In the book, If I Die in a Combat Zone, the author Tim O'Brien argues that the Vietnam war challenged one's morality through his depictions of the war from a foot soldiers perspective and how the Vietnamese civilians were mistreated.
In the story O’Brien is a draftee, foot soldier who expresses his experience while fighting in the Vietnam war; however, by doing so he reveals that many moral confrontations are encountered, due to him being opposed to the war and his courage being questioned. Moreover, by providing his mindset and thoughts throughout the story O’Brien overall efficiently conveys the moral challenges the war impacted him with. For instance, O’Brien wanted to confront his battalion commander on how to go about his circumstance
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of believing the war was unjustified, but his sergeant denied him to see the battalion commander and authorized him to visit the Chaplain first. O’Brien accepted going to the Chaplain and soon addressed to him that he did not agree with the war due to his value in human life, and as a result it lead to an argument between the two men (pg. 56). As the dispute continued O’Brien stated there is no point in argument because his belief will never change hence that he only wanted advice on what he should do about his morals when it comes to engaging in war, however the Chaplain proceeded on claiming this type of thought makes him a betrayal to America and it was necessary to have faith instead (pg. 60). In other words, the Chaplain rebuked O’Brien for letting his personal principles come before participating in the Vietnam war, for the purpose to restrain O’Brien’s ideas against the reality of the war. This is significant, because O’Brien is reaching out for assistance from his experienced, higher ranked comrade, so that he will gain justification on why murdering other humans is morally right when it comes to war. However, the Chaplain never provides an efficient answer because he has no idea how undertake this self conflict rather than only focusing on faith, which results in making O’Brien’s position more difficult due to his morals being suppressed and him not containing the kind of faith the Chaplin has since he his atheist. In addition, to their dispute over the war being morally right to fight was in particular O’Brien’s intuitive thoughts on what courage really meant to him concurrently in comparison to the wars depiction of courage. This can be seen, when Johnson, O’Brien’s officer at the time, concluded that he may not be brave, but because O’Brien believed Johnson was a very brave man it initiates his deep thoughts on what determines true courage (pg. 134). Fundamentally, he discovered in his profound thought is that courage is not risking one's life in battle to save another failing life, but actually included in a combination of different attributes such as temperance, justice, and wisdom to ultimately create true virtue (pg. 140). Expressively, this means that courage is not only courage to O’Brien it is now a vital aspect to virtue, which truly makes a soldier a man, as a result there is only a few men who are genuinely brave to him and it does not including himself. Thus, if a man withholds virtue it indicates all of his actions are morally right to himself, which means O’Brien questions whether he has real virtue or if his courage considering for the war covered his cowardice. This goes in favor of the fact the Vietnam war lead to many soldiers, similar to Johnson and O’Brien, to question if they have acquired virtue. Therefore, both the argument and internal thought over what O’Brien believed was morally right portrayed the Vietnam war precisely affecting soldiers principles. Equally important to O’Brien’s application of his perspective on the story, is the numerous instances of mistreatment toward Vietnamese civilians from the American military, in order to portray the moral struggle O’Brien and other soldiers persevered through while murdering and abusing perhaps innocent lives.
Inevitably, it is perceived throughout the story that the soldiers could not recognise who the true enemy was, due to the war being a civil war between North and south Vietnam, which meant everyone looked similar, so ultimately the military came to the conclusion that everyone was the enemy or “Charlie.” However, this collided with O'Brien's values of human life, because they believed that civilians should not take the responsibility of the war. Specifically, when the Alpha Company came across a village to rest and soon found a beat up AK-47 hidden in the bushes, thus they raided the village to try and find more weapons and afterwards the lieutenants selected three of the oldest men in the village to be restrained to a tree with rags in their mouths for the purpose of being safe from the enemy for the night (pg. 130). While it may be true, that some of the soldiers approved to forcibly tie the old men to the tree--since they were afraid the enemy will attack if not-- O’Brien and his Comrade conversed about how they did not want the old men to be beaten when interrogated and afterwards O’Brien let his mercy take over him and gave one of the men water (pg. 131). This gives the understanding that the military was not concerned about whether they were treating innocent people wrongly, rather that they were only concerned with protecting themselves from the opposition. Nevertheless, O’Brien was going against regulations when he gave one of the captives water, which provides evidence that the war was challenging his morals and in that situation he let them overcome him. On top of, O’Brien going against military rules to give his mercy to a vietnamese man is also
when O’Brien’s major Callicles had multiple discussions on whether murdering commoners was morally justified or not. Such as, when Callicles expressed to a reporter that there is no distinction between the enemy and civilians when it comes to war and that he felt no guilt to murder innocent lives if the result was winning the war (pg. 194). Overall, he believed that murdering defenseless people was morally right when it comes to the war, yet O’Brien was strongly against that mindset which is why he opposed to the war. This is substantial to the point that there was many forms of mistreatment to the vietnamese civilians that undoubtedly conflicted the soldier's, like O’Brien, when it came to their basic principles. Nevertheless, both situations of abuse being done to commoners and the discussion to try and justify murdering them as well contribute to the overall argument that the Vietnamese war was a direct cause to the soldiers challenging their morals. Accordingly, because If I Die in a Combat Zone provides details of the Vietnamese war through a draftee, foot soldiers experience and multiple accounts of unjustified abuses to the Vietnamese civilians O’Brien efficiently conveys that the story challenged the soldiers overall morals. Bibliography OBrien, Tim. If I Die in a Combat Zone: Box Me Up and Ship Me Home. London: Fourth Estate, 2015.
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.
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...
