What would happen if two brothers were pitted against one another in the civil war? “Cranes” by Hwang Sunwon, a short story, and “Thoughts of Hanoi”, a poem by Nguyen Thi Vinh both display how the war can impact one’s relationship with the other. The story “Cranes” focuses on two childhood friends that went to war. In the story, the author writes,” In front of the farmhouse that had been turned into a public peace-police office, a young man stood, tied up. He seemed to be a stranger, so Songsam approached him to have a close look. He was taken aback; it was none other than his boyhood playmate, Tokchae” (222). This excerpt shows that Songsam’s childhood friend is being kept captive, and both have fell in touch with each other. The author then writes,” ‘Hey, why don’t we stop here for a crane hunt?’ Songsam spoke up suddenly. Tockhae was …show more content…
puzzled, struck dumb. ‘I’ll make a trap with this rope; you flush a crane over here.’ Having untied Tockhae’s hands, Songsam had already strated crawling among the weeds” (227). This shows that Songsam and Tockhae’s friendship have a very strong bond that can never be broken. In conclusion, although war can be brutal, and puts friendships at risk, some can surmount it. “Thoughts of Hanoi” by Nguyen Thi Vhi is a poem that focuses on a man’s point of view on the Vietnam Civil War.
In the poem, the narrator’s world is being torn apart into tiny little pieces due to the war. The author writes,” I dream of Hanoi/ Co-ngu Road/ ten years of separation/ the way back sliced by a frontier of hatred/ I want to bury the past/ to burn the future/ still I yearn/ still I fear/ those endless nights/ waiting for dawn” (Lines 4-13). The reader can infer that the narrator is looking forward to a bright future, and wants to forget the past that was brought about the negative effects of the civil war. The narrator says, “I might be the one to shoot you then/ or you me/ but please/ not with hatred/ For you don’t you remember how it was/ you and I in school together?/ Those roots go deep!/ Brother, we are men,/ conscious of more/ than material needs,/ How can this happen to us/ my friend/ my foe?” (Lines 60-73). This shows that the narrator values their friendship more than the war. Consequently, if people only value their relationships more like the characters from the stories, there would be less tension in
wars.
Hocus Pocus is a word that most powerful witches or people use when they see a magical thing happen whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. The film Hocus Pocus is about a boy named Max who brings his sister, Dani, and the girl he likes named Allison on an adventure. The adventure started when he heard a story in class about a boy named Thackery Binx. Thackery was trying to save his sister, who was taken by the sister witches. When he went to the house to find her, the sister witches turned him into a black cat. After hearing the story, Max went to the sister witch house with the girls and jokingly lit the candle. This caused the sister witches to come back to the house. The rest of the movie shows
Mark Atwood Lawrence’s The Vietnam War: A Concise International History shows readers an international affair involving many nations and how the conflict progressed throughout its rather large existence. Lawrence starts his book in a time before America was involved in the war. It starts out with the French trying to colonize the nation of Vietnam. Soon the United States gets involved and struggles to get its point across in the jungles of Indo-China. Much of the book focuses on the American participation in helping South Vietnam vie for freedom to combine the country as a whole not under Communist rule. Without seeing many results, the war drug on for quite some time with neither side giving up. This resulted in problems in Vietnam and the U.S.
Tim O’Brien’s book, The Things They Carried, portrays stories of the Vietnam War. Though not one hundred percent accurate, the stories portray important historical events. The Things They Carried recovers Vietnam War history and portrays situations the American soldiers faced. The United States government represents a political power effect during the Vietnam War. The U. S. enters the war to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam. The U.S. government felt if communism spreads to South Vietnam, then it will spread elsewhere. Many Americans disapproved of their country’s involvement. Men traveled across the border to avoid the draft. The powerful United States government made the decision to enter the war, despite many Americans’ opposition. O’Brien’s The Things They Carried applies New Historicism elements, including Vietnam history recovery and the political power of the United States that affected history.
The poem's persona and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall depend on each other to express the poem's intention. The poem's intention is to show that war is lethal, less than gloriful, and extremely real. Although years have gone by, these recollections are still affecting how he lives. Simply standing in front of the wall reminds the speaker of all of this. The Veterans Memorial takes on a life of its own. While the speaker is in its presense, the wall controls him. It forces him to remember painful memories and even cry, something he promised himself he would not do. The persona in the poem reacts to the power the wall has and realizes that he must face his past and everything related to it, especially Vietnam.
In Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, the readers follow the Alpha Company’s experiences during the Vietnam War through the telling’s of the main character and narrator, Tim. At the beginning of the story, Tim describes the things that each character carries, also revealing certain aspects of the characters as can be interpreted by the audience. The book delineates what kind of person each character is throughout the chapters. As the novel progresses, the characters’ personalities change due to certain events of the war. The novel shows that due to these experiences during the Vietnam War, there is always a turning point for each soldier, especially as shown with Bob “Rat” Kiley and Azar. With this turning point also comes the loss of innocence for these soldiers. O’Brien covers certain stages of grief and self-blame associated with these events in these stories as well in order to articulate just how those involved felt so that the reader can imagine what the effects of these events would be like for them had they been a part of it.
