What It’s Like to Go to War is Marlantes first-hand experiences of the Vietnam War. Marlantes attended Yale University, as well as Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Marlantes was also a National Merit Scholar. Marlantes left school to serve his country in Vietnam, where he was named a Lieutenant. Marlantes was awarded a Navy Cross, Bronze Star, and he also earned himself twelve Air Medals.
Before publishing What It’s Like to Go to War, Marlantes published Matterhorn in 2010. What It’s Like to Go to War followed Matterhorn as a memoir of Marlantes personal experiences in Vietnam as well as his viewpoints on how the young, undeveloped men who go to war do not have proper preparation or education to fully understand the challenges that they will face
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One example of this is when Marlantes is very honest in his description of lying in the military world for the protection of careers and personal exaggeration. One of Marlantes most memorable examples of this lying was focused on the fact that the body counts reported were sometimes false. The fact that they would just lie about how many military members had died was an insight into the life in the military world. Lying about such a thing was considered to be irrelevant but as it turned out, was actually very important. Without this insight form Marlantes, readers would not have known this detail about wartime operations within the …show more content…
If this is not the case, most people have little to no concern for the happenings in our nation’s military. This could be part of the problem in our country, the general public is not educated on our current military operations and activities. A very power quote from Marlantes in What It Is Like to Go to War describes the setting for most of the men serving in the Vietnam War; "Warriors deal with death. They take life away from others. This is normally the role of God...The Marine Corps taught me how to kill but it didn't teach me how to deal with the killing." This quote was one of the best in the book. It showcases that while a person can be suitable for killing a vast number of enemy soldiers, they may never be prepared enough to deal with the aftershock of that experience. This also gives the reader insight to just how intense being in the war
G.K.Chesterton once quoted, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” The novel Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden, recounts the struggles of a Canadian soldier through his tedious and terrible experiences fighting for his country against the Germans. Throughout the novel, the protagonist was disgusted by the blood and trauma war brings, however, he knew that it was imperative to kill, or else he would not have survived. In war, it is kill or be killed, someone who is wise will kill to survive and protect his country, as well as avenge his family or comrades.
Wallace Terry has collected a wide range of stories told by twenty black Vietnam veterans. The stories are varied based on each experience; from the horrific to the heart breaking and to the glorified image of Vietnam depicted by Hollywood. Wallace Terry does not insinuate his opinion into any of the stories so that the audience can feel as if they are having a conversation with the Vietnam Veteran himself. Terry introduces the purpose of the book by stating, “ Among the 20 men who portray their war and postwar experiences in this book. I sought a representative cross section of the black combat force.”(p. XV) Although the stories in this book were not told in any specific order, many themes became prominent throughout the novel such as religion, social, and health.
“Every war is everyone’s war”... war will bring out the worst in even the strongest and kindest people. The book tells about how ones greed for something can destroy everything for both people and animals leaving them broken beyond repair, leaving them only with questions… Will they ever see their family again? Will they ever experience what it’s like to
It is apparent that the topic of war is difficult to discuss among active duty soldiers and civilians. Often times, citizens are unable to understand the mental, physical, and physiological burden service members experience. In Phil Klay’s Ten Kliks South, the narrator struggles to cope with the idea that his artillery team has killed enemy forces. In the early stages of the story, the narrator is clearly confused. He understands that he did his part in firing off the artillery rounds, yet he cannot admit to killing the opposition. In order to suppress his guilt and uncertainty, our narrator searches for guidance and reassurance of his actions. He meets with an old gunnery sergeant and during their conversation, our narrator’s innocence
...display how the average citizen would see war for the first time. Colonel Kelly sees her as “vacant and almost idiotic. She had taken refuge in deaf, blind, unfeeling shock” (Vonnegut 100). To a citizen who even understands the war process, war is still heinous and dubiously justified when viewed first hand. The man who seems to have coldly just given away her son’s life without the same instinct as her has participated in this heinous wartime atrocity for so long, but it only affect her now because she cannot conceive of the reality of it until it is personally in front of her. That indicates a less complete political education of war even among those who war may have affected their entire lives. The closeness and the casualties of this “game” will affect her the most because she has to watch every move that previously could have been kept impartial and unviewed.
