Everyone has different points of views, feelings, reactions, and etcetera. People handle things in different ways. I read the story “Field Trip” by Tim O’brien. The story has emotions, but yet it’s still very settle.
O’brien, who fought in the Vietnam war, re visited the battle ground twenty years later. He didn’t go alone, he took his ten year old daughter Kathleen with him. They went on this trip as a gift to her from him (she had just turned ten). “I’d wanted to take my daughter to the places I’d seen as a soldier.”, he said. He also wanted her to see the world. A ten year old probably wouldn’t enjoy most of the trip. Although “she’d held up well”. Kathleen was getting restless saying stuff like, “I think this place stinks… it smells rotten”. She go back and forth to him and the jeep. She wasn’t necessarily
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complaining, but she was bored of it. One morning she asked what the war was about “why was everybody so mad at everybody else?”. O’brien said they weren’t people just wanted one thing. “Like coming over here. Some dumb thing happens a long time ago and you cant forget it.” Her reaction to the field, was mixed. It’s like she liked seeing it for a while and then got tired of it. It could have been that she liked seeing her dad having a connection with the trip/ field. Her dad’s reaction on the other hand was very different from hers.
Personally, I think O’brien’s emotions hit hard. You can’t just let go of something and someone like that. It’s something that will always be there in your mind. He said, “I’d wanted to take my daughter to the places I’d seen as a soldier. I wanted to show her the Vietnam that kept me awake at night.”He decided to show her his past, the important things in his life. If those things didn’t matter to him, would he still have took the time to show her? He not only showed her the field he fought on. He also showed her where his friend Kiowa had died. “Now, looking out at the field, I wondered if it was all a mistake. Everything was too ordinary. A quiet sunny day, and the field was not the I remembered”, he remembers it different. I picture he remembers it as a dark, dreary, noisy place. During their time at the field O’brien took his friends Kiowa’s moccasin’s and put them in some sort of “mush” where he passed away. He wanted to tell Kiowa that “he’d been a great friend, the very best”. “In a way, maybe I’d gone under with Kiowa, and now after two decades I’d finally worked my way
out”. His reaction was meaningful. He knew why he was there. I think he felt at peace visiting the place, he once was having a rough time at. With him seeing where his friend died made him realize, that perhaps he’s never really left Kiowa’s side until, he made that connection with him. Both of them had different reactions. Kathleen's reaction was more of a hurry I just want to get out of here reaction, whereas her dad O’brien’s reaction was meaningful. However I feel like Kathleen felt like she should respect her dad’s past. Maybe that’s why she was asking him questions, she wanted to show interest. Same thing with her dad, I felt like he was resecting his own past, just by being there. It’s like he knew he has to revisit what made a big impact on his life.
It is known that he was a sergeant, he was shot multiple times, and his friend,Linda, died when he was young. It is also known that O’Brien would make up stories to bring his friend back to life. O’Brien tells us “I made elaborate stories to bring Linda alive in my sleep (O’Brien 243).” Later, O’Brien would bring his other friends back using stories. This shows that there was something wrong with O’Brien before he went to war. It also helps to show that the problem was made worse by the war. O’Brien says that “something had gone wrong. I’d come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person, a college grad...but after the seven months in the bush I realized that those high, civilized trappings had somehow been crushed under the weight of the simple daily realities (200).” O’Brien had directly stated his realization that the war had changed him. He figured out that his personality had changed; he realized that he now felt more mean.
Tim O'Brien is confused about the Vietnam War. He is getting drafted into it, but is also protesting it. He gets to boot camp and finds it very difficult to know that he is going off to a country far away from home and fighting a war that he didn't believe was morally right. Before O'Brien gets to Vietnam he visits a military Chaplin about his problem with the war. "O'Brien I am really surprised to hear this. You're a good kid but you are betraying you country when you say these things"(60). This says a lot about O'Brien's views on the Vietnam War. In the reading of the book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, Tim O'Brien explains his struggles in boot camp and when he is a foot soldier in Vietnam.
