In a family there is a special bond, but when war becomes part of the family’s life, it slowly deteriorat what was once a loving relationship of the soldier and his/her family to an isolation between the individual and their family. Based on the short story, Where Have You Gone, Charming Billy , TIm O’Brien used imagery to help readers envisioned a soldier desired of returning home. O’ Brien constantly used the word pretend to displayed the relationship between a family and the soldier during war. “He was pretending he was a boy again, camping with his father in the midnight summer along the Des Moines River… He pretended his father would be there by the campfire and they would talk softly about whatever came to mind and then rolled into their sleeping bags, and that they’d wake up and it would be morning, and there would not be a war…” (O’Brien 622) According to O’Brien, soldiers seek for his/her family during stressful circumstances of the war. …show more content…
Paul Berlin experienced the sight of his dead friend, Billy, and yearned to return home.
But he faced an obstacle between war and family; when war separated Paul from returning home with his family. In addition, readers can determined the tone of Lily Lee Adams’ poem, The Friendship Only Lasted a Few Seconds, when Adams encountered a soldier who is dying and the first thing he mentioned was, “Mom.” (Adams _ ) This corresponds to war affecting family, by demonstrating how the dying soldier searched for his mom’s presence before he passed away after being exposed to the horrifying war. The fact that a nurse pretended to be the soldier’s mom, makes readers sympathized the soldier for not being able to die near his family or see them one last time.Given these points, both Tim O’Brien and Lily Lee Adams used imagery and tone to distinguish the effect war had on family. Mainly, tearing away soldiers from their
family. The comfort and companionship of a new friendship would be a rock on which soldiers or anyone associated with the war would rely on upon amid the darkest times at war. However, even war can disrupted a perfect bond between individuals. Kenneth W. Bagby wrote a letter, Dear Folk, to his family which Bagby was overwhelmed by the death of his best friend. “ I got to know this boy well, and he was my best friend. His name Dan Davis… he died in my arms of two bullet wounds in the chest. He said, ‘Ken, I can’t breathe.’ There was nothing I could do.” (Bagby 637) The readers are able to perceived Bagby’s suffering by the tone of his voice. Bagby began the letter with a delightful, reminiscing tone but it quickly faltered to a dismal tone. his fluctuation of the tone represented his suffering. A strong bond between two friends that instantly crashed when war sneaked it way into their relationship. Creating a painful memory that affect Bagby because he knew if he could, there would have been no way bagby could save his best friend. Another example of war affecting friendship is Lily Lee Adams’ poem, “ The Friendship Only Lasted a Few Seconds.” In the poem, Adams repetitively used the line, “But the friendship / Only lasted a few seconds.” (Adams 9-10) The purpose of repeating the line indicate Adams’ solemn tone towards war. Being apart of the Vietnam war and working as a nurse, Adams emphasized the loss of a friendship she had built in a spur of the moment. Readers are able to determine her grief of wanting the friendship to last, but due to the war, the relationship between Adams and the dying soldier diminished. As a result, war has the ability to take away friendship and create a remorse and pain to the victims.
Many war stories today have happy, romantic, and cliche ending; many authors skip the sad, groosom, and realistic part of the story. W. D. Howell’s story, Editha and Ambrose Bierce’s story, An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge both undercut the romantic plots and unrealistic conclusions brought on by many stories today. Both stories start out leading the reader to believe it is just another tpyical love-war senario, but what makes them different is the one-hundred and eighty degrees plot twist at the end of each story. In the typical love-war story the soldier would go off to war, fighting for his country, to later return safely to his family typically unscaved.
Tina Chen’s critical essay provides information on how returning soldiers aren’t able to connect to society and the theme of alienation and displacement that O’Brien discussed in his stories. To explain, soldiers returning from war feel alienated because they cannot come to terms with what they saw and what they did in battle. Next, Chen discusses how O’Brien talks about soldiers reminiscing about home instead of focusing in the field and how, when something bad happens, it is because they weren’t focused on the field. Finally, when soldiers returned home they felt alienated from the country and
In the story “Home Soil” by Irene Zabytko, the reader is enlightened about a boy who was mentally and emotionally drained from the horrifying experiences of war. The father in the story knows exactly what the boy is going through, but he cannot help him, because everyone encounters his or her own recollection of war. “When their faces are contorted from sucking the cigarette, there is an unmistakable shadow of vulnerability and fear of living. That gesture and stance are more eloquent than the blood and guts war stories men spew over their beers” (Zabytko 492). The father, as a young man, was forced to reenact some of the same obligations, yet the father has learne...
In Tim O’Brien’s “Where Have You Gone Charming Billy”, the contrasting moods of the nightmarish rice patty and rejuvenating sea show that you can never leave your trauma behind when you come of age. Paul Berlin is a new soldier, fighting in the Vietnam War, afraid of being caught out, Paul and his troops had to head to the sea, but on their way, they had to pass a rice patty, it was all “mud and algae and cattle manure and chlorophyll, decay, breeding mosquitoes and leeches as big as mice, the fecund warmth of the paddy water rising up to his cut knee”. The use of imagery to describe the rice patty illustrates the effect of the disgusting rice patty have on Paul Berlin which create a nightmarish mood. Disgusted and afraid, Private First Class
Imagine being in an ongoing battle where friends and others are dying. All that is heard are bullets being shot, it smells like gas is near, and hearts race as the times goes by. This is similar to what war is like. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, the narrator, Paul Baumer, and his friends encounter the ideals of suffering, death, pain, and despair. There is a huge change in these men; at the beginning of the novel they are enthusiastic about going into the war. After they see what war is really like, they do not feel the same way about it. During the war the men experience many feelings especially the loss of loved ones. These feelings are shown through their first experience at training camp, during the actual battles, and in the hospital.
