Term Paper Categories
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Vietnam
| Term Paper Title |
Vietnam |
| # of Words |
2135 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) |
8.54 |
Vietnam
Vietnam was a horrible time for many Americans and a lot of them paid for it in many ways. Until we understand how and why this war could have been prevented then we are in danger of repeating this all over again. In this book Tim O’Brien describes just how bad of an experience it was for the soldier’s that were involved in it. This book is told from the author’s point of view. Tim O’Brien was an infantry soldier in the Alpha Company during the Vietnam conflict. He had to deal with many hardships as many of the soldier’s did. Like not knowing if you are going to be alive in the morning when you go to sleep, or having you leg blown off by a land mind, or not ever knowing if you are going to get to go home or not. I can relate to this book very much. It is interesting to follow the author during the book as he tries to figure out what courage was and also what heroism was during Vietnam War. . This war was very similar to other war’s that there has been in the past and on the other hand it is not. One thing is for sure, a lot of lives were taken in Vietnam and there were also a lot of hardships that many people faced and some still do to this day.
Tim O’Brien, like many Americans was drafted into the war in the 1960’s. He was a college graduate from a small town in Minnesota. I could not imagine graduating college and then being asked to fight in some war that you could care less about. Tim made it through boot camp and he was sent off to war. At one point he even thought about going AWOL. That idea was changed as he sat in a Seattle hotel room and decided to stick it out and go off to Vietnam. Many soldiers went AWOL, either over in Vietnam or in the States before they were sent off to fight. Tim was put into Alpha Company when he arrived in Vietnam. Alpha company was a good company; either that or they were just plain lucky. They lost their fair share of men as many companies did during the war. Being in infantry was not a fun job. Some of the soldiers would shoot themselves in the foot, just to get sent home. All of the soldiers were always waiting for that day when they would get a desk job in the rear. Tim got his wish, as towards the end of the book he got his rear job. “ I got my rear job, they wanted a typist at battalion headquarters, Barney came up and said I was a lucky son of a bitch”. (p. 176).
The author has a preoccupation with courage and heroism while he is in Vietnam. He talked to a lot of people about this preoccupation. He talked to chaplains, captains, and soldiers about this. They all had their own point of view about what this preoccupation meant. The chaplain said it had to do with “Faith”, (p. 63). The captain said something like, “ Your fighting for you country”, (pg. 65-68). He talked to many soldiers; they all had different ideas on what it meant. O’Brien himself came to the conclusion that courage was “when you promised yourself to do better next time, that in itself is a form of courage.” (p.147). Many soldiers in Vietnam thought that they were hero’s, but does shooting at innocent villagers or cows make them a hero. Like the Lt. William Calley incident when he took a whole village and just lined them up and shot them for no reason at all. I can not see that as a sign of being a hero at all. “Proper courage was wise courage”, (p. 141). Courage is also a certain kind of preserving. “The preservation of the opinion by law through education about what sort of thing is terrible”, (p.188). The thought of knowing what is right and what is wrong. That is what courage and heroism was to O’Brien in the Vietnam War.
The Vietnam War is very similar to other wars in the past in many ways, and it is not so similar in other ways. The tactics by which the way the war was fought was very different to American soldiers. The Vietnamese used a form of fighting that American soldiers were not used to, they used guerrilla warfare. The American soldiers had to go out into the jungle of Vietnam and try to find the Viet Cong. They were not used to this kind of w...Read entire document
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