Over time, an abundant collection of literature has been written in reference to the Vietnam Conflict. For instance, “The Man I Killed” written by Tim O’Brien, and “The Man He Killed” written by Thomas Hardy, were written about the feelings behind a killing. Even though both, O’Brien and Hardy show how guilty and remorseful the narrator is now feeling that his ‘foe’ is left lying dead, O’Brien illustrates a soldier who is struggling to recover. Whereas, in Hardy’s poem the narrator is semi-recovered by the end of the poem. Each piece depicts the nerve-racking experience of killing another human being, however each author’s strategy of coping differs. In both O’Brien’s short story and Hardy’s poem, they portray the guilt that one is left with once the ‘enemy’ is killed. Later on both authors state that the ‘enemy’ was never really their enemy. O’Brien uses reflection to show that Tim did not want to kill the man but considering the situation it was …show more content…
The majority of O’Brien’s writing is addressing how the dead man looks and how it affects him. O’Brien repeats the following, “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other was a star-shaped hole…” O’Brien continuously describes how the dead man looks and what he could have been had O’Brien not killed him. O’Brien states “He loved mathematics. His eyebrows were thin and arched like a woman’s, and at school the boys sometimes teased him…” Despite the fact that Hardy did show guilt in the opening of his poem, he quickly tossed that thought out by stating that this was war and he reiterates by stating “He was my foe…” Another difference that lies between the two literatures is that Hardy’s writing lacks the vocabulary that truly depicts the reality of war and how it felt first-handed-serving in the war. O’Brien illustrates the gruesome reality that soldiers
1. How did the narrator react to the fact that he killed another human being? What evidence in the story leads you to this conclusion? The narrator was shocked and felt guilty. You could tell that he feels bad because he is thinking about all the stories and lessons the boy would have been taught. O'Brien is just staring at the dead body and not speaking, which shows he's traumatized. Kiowa
At the same time, O’Brien struggles with destructiveness of the conflicting images of violence and peace in death through the juxtaposition of the imagery of the dead man. While “his one eye was shut, the other eye was a star-shaped hole.” The dead man has one shut eye that resembles a peaceful sleep, while the other side is obliterated by the grenade into a star-shaped hole. The image of the star-shaped hole in the dead soldier’s eye represents the hopes that he once had when he was alive: “He hoped the Americans would go away. Soon, he hoped. He kept hoping and hoping, always” (119). Furthermore, “his right cheek was smooth and hairless,” an image of untouched innocence that contrasts with his left cheek, which was “peeled back in three ragged strips,” destroyed by the violence O’Brien inflicts upon it. The juxtaposition of the butterfly that settles on his chin and the fatal wound on his neck, “open to the spinal cord…blood…thick and shiny” illustrate the complexity and ambiguity of the unnaturalness of war, depicted by the image of the dead man’s wrung neck, contrasted with the ironic peace and naturalism of death in the image of the fragile butterfly. These select images are also those that O’Brien chooses to fixate upon and develop throughout the chapter as he struggles to comprehend the moral implications of his actions. The innocence of the “slim, dead, almost dainty young man” is further reinforced when O’Brien describes his wrists as “wrists of a
Unlike most war stories, in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” the war in Vietnam is not glorified and instead, the story is believable and raw. The horrors of war that Lieutenant Jimmy Cross and his squadron experience in an unfiltered, yet emotionally detached way that molds the structure and the language. This story, through its structure and techniques, displays the idea of how disillusionment and loss of innocence create unimaginable burdens for the American soldiers. O’Brien portrays the characters’ burdens with a monotonous and lulling tone through the use of flashbacks, setting, imagery, and metonymy.
“The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell is able to accomplish so many thing with so little lines-mainly through the use of metaphor and diction. It explains the terrors of wars in gruesome detail and explains the ways in which wars, in a sense “breed” and “birth” death. To some, this poem is seen as the ultimate poem of war, and rightly
The Viet Nam War has been the most reviled conflict in United States history for many reasons, but it has produced some great literature. For some reason the emotion and depredation of war kindle in some people the ability to express themselves in a way that they may not have been able to do otherwise. Movies of the time period are great, but they are not able to elicit, seeing the extremely limited time crunch, the same images and charge that a well-written book can. In writing of this war, Tim O'Brien put himself and his memories in the forefront of the experiences his characters go through, and his writing is better for it. He produced a great work of art not only because he experienced the war first hand, but because he is able to convey the lives around him in such vivid detail. He writes a group of fictional works that have a great deal of truth mixed in with them. This style of writing and certain aspects of the book are the topics of this reflective paper.
If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O’Brien conveys to the reader that the Vietnam war was not America's fight. He argues this by providing his personal account of how the officers did not have the American soldiers best intentions in mind, how the Vietnamese soldiers constantly fought in an unfair and barbaric manor and the way that the soldiers’ were often confused as to who they were fighting due to the strategies the Vietnamese used.
Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War is a novel that is a personal view of the Vietnam War from the perspective of a Vietnamese soldier. Like the American novel “The things they carried”, this novel brings about the effects of war on people, and especially how it defeats the human capacity for things such as love and hope. Bao Ninh offers this realistic picture of the Vietnam War’s impact on the individual Vietnamese soldier through use of a series of reminiscences or flashbacks, jumping backwards and forwards in time between the events most salient in memory, events which take on a different theme each time they are examined. His main protagonist Kien, who is basically Bao himself, looks back not just at his ten years at
“War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.” Tim O’Brien wrote in his novel The Things They Carried. There are many different ways to connect with a reader through pieces of writing. Tim O’Brien captured many readers through his detailed writing and telling of Vietnam War stories throughout the novel The Things They Carried. In the memoir If I Die in a Combat Zone, his writing lacked thorough description and feeling compared to The Things They Carried. Tim O’Brien connects with the reader through his writing
The similar theme is that war changes people and tears them apart due to the pain and suffering of the war. “Cursing the war, cursing himself, cursing everybody”(O’Flaherty 208). The quote helps show that the war may cause you to curse things you never would've before, like, yourself. And from the poem “He thought he’d list perhaps/ Off hand like just as I/ Was out of work, had sold his traps/ No other reason why”(Hardy 16-20). This tells how war can force people to make erratic decisions, it changes your attitude and morals about any situation including joining the army and going to war. The difference between the two stories is that in “The Sniper” it turns him against his family and in “The Man He Killed” it turned the soldier against his friends. To prove this, “Then the sniper turned over the dead body and looked into his brother's face”(O’Flaherty, page 208). Again this tells of the shock the sniper received when he saw it was his brother he had killed. But in the opposing story “Yes, quaint and curious war is!/ You shoot a fellow down/ You’d treat if met where any bar is/ Or help to half-a-crown”(Hardy 17-20). It explains of how he killed a man that the soldier would have befriended in any other situation. All in all, you can see both the similarities and differences in both stories
Since the beginning of time, humans have sought after power and control. It is human instinct to desire to be the undisputed champion, but when does it become a problem? Warfare has been practiced throughout civilization as a way to justify power. Though the orders come directly from one man, thousands of men and women pay the ultimate sacrifice. In Randall Jerrell’s “The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner”, Jarrell is commenting on the brutality of warfare. Not only does Jarrell address the tragedies of war, he also blames politics, war leaders, and the soldier’s acknowledgement of his duties. (Hill 6) With only five lines of text, his poems allows the reader to understand what a soldier can go through. With the use of Jerrell’s poem, The Vietnam War, and Brian Turner’s “Ameriki Jundee”, the truth of combat will be revealed.
Death defines life; it has the ability to reinvent the living for better or worse. “The Things They Carried”, by Tim O’Brien, provides a non-linear, semi-fictitious account of the Vietnam War that poignantly depicts the complicated relationship between life and death. His account breathes subtle vitality and realism into the lingering presence of the dead, intimating that the memories they impart have as profound an impact as the living.
The narrator gives an encounter he had with another solider. His vocabulary used adds to making the story seem very unintelligent and adds to the impressions that it is coming from a common man fighting with the army. Hardy uses informal words including “nipperkin” and “half-a-crown” to show that this poem is written by an average man, and also helps to set the time period. This poem also includes multiple breaks within the lines, "I shot him dead because — Because he was my foe” (Hardy 9,10). These breaks demonstrate long pauses the reader should take to understand the tone behind the line being read, as well as the author searching for a legitimate reason to explain why he shot the man.
Due to the fact that not everyone has experienced something such as this, it shows the automatic regret following what he did. The description of the dead boy’s body is repeated six times; his jaw was in his throat, he had one eye shut and the other was a star shaped hole (118-124). Also, it is repeated that the boy had a dainty build, and that he was a scholar, rather than a soldier. In doing so, the reader can connect to the reoccurring thoughts scrambling through Tim’s head. He thoughtlessly threw the grenade before seeing that the boy posed no real threat; he was simply one of the enemies that unknowingly, came a little too close. After doing so, Tim was struck by the reality of his action. Conflicting morals were deteriorating his mind. Who he killed was technically the enemy, but he was just a boy; he had“the wrists of a child” (118). The fact that he was seemingly paralyzed by what happened, is what gives this chapter such a powerful impact on understanding the book. This gave insight on the fact that the soldiers had, in a way, over dramaticized the enemy. When really, the men on the other side were in the same position that they were; scared and not cut out for
It can be hard to fully comprehend the effects the Vietnam War had on not just the veterans, but the nation as a whole. The violent battles and acts of war became all too common during the long years of the conflict. The war warped the soldiers and civilians characters and desensitized their mentalities to the cruelty seen on the battlefield. Bao Ninh and Tim O’Brien, both veterans of the war, narrate their experiences of the war and use the loss of love as a metaphor for the detrimental effects of the years of fighting.
In this poem, ‘The Man He Killed’, the poet Thomas Hardy explores a complex theme, which is war, using the simplest language. Throughout this essay I will be discussing the thoughts and opinions Hardy has on war.