In this chapter, O’Brien contrasts the lost innocence of a young Vietnamese girl who dances in grief for her slaughtered family with that of scarred, traumatized soldiers, using unique rhetorical devices
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
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...
Through his own experience, O’Brien develops the idea that self-respect erodes like a pebble in a river of insecurity. No matter how hard O’Brien tries to convince himself that he must listen to his conscience, he is unable to retreat from his burden. He might die in the wrong war! He might become one of the carcasses in the slaughterhouse! But he must do what he should do. In life when we believe that our self-respect is right, we are determined to follow our heart. However, when we encounter oppressive situations, we will not swim away from our insecurity, because “[we are] cowards, [we go] to war”.
In the early stages of the story O’Brien is faced with a “moral emergency”, though the draft letter sent to him in the early summer of 1968 stirred up many more feelings than that of just a moral nature. O’Brien experienced unease within his conscience about how this particular war had no “imperative of its cause”; people were dying for reasons unknown. This news also hit him in a deeply emotional way; he became quite livid with the entire idea of
The violent nature that the soldiers acquired during their tour in Vietnam is one of O'Brien's predominant themes in his novel. By consciously selecting very descriptive details that reveal the drastic change in manner within the men, O'Brien creates within the reader an understanding of the effects of war on its participants. One of the soldiers, "Norman Bowler, otherwise a very gentle person, carried a thumb. . The thumb was dark brown, rubbery to touch. . . It had been cut from a VC corpse, a boy of fifteen or sixteen"(O'Brien 13).
The Vietnam War was not a “pretty” war. Soldiers were forced to fight guerilla troops, were in combat during horrible weather, had to live in dangerous jungles, and, worst of all, lost sight of who they were. Many soldiers may have entered with a sense of pride, but returned home desensitized. The protagonist in Louise Erdrich’s “The Red Convertible,” is testament to this. In the story, the protagonist is a young man full of life prior to the war, and is a mere shell of his former self after the war. The protagonists in Tim O’Brien’s “If I Die in a Combat Zone,” and Irene Zabytko’s “Home Soil,” are also gravely affected by war. The three characters must undergo traumatic experiences. Only those who fought in the Vietnam War understand what these men, both fictional and in real life, were subjected to. After the war, the protagonists of these stories must learn to deal with a war that was not fought with to win, rather to ensure the United States remained politically correct in handling the conflict. This in turn caused much more anguish and turmoil for the soldiers. While these three stories may have fictionalized events, they connect with factual events, even more so with the ramifications of war, whether psychological, morally emotional, or cultural. “The Red Convertible,” and “Home Soil,” give readers a glimpse into the life of soldiers once home after the war, and how they never fully return, while “If I Die in a Combat Zone,” is a protest letter before joining the war. All three protagonists must live with the aftermath of the Vietnam War: the loss of their identity.
Throughout the novel, Tim O’Brien illustrates the extreme changes that the soldiers went through. Tim O’Brien makes it apparent that although Vietnam stole the life of millions through the death, but also through the part of the person that died in the war. For Tim O’Brien, Rat Kiley, Mary Anne and Norman Bowker, Vietnam altered their being and changed what the world knew them as, into what the world could not understand.
They were essential in showing the key parts in O’Brien’s life that lead to the turning points which lead to the creation of this novel and his ability to be at peace with what had happened in Vietnam. He finally accepted what had happened and embraced it instead of avoiding it. Works Cited Novel O'Brien, Tim.
...ien writes this story in a completely non traditional way and manages to create a whole new experience for the reader. He takes the reader out of the common true, false diameters and forces the reader to simply experience the ultimate truth of the story by reliving the emotional truth that the war caused him. Although this may be a bit challenging for the reader, it becomes much easier once the reader understands the purpose for the constant contradictions made by O’Brien. The difference between “story-truth” and “happening-truth” is that “story-truth” is fictional, and “happening-truth” is the actual factual truth of what happened. The “story-truth” is the most important when it comes to O’Brien, and understanding his work. It is meant to capture the heart and mind of the readers and take them on a journey through war with the O’Brien, as he experienced and felt it.
Life can bring unexpected events that individuals might not be prepared to confront. This was the case of O’Brien in the story, “On the Rainy River” from the book The Things They Carried. As an author and character O’Brien describes his experiences about the Vietnam War. In the story, he faces the conflict of whether he should or should not go to war after being drafted. He could not imagine how tough fighting must be, without knowing how to fight, and the reason for such a war. In addition, O’Brien is terrified of the idea of leaving his family, friends and everything he loves behind. He decides to run away from his responsibility with the society. However, a feeling of shame and embarrassment makes him go to war. O’Brien considers himself a coward for doing something he does not agree with; on the other hand, thinking about the outcome of his decision makes him a brave man. Therefore, an individual that considers the consequences of his acts is nobler than a war hero.
Usually when someone is murdered, people expect the murderer to feel culpable. This though, is not the case in war. When in war, a soldier is taught that the enemy deserves to die, for no other reason than that they are the nation’s enemy. When Tim O’Brien kills a man during the Vietnam War, he is shocked that the man is not the buff, wicked, and terrifying enemy he was expecting. This realization overwhelms him in guilt. O’Brien’s guilt has him so fixated on the life of his victim that his own presence in the story—as protagonist and narrator—fades to the black. Since he doesn’t use the first person to explain his guilt and confusion, he negotiates his feelings by operating in fantasy—by imagining an entire life for his victim, from his boyhood and his family to his feeling about the war and about the Americans. In The Man I Killed, Tim O’Brien explores the truth of The Vietnam War by vividly describing the dead body and the imagined life of the man he has killed to question the morality of killing in a war that seems to have no point to him.
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