Seneca, a Roman philosopher and dramatist, expresses that "Worse than war is the fear of war." ... In the Vietnam War, many young men were forced to leave their wives and families to fight for a questionable cause. ... Another burning question that is on everyone's mind concerns the purpose of the Vietnam War--why are the soldiers even there? They march "without purpose" (80) and wrestle with the "ambiguities of Vietnam" (81). This uncertainty of why the soldiers are in Vietnam causes feelings of doubt in their sense of well-being. ...

• Word Count: 1146
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Caputo had one of the most unique perspectives on the war possible. He was a young Marine lieutenant when the Marines first came ashore in force in Vietnam in March of 1965. ... Caputo is one of the first Marines ashore in Vietnam and is part of the initial process of escalation that led to our massive commitment to that country. ... The marines in Vietnam and any war in general are trained and taught that killing is there primary objective. ... The Vietnam War was different from any other war in our history because of the type of warfare that was being used our solders had never foug...

• Word Count: 984
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Vietnam, the heart and soul of teenage rebellion to the government for creating a draft that sent over the creative and intelligent youth, was a war that deemed to get rid of the political idea, communism, which spread as quick as the napalm that blazed over the serene green landscapes. ... The soldiers carried loneliness, uncertainty of the truth of war, and the heavy burden of physical and emotion weight; Tim O'Brien uses war related imagery to symbolize the vim of storytelling in his book "The Things They Carried". ... Cross and Martha were both a prime example of the diffi...

• Word Count: 1571
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

In "The Things They Carried", Tim O"Brien wrote about the feelings and experiences of young soldiers in the Vietnam War. ... These tangibles greatly weigh down the soldiers, which in turn makes the Vietnam War even more difficult physically to endure. ... This shows how uneasy he is on the Vietnam battlefield, and O"Brien uses him as a tool to show the way that most of the young men feel in this time. ... War is always physically draining, Vietnam being described as one of the most miserable. ... If a person is unaffected by killing, they war would be more easily bearable for him. ...

• Word Count: 1097
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

Tim O"Brien Tim O"Brien's novel If I Die in a Combat Zone (1970) is a personal document of the war in Vietnam, and his own emotions and feeling towards war. O"Brien found his inspiration through everyday activities of a soldier in the Vietnam War. The Things They Carried (1990) was also about the Vietnam War. ... Clearly, the Vietnam War changed many lives. ... The Vietnam War brought out certain emotions that only war could bring about. ...

• Word Count: 1543
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

Vietnam was a war that lasted close to fifteen years and many men lost their lives there. ... Homer knew what it felt like to go through war because his description of Odysseus is very good. According to Edwin Burgess article Odysseus in Vietnam "Odysseus shows many post war stress symptoms, just as a real soldier would." ... I found this quote on a website about Vietnam vets and the question asks to the vet was: What was the worst thing about Vietnam? ... Like many of our vets that were fighting in Vietnam. ...

• Word Count: 754
• Approx Pages: 3
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried is not a novel about the Vietnam War. It is a story about the soldiers and their experiences and emotions that are brought about from the war. O'Brien makes several statements about war through these characters. ... The violent nature that the soldiers acquired during their tour in Vietnam is one of O'Brien's themes in his novel. ... In the story they were following the unwritten orders of war and they changed their behavior because they were told to by the war ...

• Word Count: 1205
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

In the poem "Facing It," Yusef Komunyakaa, an African-American, solemnly reflects over his experience serving in the Vietnam War while on a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. ... In a poignant recollection of his traumatizing experience in the Vietnam War, Komunyakaa uses vivid imagery, dynamic metaphor, and other poetic techniques to tackle not only his conflicted feelings towards the War, but also, more ingeniously, the force race played during his time of service. ... Something as simple as a bird invokes the image of a war plane blazing across the sky. ... Komunyakaa comes to ...

• Word Count: 1041
• Approx Pages: 4

Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."" (34) Billy does not feel remorse or anger when he hears of the war in Vietnam because it is just a frame in time, which has, is and always will happen. Even with the knowledge that his son, a member of the Green Berets, could potentially be killed in the war "Billy was not moved to protest the bombing of North Vietnam, did not shudder about the hideous things he himself had seen bombing do... Billy is told that war, disease, and even the end of the uni...

• Word Count: 576
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

The fact that he thinks about war in such a grand definite way of his journey adventures. ... Richie Perry couldn't believe how the Vietnam War was nothing what it thought it be. ... This is how the Vietnam War changed him. ... He realized the meaning of life and in the same time he found the useless concept of war life. ... No one, I repeat, makes it out of war in a perfect condition. ...

• Word Count: 658
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

In the short story "The Things They Carried" Tim O"Brien faces Jimmy Cross with the problem of surviving while fighting in Vietnam. ... Jimmy was in his own world, mainly back in New Jersey with Martha, but sometimes in a fantasy world where nothing felt real and he would do amazing things like fly over Vietnam waving the whole madness goodbye. ... She was a girl back home who he had loved dearly, and had remained in contact with throughout the war. ... Scared of what others might think cost many lives during the war. ... In a time of war you should have no friends. ...

• Word Count: 897
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School

"The Things They Carried" In the short story "The Things They Carried" Tim O"Brien faces Jimmy Cross with the problem of surviving while fighting in Vietnam. ... Jimmy was in his own world, mainly back in New Jersey with Martha, but sometimes in a fantasy world where nothing felt real and how he would do amazing things like fly over Vietnam waving the whole madness goodbye. ... She was a girl back home who he had loved dearly, and had remained in contact with throughout the war. ... Scared of what other might think cost many lives during the war. ... In a time of war you should have not f...