Promises that men make have been connected with man since the beginning of time, and are the rocks for many human bonds. Breaking these covenants, disregarding the promise made to one’s family or going against ones’ word can be seen as a potential character flaw. One emotional and physical trauma of wartime is the choice to disregard a prior family commitment. Evidence of broken bonds can be seen through news articles on the Texas Revolutionary War, books on the Civil War, letters about World War I, textbooks including information on World War II, and journals from Vietnam. Discovering the existence of broken promises for self-preservation exhibits the importance of understanding the depth of wartime and the emotional trials placed on soldiers and victims of war rather than their family.
The dramatic realization of the fact that the war will affect a member of the Chance family is apparent in this quote. The amount of sorrow and emotions felt by the Chance family, and for that matter, all families who had children, brothers, husbands, or fathers, drafted into what many felt was a needless war. The novel brings to life what heartache many Americans had to face during the Vietnam era, a heartache that few in my generation have had the ability to realize.
An emotional burden that the men must carry is the longing for their loved ones. The Vietnam War forced many young men to leave their loved ones and move halfway across the world to fight a ...
In the poem, The Friendship Only Lasted A Few Seconds written by Lily Lee Adams, the overall tone is consistently solemn. The narrator conveys her tone about war through her relationship with the soldier when she states, “After all the friendship only lasted a few seconds” (Lines 30-31, Adams). This demonstrates the limited time the speaker has to encounter the moribund soldier. This line makes light of the speaker's tone as gloomy due to the fact that she has nearly acquainted this soldier, yet he is at death's doorstep. Another example is when the speaker exclaims, “I felt I was in second place” (Lines 14-15, Adams). The nurse feels like a replacement for Mary, and cannot help but feel downhearted that the actually person cannot be there
honest with and this demonstrates the decline of family life that the war causes. Later in
Following negative feelings from close individuals in a Veteran’s life, a person taking part in war can become detached.
In many of Joyce Carol Oates short stories, she expresses her emotions from dealing with a tragic childhood, and trying to combine the natural world to what it really means. She wanted her stories to feel real by writing about society and people today, that others could connect with.
Friends and relatives are forced to watch one another die in combat and are left with nothing but the feeling of helplessness. As a soldier in Vietnam, Tim O’Brien’s character, Norman Bowker, experienced this feeling when a fellow soldier, named Kiowa, died in front of his eyes. Norman had thought about “How he had been braver than ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be” (147). As he lay in a field of manure being bombarded with shrapnel and bullets, Norman watched Kiowa slowly sink into the mud, barely alive but still living. It had crossed Norman’s mind that Kiowa still had a chance of surviving if he was pulled out of the line of fire. However, the fierce attack by the Vietnamese army forced Norman to retreat and made him leave his friend behind in the process. When Norman came home from war, he began talking to his dad about everything that had happened. He explained that he had felt brave for living and fighting in the war but felt an immense guilt for not being brave enough to save a fellow soldier. This was surprising to hear because when someone tells a story of war, typically they make themselves out to be a hero. However, Norman describes himself to be almost a coward and puts himself down for his actions. This guilt was something that he may have never had to deal with before if it wasn’t for the war. Norman now carries the weight of his friend’s life on his shoulders. Another example of this was demonstrated with an additional character in the novel, Dave Jensen. When the war began, Dave Jensen and Lee Strunk made a pact that included a promise to kill the other person if something were to happen to them that may make them suffer. One day when they were walking through Vietnam, Lee stepped on a mine and took his own leg off. According to the pact, Dave Jensen was supposed to kill Lee but when Lee begged
The story, “Soldier’s Home,” is an appropriately titled story, that explains the trials and tribulations of a soldier that had been to war and is now returning home. Throughout the story, the main character, Harold, is struggling significantly to re-adapt his lifestyle from what he was before leaving for the war, and what he is as he returns from the war. Harold repeatedly compares the lifestyle of people in his society, in America, to the lifestyles of people in Germany and France. The complications that Harold struggles with every day, are the same struggles that soldiers returning from the war still face today.
Stories involving a predator and prey have been prevalent throughout time, and those stories usually involve attractive young girls. Attractive unassuming girls are stalked by older men that pretend to be someone that they are not. One prominent example of a predator and prey story occurs in Joyce Carol Oates story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” was based off an article that Oates had read, about a twenty-three-year-old man who would hangout around young girls, pick them up, and take them for rides in his gold convertible, and he was convicted of murdering three of them (Hirschberg 773). In her story, Oates uses a suspenseful plot line, characters Connie and Arnold Friend, and imagery