Tom Clancy, the master and creator of the military genre, wrote The Hunt for Red October. Clancy and his book have received many awards, such as Best Selling Author, and achieving honor of being a bestselling book over the course of four years. All the success he has now did not come easy, and since writing was not his first career choice, he also achieved success as an insurance salesman. Clancy dreamed of joining the Navy, mostly because of his father’s background in the armed forces, and from a young age dedicated everything he did towards doing so; such as, joining the ROTC program in his schools. Unfortunately for him, he had poor eyesight and was rejected, as was his dream. He spent years developing The Hunt for Red October, as a second career path; meanwhile, he worked to sell insurance. Clancy learned more than there was to know about technology, so much so people thought he was actually getting information from the CIA, and with his imagination creating a twist; he soon published one of greatest military based books ever to be written and created a completely new subgenre under the military genre, techno-thriller.
Born April 12, 1947 in Baltimore, Maryland, Tom Clancy begins his journey to becoming one of the best contemporary military based authors. He was the son of a mailman who served in the United States Navy. Tom Clancy recalls memories about his father, “taught me to be independent” (Richard Baiocco). Clancy’s mother worked in the credit department for Montgomery Ward, a department store. His parents both worked solely to send him to parochial school. He attended a school educated by Jesuits, “Tom recalls having had ethics pounded into him” (Richard Baiocco).
Growing up, Clancy was very interested ...
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...t. He went through rejection as one should and learned from that to become an enormous role model for all in the English field.
Works Cited
All Watchers. 13 April 2011.
Http://www.allwatcher.com/topics/info_3549.asp
All Readers. 15 April 2011.
Http://www.allreaders.com/topics/info_1258.asp
Beetz, Kirk. “Thomas L. Clancy, Jr.” Beacham’s
Popular Fiction: 1950-Present American British. Walton Becham. Vol.1. Washington, D.C.: Becham Publishing, 1986. 4 vols. To date.
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Free Book Notes. 15 April 2011.
To write a true war story that causes the readers to feel the way the author felt during the war, one must utilize happening-truth as well as story-truth. The chapter “Good Form” begins with Tim O’Brien telling the audience that he’s forty-three years old, and he was once a soldier in the Vietnam War. He continues by informing the readers that everything else within The Things They Carried is made up, but immediately after this declaration he tells the readers that even that statement is false. As the chapter continues O’Brien further describes the difference between happening-truth and story-truth and why he chooses to utilize story-truth throughout the novel. He utilizes logical, ethical, and emotional appeals throughout the novel to demonstrate the importance of each type of truth. By focusing on the use of emotional appeals, O’Brien highlights the differences between story-truth and happening-truth and how story-truth can be more important and truer than the happening-truth.
An interesting combination of recalled events and editorial commentary, the story is not set up like a traditional short story. One of the most interesting, and perhaps troubling, aspects of the construction of “How to Tell a True War Story” is O’Brien’s choice to create a fictional, first-person narrator who might just as well be the author himself. Because “How to Tell a True War Story” is told from a first-person perspective and O’Brien is an actual Vietnam veteran, a certain authenticity to this story is added. He, as the “expert” of war leads the reader through the story. Since O’Brien has experienced the actual war from a soldier’s point of view, he should be able to present the truth about war...
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is one of the most well known World War II authors. His humble beginnings and early life misfortunes shaped not only his writings, but also his view of the world. His imprisonment in Dresden in World War II, however, formed his opinions about war at an early age and later inspired many of his works and style of writing. After the returning from World War II, Vonnegut voiced his sentiments through his writing that war was wasteful and uncivilized. Vonnegut developed a unique blend of sadness, satire, and simplicity, along with his ability to understand the audience, which made his novels comprehensible and inspirational to any reader. Although one of his most famous novels, Slaughterhouse Five, is based off of his experiences in World War II, during the time of its publishing, antiwar groups applied the novel’s themes to the Vietnam War. Early life tragedies and imprisonment established Kurt Vonnegut’s antiwar opinions in his semiautobiographical novel, Slaughterhouse Five, which would influence and encourage the younger Vietnam generation to protest an unnecessary war.
Beacham, W. (Ed.). (1986). Beacham’s Popular Fiction In America, Volume 3. Washington DC: Beacham Publishing.
O’Brien, Tim. How to Tell a True War Story. Literature and Ourselves. Sixth Edition. Eds.
...im to write about his platoon members. Because Tim O’Brien goes to Vietnam and faces the stress and deals with the trauma his character is forever altered. This is the Tim O’Brien who discovers that one can never die.