The Vietnam War was the longest war in America's history of involvement. Twenty years of hell, land mines, cross-fire, and death. Vietnam was divided by the Geneva Accord. The north being communist run by Ho Chi Minh. The south being anti-Communist run by Ngo Dinh Diem. Before Vietnam was separated, it was run by France. France had ruled most of Indochina since the late 1800s. The Vietnamese were unhappy with the way the French were controlling, therefore, many of them took refuge in China. When in China, they began to follow the lead of Ho Chi Minh, who wanted to model the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence as that of the U.S. version. In the 1940s, Japan had taken over Vietnam which upset Ho Chi Minh and his revolutionaries when they had returned a year later.
Through the stories of 5 womens lives throughout the time period of the Vietnam War, Moreau helps the reader to grasp the way they are feeling by interpreting the voices of the other family members. (Moreau, 35) She uses words and phrases to express the need they need for their fathers and how life at home isn’t the same without them there. One can picture the emptiness and loneliness they feel inside. Also writing the autobiographies in first person point of view, lets the reader know every feeling, every movement and expresses the empty hole in their stomachs having to take care of an entire family alone (Hales). What Moreau was trying to grasp with this concept, is to make the reader feel and almost experience what it would be like if it were them in one of the wives position. Although only a few actually got to experience this feeling, we should all understand what it’s like to be in a situation like that and have our sympathy for them. Letters were written very few times, but when the time came to be able to write, th...
It has been known that the Vietnam War affected many American soldiers who were involved in the war physically and psychologically. The Vietnam War was one of the most memorable wars in history. Many Americans’ lives lost for no objective at all. Chapter 10 informed us about how the Vietnam War started and what really happened during that time. It also gave us background information about Vietnam Veterans and nurses who were involved in the war and what they went through during the war. I had the opportunity to interview a Vietnam Veteran also.
The impact of the Vietnam War upon the soldiers who fought there was huge. The experience forever changed how they would think and act for the rest of their lives. One of the main reasons for this was there was little to no understanding by the soldiers as to why they were fighting this war. They felt they were killing innocent people, farmers, poor hard working people, women, and children were among their victims. Many of the returning soldiers could not fall back in to their old life styles. First they felt guilt for surviving many of their brothers in arms. Second they were haunted by the atrocities of war. Some soldiers could not go back to the mental state of peacetime. Then there were soldiers Tim O’Brien meant while in the war that he wrote the book “The Things They Carried,” that showed how important the role of story telling was to soldiers. The role of stories was important because it gave them an outlet and that outlet was needed both inside and outside the war in order to keep their metal state in check.
In the book, Novel Without A Name three men; Luong, Bien, and Quan are childhood friends who have similar upbringings. The author Duong Thu Huong writes about their childhood “We had chased crabs together, wrestled with one another, gone to school under the same roof.” (Huong 29). These three men were very close while they were growing up. When war had started they all joined the army for similar reasons of honor for themselves and their village. It wasn’t until their experiences of war, that the outlook of these men started to drift away from each other. The separations would be driven with the positions they held in the military. Bien was a sergeant who wore the full burden of the hardships of war. He was on the front lines experiencing the
It is understandable that some Americans strongly opposed the United States getting involved in the Vietnam War. It had not been a long time since the end of World War II and simply put, most Americans were tired of fighting. Mark Atwood Lawrence is one of the people who opposed our involvement in the Vietnam War. In his essay, “Vietnam: A Mistake of Western Alliance”, Lawrence argues that the Vietnam War was unnecessary and that it went against our democratic policies, but that there were a lot of things that influenced our involvement.
The soldiers from this novel represent actual feelings about brotherhoods, misperceptions of war and the pointless fighting. They provide clear examples of these with their experiences from war. From sitting on their “boxes” and chatting, to the realization of a friend inside an enemy, these soldiers have been able to see the realities of war and have shared it with the rest of the world. People can now see how horrid it is to be in a war and now they try at all costs to prevent war. War is bad, that’s all there is to it. Not much more you can say about it except that. When viewing the death of innocent people, the question is asked once again, is it really worth it?
The Vietnam War was a traumatic experience for everyone that fought on the ground. American soldiers were up close and personal with the Viet Cong (enemy) which made them live in constant fear for their lives. They never knew how they would die or when they would take their last breath, and this thought was always in the back of their minds. The Vietnam War was very brutal, and the amount of death from both sides was enormous. Tim O’Brien’s story “The Things They Carried” is an accurate description of the Vietnam War. He paints a good, yet brief, description of what the war was like for the American soldiers who fought on the front lines.
...is story, Hemingway brings the readers back the war and see what it caused to human as well as shows that how the war can change a man's life forever. We think that just people who have been exposed to the war can deeply understand the unfortunates, tolls, and devastates of the war. He also shared and deeply sympathized sorrows of who took part in the war; the soldiers because they were not only put aside the combat, the war also keeps them away from community; people hated them as known they are officers and often shouted " down with officers" as they passing. We have found any blue and mournful tone in this story but we feel something bitter, a bitter sarcasm. As the war passing, the soldiers would not themselves any more, they became another ones; hunting hawks, emotionless. They lost everything that a normal man can have in the life. the war rob all they have.
The soldiers feel that the only people they can talk to about the war are their “brothers”, the other men who experienced the Vietnam War. The friendship and kinship that grew in the jungles of Vietnam survived and lived on here in the United States. By talking to each other, the soldiers help to sort out the incidents that happened in the War and to put these incidents behind them. “The thing to do, we decided, was to forget the coffee and switch to gin, which improved the mood, and not much later we were laughing at some of the craziness that used to go on” (O’Brien, 29).