Responsibilities

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People are defined by the choices they make. In Vietnam, Bruce Weigl was forced to kill the enemy, and although this is bad, he didn’t have a choice. If he hadn’t killed his enemy, then they would have killed him. In “Snowy Egret” by Weigl, a boy kills an innocent bird. Unlike in Vietnam, this boy had no pressure. However, what the two have in common, is how things in life don’t really turn out to be what is expected. The boy shot the bird because he thought it would be fun; instead, he felt regret, anger, and fear for what he had done. Weigl can relate to the boy because in Vietnam they were “destroying” what they “didn’t understand”. Three of the scenes Weigl describes are the boy’s regret, the boy’s family problems, and how the boy changes through this experience; these three scenes cause the reader to feel pity, fear and anger.
The boy regrets killing the snowy egret and it makes the reader pity him. Just like Weigl, the boy didn’t understand what he was doing when he pulled the trigger. The boy “hadn’t even known he loved” (34) the snowy egret. The “white” (22) bird resembles ...

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