Throughout the 1960s, the people of the United States had very conflicted emotions about many situations occurring in their homeland or out in the foreign world. During this period, the Vietnam War was raging on as a fight of democracy against communism, as stipulated by the United States government. On the homefront, the hippies were thought of as either a necessary and revolutionary force to fight against social issues, or as a radical and useless group of youngsters who were only looking to cause problems. However, between the soldiers and hippies, they shared the similarity in how they felt internally, yet they did not convey their external actions in the same way. Within both groups, they each shared the fact in that they both wanted an …show more content…
escape from their respective realities, despite the fact that they responded to their situations at hand in a different manner.
The hippies and Vietnam War participants wished to escape the reality that they lived in. In Joan Didion’s essay, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” she constantly witnesses moments of these young “adults” attempting to escape their supposed-to-be life. One of the people she meets, Debbie, explained to Didion how she “wanted to be a veterinarian once,” but while saying that now she wants to be “an artist or a model or cosmetologist,” now, she retells the story of how she ran away from her parents because “they wouldn’t let [her] dress the way [she] wanted” (Didion 91). By saying this, Debbie proves how she despises anything of what she wanted to do or what her parents wanted her to do in the past. In affirming that she wants to be different now, instead of what following in the footsteps of her past goals, she now looks forward into a new and unknown reality. Furthemore, by abandoning her parents, she exemplifies her feeling of running away from her former realistic expectations. Because she left her parents behind in the dark, her attitude of starting a new life in what she wants to do moves along her ambition to withdraw from the real world. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, also demonstrates this point. During the first moments of the books, O’Brien …show more content…
examines the things that each soldier had to carry whether it was small in weight, big in a figurative manner, or anything in between. At one instance, Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, enters a tunnel to dissolve himself and his feelings about his homeland and those that he loves. In that moment “he was thinking about Martha,” the woman he loved, and after the “stresses and fractures” that made him “feel paralyzed” in one moment of time, “he felt just alone” at the memory of Martha biking “across campus” longing to return home (O’Brien 13). At this time, Cross’ eagerness to escape his platoon and think about wanting to go home shows how much he antagonizes being over there. By being in Vietnam, he feels the emotion of desire, in a sense that he longs to try and be with Martha again, or at least be able to fasten the idea of seeing her at least one more time, by returning home. To have these thoughts, and by escaping to a little hideout in the cave, Cross thinking about this makes clear the hard endurance of being in the war, and the thoughts of wanting to escape it once and for all. Even though these respective groups feel the same way, their outer actions speak differently for both of them.
Returning to Didion and her essay, the hippies approach their movement by revolutionizing movements to protest against domestic problems. In one specific moment during her journaling, she witnesses an actual hippie protest, supporting African-American rights. However, in their mission to make a promising and effective statement, they, in turn, do the exact opposite of that. As the protesters in this movement, referred to as the Mime Troupers, were in blackface, a Negro was “beginning to get annoyed” and “get mad” at this blasphemy of their ultimate ideals, while one Mime Troupe that “[jeered] ‘What’d America ever do for you?’” was “gonna start something” with the Negro and the group associated with him (Didion 126). Didion’s revealing of these events help illustrate the method of how the hippies dealt with what they believed in. By interpreting what she wrote about, it is easy to understand how the protests that they conducted included a sense of readicality and limited thinking when carrying it out. To be politically incorrect by being racist during their protests and executing it with no change in what they are arguing for, it is demonstrated that the hippies externally protested with no purpose at all, and it is their actions made themselves perceived in the 1960s. The actions of the other 1960s group, the War soldiers, differed greatly from what occurred in the
Haight Ashbury area during this period. Again, in The Things They Carried, soldiers during the war era were not as ambitious as the hippies, and for the most part, really changed the outlook of many people after arriving, and seeing the events that unfolded with their own eyes. This holds true for one girl, who demonstrated how much she changed after arriving at one of the camps. Being one Mark Fossie’s girlfriend, Mary-Anne began to fall “into the habits of the bush” and “stopped wearing jewelry, cut her hair short, and wrapped it in a dark green bandana” all the while everyone noticing that she was “a different person, it seemed” (O’Brien 68). By coming to Vietnam, Mary-Anne exemplifies the vast difference of how people handled what they did was a contrast of what people did back home. Before, she was a young, happy, and materialistic young woman, and now that she has seen the warfield, her view had completely changed, thus resulting in a different perspective and actionary response to what is happening. To make all these changes to herself also adds on to how the unsafe and scary environment affects what she does. Because Vietnam was a very not safe place, especially during this period, her fight-flight response to change shows the wide contrast of how the hippie movement changed the actions of its people and how the Vietnam War changed the actions and attitudes within their groups and participants in the 1960s. Even though each member of each group might have felt the same way in a similar manner, that does not change the fact how these people had a different response to their movements. With respect to the point that the situations were totally different on a scale of danger, the way that each person felt had a similar impact on their emotions afterwards. However, straying from emotions, the outlook on how each person continued on and motioned what they did was contrastingly different, and ultimately, is what makes each crusade one of a kind in its own unique way.