O’Brien uses this story to convey that the soldiers in the Vietnam War were forever changed by the horrifying experiences that they experienced. He gives specific reasoning, such as “a true war story is never moral” and “a true war story cannot be believed.” This ties into this chapter, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong,” when O’Brien states that Rat Kiley had a tendency to exaggerate his stories, so the credibility of his story is already tarnished. Despite Kiley’s pleas stating that his story is absolutely true, this doesn’t stop O’Brien and the other soldiers from subconsciously “subtracting superlatives, figuring the square root of an absolute, and then multiplying by maybe.”
O’Brien looks back into his past, to the time when he was called to serve in the Vietnam War. O’Brien’s initial
O Brien 's point of view is an accurate one as he himself because he is a Vietnam veteran. The title of the short story is meaningful because it describes each soldier’s personality and how he handles conflict within the mind and outside of the body during times of strife. The title fits the life as a soldier perfectly because it shows the reality that war is more than just strategy and attacking of forces. O’Brien narrates the story from two points of view: as the author and the view of the characters. His style keeps the reader informed on both the background of things and the story itself at the same
The death of Kiowa is the point in this story, and arguably the entire novel, where the true nature of war becomes evident. His death in any situation would have been tragic, and camping in that “shit field” alone would have been an emotionally scarring experience; however, that these events had to coincide in time only multiplies the gravity of the situation. Interestingly, every soldier has his own way of grappling with such overwhelming feelings of grief for his highly-esteemed comrade. Yet what every man has in common is that in the end he concludes that he alone is the one ultimately responsible for Kiowa’s death.
When O’Brien first arrives to Vietnam, the men of the platoon show him how the grief of war can be covered up by humor. As the men were patrolling near a village off the South China Sea they suddenly started to encounter sniper fire. The firefight only lasted a few minutes but Lt. Cross decided to order an airstrike on the village anyways. After the strike was over, the platoon proceeded to the smoldering village to find nothing but “…an old man who lay face up near a pigpen at the center of the village. His right arm was gone. At his face there were already many flies and gnats.”(). To many, this image of a destroyed village and the mutilated old man would cause horror and plight. Instead of that normal reaction, “Dave Jensen went over and shook the old man’s hand. “How-dee-doo,” he said.”(). The other men of the platoon also went up to the dead man’s body and shook his hand while adding a comment. This disturbing response the men have to the dead old man isn’t one of disrespect, it is their coping mechanism for realizing what they just did. Because O’Brien was new to Vietnam he had yet to understand why the men were all doing this. He was awestruck by the actions...
he can create a new world where soldiers never died and there never was a war to be fought. Through the magic of storytelling, “[O’Brien] can still see Kiowa, too, and Ted Lavender and Kurt Lemon and sometimes [he] can even see Timmy skating with Linda under the yellow floodlights” (O’Brien 245-46). He created a new world where soldiers never died and there never was a war to be fought. In this story, there was no deaths to be sad about, and there was no funerals to attend. Each of O’Brien’s vignettes saved a different moment.
I don’t know.” (268). This quote shows how it is hard for the narrator to get Kathleen to understand and to explain the situation. People who were not there will not fully understand the physical and mental toll that war has on humans. Kathleen is confused on why her father focuses on " Some dumb thing happens a long time ago and you can’t ever forget it" (269). She represents the people that do not understand and probably will never fully understand what the Vietnam War was like and why it is such a big deal that haunts her father. Kathleen like many others think they can just put the painful memories behind them and not worry about it after it happens. The narrator has a hard time trying to explain to these kinds of people about their past experiences.
After more time and experience O’Brien never fully gets used to the humor but understands that jokes are other soldiers’ way of coping as dreams and stories are used by O’Brien to cope with his own personal experiences. It wasn’t long into his first days in Vietnam that the memory of Linda would resurface. This memory resurfaces after being with his platoon for just four days. O’Brien and his group encounter a small amount of sniper fire and even though no one was hurt, an air strike was called and soon after O’Brien had his next experience with mortality.