These instances contribute to his emotional turmoil and hatred towards the Vietnam War. The deaths became constant, and most would learn to conceal their emotions on the subject. One day the Alpha Company was traveling from one village near Pinkville to another. Passing by a herd of cows and many young boys in a field, the soldiers took this opportunity for target practice, just like at Fort Lewis. O’Brien did not shoot, but did so without protest. Amazed at his comrades for their actions and outward pleasure by the smiles on their face (pg. 139). Emotionally the war is changing these men, making them numb to the fact of death, and others who watch and wonder are still apart of the overall effect. He mentions on page 81 that O’Brien has even found himself not knowing when people arrive and when others die. The emotional turmoil has affected him and his officers tremendously in the fact that they have all learned that the death of the vietnamese and possibly of their own, are just apart of the war (pg. 141). Mad Mark, the platoon leader, is described to have no-fear or in other words “insanely calm.” This emotionlessness is apparent when he flaunts a ear he just cut off a person he killed. The other soldiers giggle and find his stunt as amusing, all together confirming that the continuous death has damaged his
War makes you a man; it makes you dead” (O’Brien 76). Any well written novel will intrigue a reader because when an author is able to bend in emotions of a real life event with a fictional standpoint of things, a story has been written.
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
...ust deal with similar pains. Through the authors of these stories, we gain a better sense of what soldiers go through and the connection war has on the psyche of these men. While it is true, and known, that the Vietnam War was bloody and many soldiers died in vain, it is often forgotten what occurred to those who returned home. We overlook what became of those men and of the pain they, and their families, were left coping with. Some were left with physical scars, a constant reminder of a horrible time in their lives, while some were left with emotional, and mental, scarring. The universal fact found in all soldiers is the dramatic transformation they all undergo. No longer do any of these men have a chance to create their own identity, or continue with the aspirations they once held as young men. They become, and will forever be, soldiers of the Vietnam War.
A war that still comes to mind and appears in people’s conversation today is the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War started November 1, 1955 and ended April 1, 1975. This war involved the United States, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Thailand. The people who didn’t experience the war might wonder what it was like, what were the soldiers duties, how did the soldiers act, or even how did the soldiers survive the war. Tim O’Brien who wrote a short story that is called “The Things They Carried”, is a story that involves soldiers who are in Vietnam. In his story he writes about a Lieutenant named Jimmy Cross and his passion about a woman named Martha and how he becomes a better lieutenant for his men during the war.
"There are no extraordinary men... just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are faced to deal with" (William Halsey). The same can be said about volatile men. This is the quote Christopher R. Browning thought of when he named this book. The men of the 101st battalion were rarely faced with decisions. Even if it had been proposed by Trapp the morning of Jozefow that "any of the older men who did not feel up to the task that lay before them could step out" (Browning, chapter 7, pg. 57), he didn't actually allow them any time to truly think about it. He brought it up moments before they were about to go out to the slaughter. They were blind-sided and the men who didn't want to risk the future of their jobs as policemen or the men that didn't want to look weak in front of their peers were ushered into a massacre unlike that they could have ever imagined. But because they were all basically forced to give killing a shot, it only allowed them to adapt to war easier. The job that the men of the 101st had to carry out continued to get easier as they adapted to the climate of the war by creating rules for themselves. These ordinary men were no longer in an ordinary situation.
Behind every war there is supposed to be a moral—some reason for fighting. Unfortunately, this is often not the case. O’Brien relays to the readers the truth of the Vietnam War through the graphic descriptions of the man that he killed. After killing the man O’Brien was supposed to feel relief, even victory, but instead he feels grief of killing a man that was not what he had expected. O’Brien is supposed to be the winner, but ends up feeling like the loser. Ironically, the moral or lesson in The Things They Carried is that there is no morality in war. War is vague and illogical because it forces humans into extreme situations that have no obvious solutions.
It glorifies soldiers as warriors not only because they are fighting the villains but are seen as heroes who defend the American values of freedom and democracy. As the United States has made these values the normative standards for itself and the rest of the world, the attitude of superiority has increased in the people, thus making it easier for the US to use the normative values as justification for military actions. The cooperation between media and government, which has unconditional support from American people by fostering a “peace through war” attitude, also help in strengthening a patriotic feeling in the society. This is probably the reason why people do not think about the numbers of others that the US military has killed as a negative issue. In the collective American mind, the US is militarily involved for the greater good, taking on the role of peacekeeper, thus making warrior culture a necessary component of peace culture in the
In war, much reward is given, possibly to a fault. In The Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, the reader follows Lieutenant Mellas, an Ivy League graduate, who in joining the military hopes to earn praise as a soldier. He will use this praise and reward as a soldier to propel his personal agenda. Once thrown into the thick, ghastly swamp that is the Vietnamese jungle, Mellas witnesses the true terror and horror of war. He quickly realizes what it means to be a true warrior, a man of character. This character that he comes to learn and understand throughout the novel comes to define him as a man and human being. As the story progresses, he becomes more angry with the U.S. Military. He begins to recognize how often the true heroes of war go unnoticed.
He left his university studies to enlist combat duty in Vietnam in 1967 as a volunteer, but came out of it all a true soldier. He didn’t know that war wasn’t like what the movies made it out to be. In fact, when he arrived there he realized that war was much more horrible than what he thought it was. He watched as his comrades were shot and killed. But after all that happened, he only then realized how important all