Bobbie Ann Mason In Country Essay

Unsure of his future, Richie Perry goes to Vietnam at seventeen years old to fight in the U.S. Army. His medical profile for his knee is not put in yet, so Perry is forced to go out on the battlefield with his company alongside friends that he has made like Peewee. He experiences terrifying moments where he has fortunately escaped from, but encountered deaths of fellow squad members and witnessed extreme levels of destruction and brutality. Perry ponders on going back to “The World” due to these horrific and life-threatening events but knows he won’t be able to take care of his brother and mother since he doesn’t have a good education. After getting injured badly in a battle, he returns from the

Emmett slept with his niece. Emmett lived off his sister. Emmett seduced high school girls. He had killed babies in Vietnam. But he was popular, and Emmett didn’t care what some people said” (In Country 31). Her father died in the Vietnam war before she was born and she begins to wonder what was his personality like or what kind of conversations did he carry when he was alive. Many family members described Sam’s father as a very funny and charismatic person. Sam’s mother left her in Hopewell to stay with her Uncle Emmett and got married to a man that lived in Lexington and started a new family. Her mother left the town because she was trying to fill in that void or erase the hurt she experienced from the passing of Sam’s father.

On April 25, 1975, marked the end of an era for one country, but the cruel reality of a new beginning for many Vietnamese families. As the north communists were celebrating their victory, the south was in a panic to escape new order. Many families feared for their lives and were forced to make difficult decisions and sacrifices by leaving their whole life behind in hopes of starting a new life in another country. GB Tran is an American whose parents fled from Vietnam in order to escape communism. With no real knowledge of his family’s history pertaining to the Vietnam War, he finds himself unable to make a connection with his home country, and a deeper understanding of what sacrifices his parents made for their family. In this

Then Ung started to talk about what happened after the Vietnam War and how a lot of people started to move to different place. Ung described what happened to her family and everyone got separated. After Ung and her family also moved to different state, the military took her father and he never came back. After three

What is a symbol of peace and hope to you? I was wondering if it was a dove, olive, or v sign. In the book In Country by Bobbie Ann Mason, an egret played a role in peace. The writer tells the reader of the book about the suffering and sadness of a man who went through the Vietnam War, using the egret as the symbol of peace.

Both In Country , by Bobbie Ann Mason and “On the Rainy River,” by Tim O’Brien share the theme of guilt; in O’Brien’s case, guilt meant his decision to fight in the war, Emmett’s guilt meant having survived through it and killing innocent people. Emmett’s guilt is more along the lines of survivor’s guilt, O’Brien’s is more about the decision he made to fight. With Tim O’Brien, going to war meant earning the respect of his family and friends. He describes his decision to go to war as “cowardly” because he went against his morals in order to please his family and his peers. Both characters are alike in that they hardly talk about their experiences in the war and try to avoid the subject all together. Emmett does not want to talk about the war at all with the people who were not there. He wants to sweep the past under the rug, he suffers from survivor’s guilt from seeing his fellow soldiers killed and is ashamed of having killed others. Emmett even admits to his survivor’s guilt, “Emmett said they were embarrassed that they were still alive” (Mason 67). ,Emmett would rather have died because the pain he experiences after the war were too much to handle. Both O’Brien and Emmett share this guilt, the biggest guilt being that they killed innocent people. They went to war as young kids, they give the impression that the war almost ruined their lives and never got their life back. The war did not end when they left Vietnam, the war stayed with them for even after they came home.

In the southern set stories that dealt with country folks and good people, I found myself going from seemingly innocent nostalgic fiction to a moralistic portrait of what american life was down south. It wasn't until the last page that I understood the depth of each small town story. Up till then, the scope was small. A town in Georgia perhaps. Yet, this small scope grew to be more and more and encompass larger themes such as class, societal roles, religion, morals, and racism among others, all woven into rich stories with defining characters.

Deirdre English, an ordinary American girl, found out about the war in the museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. She did not have an opportunity to learn about the war – in school teachers did not talk about Vietnam and she probably did not have a reason to seek for information about it. However, once she accidently saw a demonstration and she found out that she was living in ignorance. “‘Most American don’t even know that we’re at war in a little Southeast Asian nation called Vietnam.’ And I thought, yeah, I’m most Americans (30).” The perception of Vietnam war seems that it was not as important issue as for example World Wars for Americans. These stories show the ignorance of common people. However, it is hard to say if it was their

Deirdre English, ordinary American girl, found out about the war in the museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. She did not have an opportunity to know about it – in school teachers did not talk about the Vietnam war, media did not highlight war issues, but once accidently she saw

It is astonishing how one seemingly minuscule decision can make the largest difference in the timeline of ones life. In the story, Leaving Gilead, by Patt Carr, Geneva Birdsong, her daughter Saranell, and their slave Renny, are on the road as a result of the civil war, which Geneva's husband Ian, is fighting in. While traveling, they come across many instances where the love of Geneva's heart and sanity of her mind is questioned. Geneva is unable to accept reality.

The movie In Country directed by Norman Jewison, has many parallels with the book Redeployment by Phil Kay. Following the character Sam Hughes, a recent high school graduate, searching for a connection with her dead father. Her father died in the Vietnam war. Sam is constantly asking her uncle Emmett about the war and what the war was like.

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.

My fascination with the Vietnam War began when I went on holidays and crawled into the tunnels tight enough to make even a small eight year old claustrophobic. I wondered how adults survived in the war by using this tunnels. This personally influenced my perspective on the Vietnam War and marked my interest in this piece of history. In my Preliminary HSC Advanced English classes I was told to choose a political perspective in poetry. I chose Levertov, who wrote about the effects of the Vietnam War on people. In my Extension One English classes I learnt about literature as a representation of the author’s culture. These two main ideas and childhood interest in the Vietnam War became the starting point for my Major Work.

The Sorrow of War shows the Vietnam War from a communist’s point of view; a perspective that is often overlooked and misunderstood by Americans. This literary work exemplifies the idea that all humans encompass feelings and emotions regardless of their political affiliation, citizenship, and/or ethnicity. Furthermore, Americans are seen as the “bad guys” to the North Vietnamese, invading their country, killing their people, and raping their women. Another realistic aspect of The Sorrow of War is how Kien suffers from survivor’s guilt – he is unable, even in decades after

My parents also narrated that my great-grandfather left behind his career of being a doctor for those in Uganda, to help those with limited access to health care. Because of this initial interaction with discrimination, my grandmother became a source of political power in my town of India. My father recently told me that every major political figure in his town would meet at my grandmother’s house and look to her as a source of leadership in the town. Further, she expanded her knowledge of the events to my father and myself—noting the importance of rejecting the idea of violence founded on the idea of discrimination, and the importance of rejecting violence as a whole. My family thus extended to me the concept of looking down upon war, for the sole purpose that war always led to destruction. Because of this, Forrest Gump’s commitment to join the Vietnam War seemed absolutely bizarre to me, it seemed rash and irresponsible. Furthermore, when Lieutenant Dan explained to Forrest his dream of dying a death for the betterment of his country, I was left in disbelief again. This scene allowed me to realize the many layers of war in society, that many people did not see it as a pointless call for