War

            Bullets were flying and people were falling down dying were all parts experienced in Vietnam. The horror of one of the bloodiest wars there ever was. Over in Vietnam was where Tim O"Brien experienced them all. War had a special impact on him that influenced his writing. Tim O"Brien, the author of If I Die in a Combat Zone, expresses a Herculean abhorrence to war through the bloodshed from his atrocious experience, and also the basic fact of fighting in a war he did not have faith in.
             O"Brien truly did dislike war itself and he expressed it in the book. An example of this is "It was an intellectual and physical standoff, and I did not have the energy to see it to a end. I did not want to be a soldier, not even an observer of war. But neither did I want to upset a peculiar balance between the order I knew, the people I knew, and my own private world"(O"Brien 89). He did not want to be a part of any war and not even a watcher of war he wanted no part of it. In addition to that He knew that he had to fight in that war because he knew that if he did not the battle could reach home. Another example of O"Brien disliking war is " Or it would be fine to confirm the old beliefs about war: Its horrible; but, it's a qucible of men and events, and in the end, none of this seems right" (O"Brien 231). War is utterly horrible and dreadful to those who participate in direct combat. The waste of the many human lives here just did not seem right to him. War just was not the answer to the problem and he says "No war is worth loosing your life for, but others argued that, no war is worth loosing your country over, and when asked about the case when a country fights a wrong war those people just shrugged" (O"Brien p.21). O"Brien valued his life and he valued keeping it. In addition to that others also valued their lives but they valued their countries even more and they also knew that they were fighting in a war that their country was not meant to fight.