That night when Kiowa died, it was not really Norman Bowker’s fault, it was O’Brien’s. O’Brien was talking to Kiowa and was going to show him a picture of his girl he has back home. He then turned on a flashlight to show him the picture. Then, it started raining and the Song Tra Bong river, which the field was on the bank of, started flooding. In the morning, the troops searched for him. O’Brien recalls, “Leaning forward, heads down, they used the butts of their weapons as probes, wading across the field to the river and then turning and wading back again” (155). They did not want to believe that they lost such a good man to the mud field, and ultimately to the trechery of
Back to more agonizing death, in the chapter “In The Field,” the platoon is hit with a devastating loss of life, and one of the men suffers very deep shame and guilt for the part he played. The platoon makes camp in a field along the river, despite the locals warnings to stay out. It’s raining and within a short time, they realize they’ve made camp in the village’s toilet. As the water rises, the field becomes deep muck. During the night, Kiowa’s best buddy, a young soldier, clicked on his flashlight to show Kiowa a picture and within a millisecond mortar rounds started exploding all around them, Kiowa was wounded, went under the water and muck, and drowned. O’Brien himself stated, “There were bubbles where Kiowa’s head should’ve been” (O’Brien
Throughout the chapter O’Brien uses a technique known as point of view. The point of views in the novel comes from three characters- Azar, Kiowa, and Tim O’Brien himself. The three characters perspectives on war are interpreted entirely different. Tim O’Brien is illustrated as the most sensitive solider out of the three. “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole…” (124). Tim’s sensitivity is revealed when he shows how bewildered he is as he stares at the lifeless Viet Cong body. Tim allows the readers to see that he has remorse about how he took action to stop the Viet Cong solider as he thinks repetitively about the repugnant attack. Tim is also shown as the character that never really talks and is very quite which in turn shows that he is guilty and ashamed. Azar happens to be the solider that is there to complete his job and does not show any sorrow for any actions that may occur. “Oh, man, you fuckin’ trashed the fucker” (125). In the novel, Azar shows that he actually enjoys the work of war and it does not really seem to bother him. Kiowa is more sensible in realizing and understanding what Tim is experiencing. “Tim it’s a war. The guy wasn’t Heidi—he had a weapon, right? It’s a tough thing, for sure but you got to cut out that staring” (126). He knows that what Tim is feeling is really hard for him to grasp because of the astonishment “Take it slow. Just go wherever the spirit takes you.” (126). It is shown that Kiowa has an understanding of Tim but he knows how to deal with the situation at hand.
When the story begins, O’Brien sits in front of the dead man that he had just killed and writes a history of that man by providing the readers with as much details as he possibly could, and expresses, “His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone,…it was this wound that had killed him” (O’Brien 124). In other words, this description is saying that all the wounds that was vividly detectable was caused because of O’Brien. He expresses this from a narrative point of view which intrusively emphasizes the guilt he has; if it was second or third point of view, O’Brien wouldn’t have been successful to let the readers know he truly felt when this happened. He believes that if he hadn’t shot the man, he would now be in a moderate situation and he wouldn’t have inflicted the wounds. The history of the dead man that O’Brien describes, without even knowing the name, illustrates the guilt that he feels, he’s very emotional about this circumstance because he constantly sees his own reflection and relates himself to the dead, young soldier . Therefore, Tim O’Brien conveys a world of emotion through his efforts to write about the heavy guilt that he was going to have to carry for the rest of his life without hiding the fact that he was dreading and feeling other negative emotions. Additionally, another
Have you ever wondered why people have certain reactions? I chose chapter eight on emotions for my reflection paper because emotions are something that everyone has and feels, yet cannot always explain or react to in the way you would expect. Personally, I have never been great at responding to emotions in a way that I would not regret in the future. Thus, naturally being drawn to this chapter as a way to expand my knowledge on how to react to things more positively. I also wanted to learn why I feel a certain way after events that would not affect most people and be reassured about my feelings. Opposite to that, it is nice to see that, while not always productive, others have the same reaction habits. Overall, emotions are a complicated