The novel is also used to emphasize the effects of the redeployment theme as it relates to soldier and civilian relations. Klay’s goal is to address the disconnect between civilians and military personnel and how war affects the interactions that soldiers have with civilians once they come home. While deployed war hardens soldiers ,this can be seen in the first short story “ Redeployment” the soldier discusses his disgust about having done horrendous things during war such as “shooting dogs” and seeing “the body parts in the locker and the retarded guy in the cage” while in the torture room (Klay 2). Having participated and saw these ghastly events, it makes it difficult for soldiers in some aspects to listen to civilian commands after …show more content…
Another important factor that Klay brings up is the treatment of soldiers by civilians when they return home. In many of Klay’s short stories he tells of the awe and for some idol ship that the civilians have when the soldiers return. In “Bodies” the Marine, says “ It was another three weeks before I got home and everybody thanked me for my service. Nobody seemed to know exactly what they were thanking me for”( Klay 63). The Marine is touching on the fact that civilians do not exactly know all the horrors of war but they are quick to thank them. This idolization can make it difficult for soldiers to reintegrate themselves into society. In “Iraq Comes Home” Sue Randolph is an army veteran who discusses the difficulties that she had readjusting to life at home “The military says that they 're giving exit counseling and reintegration. What they 're calling reentry counseling, in my experience, was, "Don 't drink and drive. Pay your bills on time. Don 't beat your spouse. Don 't kick your dog." All of these things that once you 've reached a certain age, you 're supposed to know. None of it is, "If you have discomfort with dealing with crowds, if you don 't feel comfortable with your spouse, if you can 't sleep in a bed, if you don 't want to drive down the road because you think everything is a bomb, here 's what …show more content…
He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man with his mouth” . Mark Twain points out the atrocities that man does to each other just as Klay does within his novel. Novels such as Klay’s that tell of the bloodshed of war act as insight mechanisms for civilians that are generally kept in the dark.If war has such devastating effects on societies why do nations continue to partake in this act of violence? In order to keep the blood off of their own hands elites place soldiers in predicaments, in which they are expected to get down and dirty. The question remains is it air to ask your fellow man to partake in these
Today’s veterans often come home to find that although they are willing to die for their country, they’re not sure how to live for it. It’s hard to know how to live for a country that regularity tears itself apart along every possible ethnic and demographic boundary… In combat, soldiers all but ignore differences of race, religion,and politics within their platoon. It’s no wonder they get so depressed when they come home. (Junger
The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien, transports the reader into the minds of veterans of the Vietnam conflict. The Vietnam War dramatically changed Tim O’Brien and his comrades, making their return home a turbulent and difficult transition. The study, titled, The War at Home: Effects of Vietnam-Era Military Service on Post-War Household Stability, uses the draft lottery as a “natural experiment” on the general male population. The purpose of the NBER (National Bureau of Economic Research) study is to determine the psychological effects of the Vietnam War on its veterans. In order to do this, they tested four conditions, marital stability, residential stability, housing tenure, and extended family living. However, it neglects the internal ramifications of war that a soldier grapples with in determining whether they are “normal” in their post-war lives. Thus, effects such as alienation from society, insecurity in their daily lives, and the mental trauma that persist decades after the war are not factored in. After reading the NBER study, it is evident that Tim O’Brien intentionally draws the reader to the post-war psychological effects of Vietnam that may not manifest themselves externally. He does this to highlight that while the Vietnam war is over, the war is still raging in the minds of those involved decades later, and will not dissipate until they can expunge themselves of the guilt and blame they feel from the war, and their actions or inaction therein.
As the story begin Sergeant X is an confident and uplifting man , but it’s towards the middle and end of the story that we see him disassociate from his surroundings and people that like him. For example in the story while everyone was down on the first floor he was up stair on the second smoking and drinking alone separating himself from the rest and using alcohol to numb his pain (J.D Salinger). When an individual chooses to isolate themselves from their surroundings and people, they become lonely and pained and they would use anything to numb the pain. For Sergeant X he begins to separate himself from everyone as he is at war.There is also a sense that Sergeant X is isolated from those around him. Despite being in England with sixty other soldiers, at no stage of the story does X socialize with any of his fellow soldiers . Even when he does socialize, for example with Clay, he doesn’t enjoy his company (J.D Salinger). This shows a great deal of disassociation and how the build up of isolation can affect you as a person without
It alters the way you think; it changes your nature. O’Brien never explicitly stated this fact, but throughout his writing he makes it very obvious to the reader. Once the men left the United States, they were introduced to a new way of living. In the United States, everyone, for the most part, has warm shelter, food, and multiple sources of protection. The society is a community, the population is huge and we interact daily with many different people, many you will never even see again. The mindset of a United States citizen is much different than those who have been shipped to Vietnam. Soldiers must have an array of feelings; there are so many reactions that take place when you are sent a letter that states you must move to a different country and shoot people that you have never even met. There are no police in Vietnam. The only people in Vietnam that are speaking English are the soldiers. They have the freedom to do almost anything. Their job is to kill now – that is their only purpose. Again, no regular civilian would ever really understand this change because it is something they must experience. O’Brien reveals his platoons ethical breakdown in the chapter “How to Tell a True War Story”. The day that Curt Lemon dies from stepping on a rigged mortar shell, Rat captures a baby buffalo. He cares for it, petting her and feeding her some of his food. When it did not eat some of its food, Rat Kiley shot it. He shot it repeatedly careful to make sure that
While soldiers are away from home, many things might change that they aren’t there for, for example, family problems and disasters. In addition, veterans might come home to a whole different world than when they left, and this already makes their lives more challenging to go with these changes. In addition, soldiers might also come back with physical injuries, like a lost limb, or loss of hearing. As a result, this makes everyday tasks much harder than they actually are. Veterans also might be mentally scarred from war. For example, a mental disorder called post traumatic stress disorder, makes life for the veteran and family much
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.
