learn the pain of heartbreak. All of these things tears the innocence away from people, some people lose their innocence younger than others. For Lieutenant
War slowly begins to strip away the ideals these boy-men once cherished. Their respect for authority is torn away by their disillusionment with their schoolteacher, Kantorek who pushed them to join. This is followed by their brief encounter with Corporal Himmelstoss at boot camp. The contemptible tactics that their superior officer Himmelstoss perpetrates in the name of discipline finally shatters their respect for authority. As the boys, fresh from boot camp, march toward the front for the first time, each one looks over his shoulder at the departing transport truck. They realize that they have now cast aside their lives as schoolboys and they feel the numbing reality of their uncertain futures.
In the first chapter during a tunnel search, Ted Lavender went off to use the restroom. When he was walking back and was close to the other soldiers, he was shot in the head and killed instantly. The book describes how his mouth was open, his teeth were broken, and his eyes swollen black. The book states that Jimmy Cross, “... felt shame. He hated himself. He loved Martha more than his men and as a consequence Lavender was now dead.” This would be something he would have to carry like a stone in his stomach for the rest of his life.” When Ted Lavender was shot in the back of the head, all the soldiers were in shock, but Lieutenant Jimmy Cross blamed himself because he was in charge of his men and was side-tracked by his love for, Martha, an old school friend. Later in the book, Jimmy Cross visits one of the soldiers from the war. They look through the photos and see one of Ted
There is a major change in the men in this novel. At first, they are excited to join the army in order to help their country. After they see the truth about war, they learn very important assets of life such as death, destruction, and suffering. These emotions are learned in places like training camp, battles, and hospitals. All the men, dead or alive, obtained knowledge on how to deal with death, which is very important to one’s life.
The novel, “The Things They Carried”, is about the experiences of Tim O’Brian and his fellow platoon members during their time fighting in the Vietnam War. They face much adversity that can only be encountered in the horrors of fighting a war. The men experience death of friends, civilians, enemies and at points loss of their rationale. In turn, the soldiers use a spectrum of methods to cope with the hardships of war, dark humor, daydreaming, and violent actions all allow an escape from the horrors of Vietnam that they experience most days.
The novel “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’ Brien takes place in the Vietnam War. The protagonist, Lieutenant Cross, is a soldier who is madly in love with a college student named Martha. He carries around photos and letters from her. However, the first few chapters illustrate how this profound love makes him weak in the war.
His love for Martha was unhealthy and almost obsessive. He still remembers clearly "touching that left knee" of Martha's. Even out in the field he still reminisces how her knee felt. During a mission to destroy some tunnels, Cross imagines the tunnel collapsing on him and Martha. He also wonders if she is still a virgin or not and wonders why her letter are signed "love". This distraction and incompetence of himself lead to the death of one of their fellow soldiers, Ted Lavender. He has been shot and killed, partly because of Cross' lack of focus on the situation. He keeps to himself as he blames the incident on only himself. Shockingly, as they were waiting for a chopper to take his body away, he digs a foxhole. While sitting in the hole, crying, he was also thinking of " Martha's smooth young face, thinking he loved her more than anything, more than his men " at the same time. This abnormal love for Martha has defected his ability to perform his duties as a leader. Martha has possessed him so much that even "without willing it, he was thinking about Martha." This shows that he has lost control on where and when is the right time to think about things like that.
In the first paragraph of the story, Jimmy Cross' rank is noted (First Lieutenant) along with the fact that he "carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey" (434). From the outset, the reader sees that Martha plays a pivotal role in his thoughts and actions. The fact that Jimmy Cross "would imagine romantic camping trips into the White Mountains in New Hampshire" after he marched the entire day and dug a foxhole indicates that he thinks often of Martha (434). While these thoughts of a lover back home provide some form of escape for Lt. Cross, they also burden him with the obsessive feelings of unrequited love. ...
When the war breaks out, this tranquil little town seems like the last place on earth that could produce a team of vicious, violent soldiers. Soon we see Jim thrown into a completely contrasting `world', full of violence and fighting, and the strong dissimilarity between his hometown and this new war-stricken country is emphasised. The fact that the original setting is so diversely opposite to that if the war setting, the harsh reality of the horror of war is demonstrated.