The Vietnam War Essay, And O Brien's The Things They Carried

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Recommended: Compare and contrast

Kaitlyn Johnson
Disher 4
English
May 28, 2014
Compare and Contrast Paper
The Vietnam War, conflict in Southeast Asia, was mainly fought in South Vietnam between government forces with aid from the United States against guerrilla forces with aid from North Vietnam. The war began soon after the Geneva Conference provisionally divided Vietnam into the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, North Vietnam, and the Republic of Vietnam, South Vietnam. It began as a Vietnamese civil war and grew into a limited international conflict in which the United States became deeply involved. The war resulted in South Vietnam's collapse and unification in the northern part of the country.
O’Brien’s novel, The Things They Carried, and Oliver Stone’s film, Born on the Fourth of July, both stories analyze and discuss the Vietnam War. Both pieces of work display similar plots, characters, and themes. However, from a more detailed perspective, the two pieces of work are also very differently structured. O’Brien scattered his writing in many different stories that all group together perfectly.
In the novel, The Things They Carried, the themes of fear, isolation and truth in the form of storytelling stick out the most. The theme of fear is prominent when O’Brien has to choose whether to flee to Canada or to be a man and go fight in the war. Along with this theme, the theme of solitude also appears. The soldiers are in the war and are cut off from what is going on at home. They are isolated in their own minds and are lonely. They are detached from their own morality and are just fighting on true instinct. Lastly, storytelling is one of the most prominent themes in the novel. Throughout the entire novel, O’Brien tells his stories to grieve his losses of friends a...

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...milar interests in the war, but they are different in their ways of showing their interests. The film and book both display similarities in terms of their characters, yet differentiate in their themes.
After reading The Things They Carried and watching Born on the Fourth of July, I have realized that they are both two very great pieces of work that analyze and portray what it was like to be a part of the war and how it affected everyone in and out of it. The Vietnam War was a huge mistake for the US to take part in. However, because of it, we learned from our mistakes and made changes in government to help prevent Vietnam from ever happening again. Along with these changes, great novels and films are still being created about the Vietnam War. These books and movies make is more easily possible for feature generations to learn about and understand the Vietnam War.

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