This affects each soldier when the war is finished. When a soldier returns back to his home after the war, he is unable to escape his primitive feelings of survival.
...often times tragic and can ruin the lives of those who fight. The effects of war can last for years, possibly even for the rest of the soldiers life and can also have an effect on those in the lives of the soldier as well. Soldiers carry the memories of things they saw and did during war with them as they try and regain their former lives once the war is over, which is often a difficult task. O’Brien gives his readers some insight into what goes on in the mind of a soldier during combat and long after coming home.
The environment in which Kiley was first deployed to lacked rules since authorities were not present to enforce them, the highest ranking NCO’s favorite pastimes ran from “dope to Darvon...there was no such thing as military discipline...You could let your hair grow...didn’t have to polish your boots or snap off salutes, or put up with the usual rear-end nonsense” (91). Thus along with the medical unit, Kiley’s exposure in a medical detachment far away from the tropical warzone gave him a deceptive impression of the Vietnam war. His ingenuous attitude shows that as a young soldier, Kiley had entered the war with a simplistic worldview, unsuspecting of the severity the war brought on to everybody within its sphere of influence. In one of the early chapters, “How To Tell A True War Story”, O’Brien recalled the time Lemon and Kiley went off by themselves after the platoon marched for two days, “A nature hike, [Rat Kiley and Curt Lemon] thought…giggling and calling each other yellow mother and playing a silly game they invented” (69). Kiley is momentarily portrayed as a kid, who is untouched by the harsh realities of the Vietnam War. But the juxtaposition of placing an unsuspecting child in a hostile war zone sets an ominous tone for Rat Kiley. Like most soldiers who had been drafted into the war, Kiley initially did not have the emotional
The author uses metafiction to acknowledge this line of questioning, even going as far as to involve an entire vignette, “How to Tell a True War Story,” in attempting to answer it. The veteran discusses with the reader the point of war as portrayed in real war stories. In short, the answer is that, quite simply, there is none. As O’Brien states, “A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest proper models of human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done,” (65). He clearly sees no higher calling in the battlefield; it is dark, pointless, and barbaric. No, it is more than barbaric: it is an ancient, archaic, and even eldritch practice. It is the practice that all animals on our planet engage in: natural selection, the ultimate test of who can survive. Fictional O’Brien himself, at one point, sought to reject it upon partaking in it first hand, writing, “He told me that it was a good kill, that I was a soldier and this was war, that I should shape up and stop staring and ask myself what the dead man would’ve done if things were reversed. None of it mattered,” (127). Kiowa tells O’Brien that it is kill or be killed, and the fictional O’Brien shuts down and cannot grasp it. However, the metafictional O’Brien speaking with his reader knows that it is vulgar, it is violent, it is crude: “As
Wounds, fire, tanks, sweat, letters, distance, cold, training, effort; all these terms are the cause of all psychological aftermath in veterans. Most of the veterans who make it back home alive, come back with their psychological health dead, as well as some make it back alive with their psychological health better than ever. The amount of psychological damages for veterans are sometimes more the expected than the real, and sometimes financial benefits play a big role in finding out which exact soldiers really suffer from these post war effects.
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.
Redeployment and Bodies are both short stories by Phil Klay that vividly illustrates the experiences of soldiers in war and on the homefront. Redeployment tells the story about a man named Sgt. Price who tells about his experiences on the battlefield and how he tries to readjust to society in America. He struggles at the end of the story when he has to put down his dog. The narrator of bodies tells the story of how he processed dead bodies in the war. The story reveals his character development and how he tells the "what really happened" to a man at the bar. Redeployment is a war story that is melancholy because it gives a glimpse of what marines go through. Similarly, Bodies is another war story that is gloomy because
Anything can get to them and when they are deployed back they are sometimes only a few days to a week removed from that battle felid and they get no time to let off steam or get some type of metal help. They are just put back in the society, normal life with their family. This messes with there mind a lot. (Dean 7) Many of these veterans had this American hero image in their mind which is understandable, but when they got back they had anything but that. This really messed up their minds because they had a bar set and is was not met by any means. (Dean 8) The negativity surrounding the veterans just shut them down completely from anything, family included because they had put it all out there for the mother land and they got little respect. They saw many friends die and didn’t get to see their family’s for long periods of time. (Dean 22,23) PTSD is known to just eat away at the mind like a parcite, not letting the person do anything at all. They can not have a normal life with a family. (Wilson 9) Just the way the mind thinks when diagnosed with PTSD is backwards and not with much sense sometimes. Compulsive reexposure is something not really talked about because the front is that everything is okay because the attempt to a normal life is shown. The way that works is the mind works in reverse like a veteran coming back feels the need to be in the swat or a woman got abused as