During the 1960’s, there was a rising tide of protests that were taking place. College students began to stand up for their rights and protest for a stronger voice in society. The United States was going through a tough period marked by the Cold War against communism and also the war in Vietnam. From Truman to Nixon the United States government involved the country more and more in Vietnam. Nixon announced a new policy in 1968 called Vietnamization. (Foner, 4th edition, pg.1028) This policy would bring American troops back home, but it neither limited the war nor ended the antiwar movements.
The 1960’s was a time society fantasized of a better world. However, the horrors of the Vietnam War soon became evident; the mass amounts of death occurring because of the war became a reality. It created a “movement”, especially in American colleges, in order to stand up for what they believed to be “right”. By 1970, many Americans believed sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake, however there were also various individuals becoming increasingly critical of the student antiwar movement
During the Vietnam Conflict, many Americans held a poor view of the military and its political and military leadership. Protestors met returning soldiers at airports, train and bus stations, and in hometowns with open hostility. Following the conflict, and perhaps the maturing of the ‘60s generation, the view towards the military began to change somewhat. The hostility declined, but an appreciation for the military never really re-emerged during the ...
Recently you have received a letter from Martin Luther King Jr. entitled “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” In Dr. King’s letter he illustrates the motives and reasoning for the extremist action of the Civil Rights movement throughout the 1960’s. In the course of Dr. King’s letter to you, he uses rhetorical questioning and logistical reasoning, imagery and metaphors, and many other rhetorical devices to broaden your perspectives. I am writing this analysis in hopes you might reconsider the current stance you have taken up regarding the issues at hand.
The 1960s were a very turbulent time. The Vietnam War was escalating terribly, as a proxy for the Cold War that was being fought between the USSR and America. Americans went to bed each night fearful of nuclear holocaust. They also were increasingly going to bed hungry, as the divide between rich and poor was increasing. This reality led to the creation of “The war on Poverty”: Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and other social welfare programs, which were only recently legislated. This era was also the time of the civil rights movement. Only five years earlier the Voting Rights Act had been passed. Prejudice was still a huge factor in many people’s lives. These issues are coming up every day in Lock’s paper, the Washington Post. He is commenting on this reality in the form of an editorial cartoon.
...War and the Civil Rights Movements in order to illustrate how the 1960s was a time of “tumult and change.” To Anderson, it is these events, which sparked the demand for recognition of social and economic fairness. He makes prominent the idea that the 1960s served as the origin of activism and the birth of the civil rights movement, forever changing ideals that embody America. The book overall is comprehensive and a definite attention grabber. It shows how the decade had the effect of drastically transforming life in America and challenging the unequal status quo that has characterized most of the nation's history. Despite the violence and conflict that was provoked by these changes, the activism and the liberation movements that took place have left a permanent imprint upon the country.
Joan Didion, the author of On Self Respect, claims that self-respect demonstrates a display once called character; she also argues that the ability to sleep well at night depends on self-respect. Namely, one who realizes that the choices and the actions he/she had made have brought his/her today, has self-respect. Considering Didion’s arguments and personal, real-life examples, self-respect must have at least some influences on physical behaviors.