“No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and is misunderstood now” (Richard Nixon). This quote said by Richard Nixon was directed toward everyone in the United States involved in relaying the events of Vietnam back to the U.S. It showed how almost no one was able to describe any realistic detail of the event, except for Tim O’Brien. A student at Macalester College, Tim O’Brien was heavily involved in various antiwar protests, such as war protests and several peace vigils (“The Things They Carried…” 318). However, Tim O’Brien was drafted into the army, and by the time he was released, he was promoted to a captain (“O’Brien (William)…” 1). This source also goes on to say that due to his efforts, Tim O’Brien received the honorary Purple Heart (“O’Brien (William)…” 1). Another source states that, “despite being awarded the Purple Heart for wounds he received, O’Brien loathed the war and everything about it, but it would become the catalyst and continuing inspiration for his literary career” (“The Things…” 319). This quote helps to explain why Tim O’Brien’s work focuses mainly on characters dreading the war and wishing to be released home (“The Things…” 319). Due to the Vietnam War O’Brien fought in, his work focuses on fictional experiences of characters in the Vietnam War (“O’Brien (William)…” 318). Many health experts have commended O’Brien “for his insightful depiction of combat trauma” (“The Things…” 228). This source also goes as far as to say that, his stories can be compared to the Iliad, and the war stories of Ambrose Bierce (“The Things…” 228). “The Things They Carried” is considered by many, a great addition to books based on Viet...
O’Brien, Tim. “How to Tell a True War Story.” The Things They Carried. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print.
...unt for Red October, Clancy was suddenly a celebrity. He was invited to the White House for a private meeting with President Reagan and was met by military enthusiasts around the country. Now he had the opportunity to gain firsthand experience with the military operations and hardware he had known only from books and technical manuals. Clancy observed joined in training exercises and spent a week at sea on a mishearing frigate, and another on a submarine. Despite the detailed descriptions of life aboard a submarine in The Hunt for Red October, Clancy had never set foot on one until after the novel was published.
As a Wall Street Journal Pentagon correspondent, Thomas E. Ricks is one of America’s elite military journalists. He has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and awarded a Society of Professional Journalists Award for his writings based on the Marines. Thomas E. Ricks lectures to military officers and was a member of Harvard University’s Senior Advisory Council on the project on U.S. Civil-Military Relations. As a Pentagon correspondent, he can access information where no other civilian can step foot—traveling with soldiers abroad, his eyes tell the tale of the life of a Marine.
O’Brien’s unique verisimilitude writing style fills the novel with deep meaning and emotion. Analyzing the novel through a psychological lens only adds to its allure. Understanding why characters act the way they do helps bring this novel to life. The reader begins to empathize with the characters. Every day, the soldiers’ lives hang in the balance. How these soldiers react to life-threatening situations will inspire the reader. Life has an expiration date. Reading about people who are held captive by their minds and who die in the name of war, will inspire the reader to live everyday as if they are currently in the
The life of Thomas L. Clancy Jr. started like any other, but changed with the success of his work. He was born the year 1947, in the City of Baltimore, Maryland. His father was a postal carrier and also a store credit employer (Speace 98). Clancy spent his life educated in only Catholic schools. Because of this Clancy says, "I was never swept up in the drugs or music"(Cohen 2). He attended Loyola College in Baltimore Maryland, and earned a degree in English (Speace 98). At that time, Clancy then tried to enlist in the army. He was excused though, because of a case of myopia. "I thought I would have made a good tank commander"(Speace 99) , said Clancy, whose childhood dreams had been broken when he was kept from entering into the military. He then took on a career as an insurance agent in Baltimore Maryland, and kept that job until around 1973 (Speace 98). He then became a business owner from 1973 to the year 1980. In 1969, Clancy married a woman named Wanda Thomas, who was an eye surgeon and an insurance agency manager (Speace 98). They had four children, Michelle, Christine, Tom, and Kathleen, and a dog named Freddie (Cohen 115). They lived on 400 wooded acres in Maryland, along the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. Standing on the front lawn is a tank, given to him as a gift by his wife at the time (Schindehette 114). On the property there are also two tennis courts, two basketball courts, a full length football field and...
Works Cited “American Literature 1865-1914.” Baym 1271. Baym, Nina et al. Ed. The Norton Anthology of American Literature.
Belasco, Susan, and Linck Johnson, eds. The Bedford Anthology of American Literature. Vol. 1, 2nd Ed., Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2014. 1190-1203. Print.
Being a forty-three year old author writing about war decades after his experiences, it is of little concern to O’Brien whether he tells tales solely in line with the facts. He does not want the reader to care whether the stories he weaves actually happened, for he is only writing to “try to save lives with [his] stories” (232). His stories may be made up and his stories just might be complete lies, but the truth is irrelevant. More importantly, his stories save lives. They save his own, they save yours, and they save society’s.