• Word Count: 841
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

These dichotomized feelings reflect his inner struggle with masculinity and are mirrored in his feelings towards the people of Vietnam because he searches for his identity in both the land and the women of Vietnam. ... Andrew understands that survival and selflessness are linked to prostitution within Vietnam. ... Tuon Bunkong, who wrote an essay concerning guilt and the effects of war, writes that Andrew is guilt ridden due to the fact that, "because his parents had money, his family was able to escape the kind of poverty that seems to permeate Viet Nam," (220). His career, freedom,...

• Word Count: 2179
• Approx Pages: 9
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

Soldiers believe that they are not to talk about what they had to do or what they had to see while at war. ... War can also affect a person's mind through time. ... I turn that way--I'm inside the Vietnam Veterans Memorial again" (Komunyakaa 8-12). ... That same struggle of balancing their mind is fought by many war veterans. ... The reader can see that a part of the narrator's soul died in the war as he is "half-expecting to find [his] own" name on the Vietnam Memorial (Komunyakaa 15-16). ...

• Word Count: 1099
• Approx Pages: 4
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

It makes them find different ways to cope with war. ... They are in the Vietnam war and the horror of death is always hanging over their heads. ... The violent nature that the soldiers acquire during their tour in Vietnam is also an example of the way they dealt with the horrors. ... They couldn't survive in the war if they had stayed the way they were before the war. ... They were following the unwritten orders of the war. ...

• Word Count: 1194
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

This was during the 1970's when the Vietnam War took place in which Australia was heavily involved. ... The major component of conflict, which creates this opposition, is the war in general and its necessity. ... There are also a few other smaller conflicts which hold less importance than the war such as love and fidelity. ... He also openly opposes the war and Australia's involvement. ... They"ll know that to be against the Vietnam war is also to be against the old fossilised government we now have. ...

• Word Count: 1178
• Approx Pages: 5
• Grade Level: High School

Major occurrences during this era are Civil Rights Movement in 1954, Vietnam War in 1955, and the Watergate Scandal in the 1970s. ... In the poem "Facing It" by American author Yusef Komunyakaa, the author uses metaphor, imagery, and symbolism in order to express to his audience the close experience of making his journey to the Vietnam War Veteran's Memorial in Washington, DC. Through the use of these various literary devices, the speaker is not only able to draw the audience into the history of the poem, but also shares his involvement in the war, and place the events of the wa...

• Word Count: 1172
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography

Cross is an officer for the United States Army, and he has a duty to be a leader for his men in the midst of a very brutal war. ... "The Things They Carried- is just a brief insight to the Vietnam War, but it is clear that this war was a fatal one. ...

• Word Count: 480
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

What if war was no longer a terrible experience? ... If war were to erupt in the states, this procedure would cause the death of family members and loved ones to be just another memory. ... For example, rape victims and war veterans would be able to receive positive benefits. One war veteran said in a conversation with Pitman, " if Vietnam was only a memory I would be OK. ... Statistics say, "More than 960,000--or 30 percent--of our 3.1 million Vietnam theater veterans have been affected by PTSD at one time or another, and an estimated 479,000 are still suffering from the disorder" (Jontz ...

• Word Count: 1631
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography

War and love - they have always been compared- (152). ... He is brainwashed and a danger to himself and the stability of the war. ... Pyle thinks that the only way to help the war is to take it upon him. ... Although he seems to have found the perfect solution to the conflict in Vietnam, he is inexperienced and callow. ... It is a war; there is no perfect solution. ...

• Word Count: 843
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

War and love - they have always been compared- (152). ... He is brainwashed and a danger to himself and the stability of the war. ... Pyle thinks that the only way to help the war is to take it upon him. ... Although he seems to have found the perfect solution to the conflict in Vietnam, he is inexperienced and callow. ... It is a war; there is no perfect solution. ...

• Word Count: 840
• Approx Pages: 3
• Grade Level: High School

Tough Love in "The Things They Carried," by Tim O"Brien In Tim O"Briens "The Things They Carried," O"Brien describes the blind obsession of Lieutenant Jimmy Cross for a young girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. Burdened by the physical and psy...

• Word Count: 517
• Approx Pages: 2
• Grade Level: High School

This country was built on war, and soldiers need help to cope with the realities of war both during and after. ... However, war has a way of changing a man mentally. ... They also carried the land itself – Vietnam, the place, the soil – a powdery orange – red dust that covered their boots and fatigues of their faces" (O'Brien 1008). ... Killing is inevitable during the war, but Lt. ... Living life after the war is the hardest part. ...

• Word Count: 1168
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography

The Things They Carried War is hell. ... However, nothing compares to actually fighting in a war. ... He reacts and recovers from the war in the most productive way, by actually forming a career and helping others experience his war stories through his writing. ... O"Brien shows that he has no lingering bitterness towards the people of Vietnam stating, "All that's finished" (188) in response to a farmer near the field where he returned to leave Kiowa's shoes at the place where he died. ... War is nasty; war is fun" (80). ...

• Word Count: 1691
• Approx Pages: 7
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

In Tim O"brien's short story, "The Things They Carried," he describes a certain platoon humping through the jungle of Vietnam. ... They all carried the basic essentials for survival of war and the things that would make living possible by carrying the bare minimum of what they absolutely had to have. ... War is probably the scariest situations you would want to be in. ... Many of soldiers did so during this time to escape the reality of war, to briefly escape the heavy burden of emotions. ... They did the things they had to do: "It was what had brought them to the war in the first pla...

• Word Count: 922
• Approx Pages: 4
• Grade Level: High School