In the duration of one year, 1968, the American national mood shifted from general confidence and optimism to chaotic confusion. Certainly the most turbulent twelve months of the post-WWII period and arguably one of the most disturbing episodes the country has endured since the Civil War, 1968 offers the world a glimpse into the tumultuous workings of a revolution. Although the entire epoch of the 1960's remains significant in US history, 1968 stands alone as the pivotal year of the decade; it was the moment when all of the nation's urges toward violence, sublimity, diversity, and disorder peaked to produce a transformation great enough to blanket an entire society. While some may superficially disagree, the evidence found in the Tet Offensive, race relations, and the counterculture's music of the period undeniably affirm 1968 as a turning point in American history.
The late sixties was a time of turmoil in the United States. It was a transition period between the psychedelic sixties and the revolutionary seventies. The youth of the United States was becoming increasingly aware of the politics of war, the draft and other general misuses of governmental power. With the Democratic National Convention being held in Chicago during 1968, political tensions were running high throughout the city. Numerous protests were held during the time surrounding the convention in protest of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s policies on the Vietnam War. Most notably, the group of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, David Dillinger, John Froines, Lee Weiner and Bobby Seale...
In 1961, previous to the outbreak of Occupy Wall Streets of Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park was filled with three–thousand young beatnik protestors. Playing instruments and singing folk music symbolized the starvation that these young folks wanted of freedom and equality for America. Protestors demonstrated mixed cultures, individualistic beliefs that went against the status quo of America after the post-war years. The Beatnik Riot involved young traditional Americans fighting not just for the musical crisis of that time, but for the social, racial, and cultural segregations that were brought on by the years of war.
The 1960’s and early 1970’s were a time that eternally changed the culture and humanity of America. It was a time widely known for peace and love when in reality; many minorities were struggling to gain a modicum of equality and freedom. It was a time, in which a younger generation rebelled against the conventional norms, questioning power and government, and insisting on more freedoms for minorities. In addition, an enormous movement began rising in opposition to the Vietnam War. It was a time of brutal altercations, with the civil rights movement and the youth culture demanding equality and the war in Vietnam put public loyalty to the test. Countless African-Americans, Native-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, women, and college students became frustrated, angry, and disillusioned by the turmoil around them.
Peaceful protests were the most prominent form of civil rights activities during the sixties, and often proved successful, given time. “Peaceful but relentless protest was more effective than violent action” (Lindop 30), the legendary civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. argued. One form of this protest manifested itself through James Farmer, who formed the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE for short), conceived the bril...
The Hippie Movement changed the politics and the culture in America in the 1960s. When the nineteen fifties turned into the nineteen sixties, not much had changed, people were still extremely patriotic, the society of America seemed to work together, and the youth of America did not have much to worry about, except for how fast their car went or what kind of outfit they should wear to the Prom. After 1963, things started to slowly change in how America viewed its politics, culture, and social beliefs, and the group that was in charge of this change seemed to be the youth of America. The Civil Rights Movement, President Kennedy’s death, new music, the birth control pill, the growing illegal drug market, and the Vietnam War seemed to blend together to form a new counterculture in America, the hippie.
American society and culture experienced an awakening during the 1960s as a result of the diverse civil rights, economic, and political issues it was faced with. At the center of this revolution was the American hippie, the most peculiar and highly influential figure of the time period. Hippies were vital to the American counterculture, fueling a movement to expand awareness and stretch accepted values. The hippies’ solutions to the problems of institutionalized American society were to either participate in mass protests with their alternative lifestyles and radical beliefs or drop out of society completely. The government and the older generations could not understand their way of life.
The sixties was a decade of liberation and revolution, a time of great change and exciting exploration for the generations to come. It was a time of anti-war protests, free love, sit-ins, naked hippie chicks and mind-altering drugs. In big cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Paris, there was a passionate exchange of ideas, fiery protests against the Vietnam War, and a time for love, peace and equality. The coming together of like-minded people from around the world was spontaneous and unstoppable. This group of people, which included writers, musicians, thinkers and tokers, came to be known as the popular counterculture, better known as hippies. The dawning of the Age of Aquarius in the late sixties was more than just a musical orgy. It was a time of spiritual missions to fight for change and everything they believed in. Freedom, love, justice, equality and peace were at the very forefront of this movement (West, 2008). Some wore beads. Some had long hair. Some wore tie-dye and others wore turtle-neck sweaters. The Hippie generation was a wild bunch, to say the least, that opened the cookie jar of possibilities politically, sexually, spiritually and socially to forever be known as one of the most memorable social movements of all time (Hippie Generation, 2003).