Friday, December 10, 2010
MY FAVORITE BLOG POSTS
http://roxanneseng102blog.blogspot.com/2010/09/response-to-sam-hammils-necessity-to.html
This was my first blog post, not only in class but altoghether. This assignment was a new experience for me and I also learned a lot in reading Sam Hammil's essay. This post means something to me because I feel the essay I read changed me in how I will react to the realities of the world and how I will teach my children about those realities.
http://roxanneseng102blog.blogspot.com/2010/09/tim-obrien-response.html
Tim O'Brien really changed my outlook on the war. I never used to pay attention to what was going on with the war until I read O'Brien's book "The Things They Carried". I enjoyed reading his book because even though it was fiction, it was more real than anything I have ever read. Great book!!
http://roxanneseng102blog.blogspot.com/2010/10/summary-vs-analysis-tim-obrien.html
I enjoyed this blog post because I really enjoyed the story I wrote about. Again, Tim O'Brien was the book I enjoyed reading the most in this class. The story I read for this post, "The Ghost Soldiers", by O'Brien, was a very interesting piece in which it showed just how the war and the horrors of the war could change a person's idea of right and wrong. This was my favorite story in O'Brien's book.
This was my first blog post, not only in class but altoghether. This assignment was a new experience for me and I also learned a lot in reading Sam Hammil's essay. This post means something to me because I feel the essay I read changed me in how I will react to the realities of the world and how I will teach my children about those realities.
http://roxanneseng102blog.blogspot.com/2010/09/tim-obrien-response.html
Tim O'Brien really changed my outlook on the war. I never used to pay attention to what was going on with the war until I read O'Brien's book "The Things They Carried". I enjoyed reading his book because even though it was fiction, it was more real than anything I have ever read. Great book!!
http://roxanneseng102blog.blogspot.com/2010/10/summary-vs-analysis-tim-obrien.html
I enjoyed this blog post because I really enjoyed the story I wrote about. Again, Tim O'Brien was the book I enjoyed reading the most in this class. The story I read for this post, "The Ghost Soldiers", by O'Brien, was a very interesting piece in which it showed just how the war and the horrors of the war could change a person's idea of right and wrong. This was my favorite story in O'Brien's book.
MY BEST WORK
There were many people against the war and instead of being praised for their bravery and commitment, the soldiers were shunned. For the people who fought in the Vietnam War, it was hard to come back and express the awful things they had seen and people did not care to hear. These men had to find ways of dealing with the weight they carried on their backs. Tim O’Brien, the author of “The Things They Carried”, speaks of the many burdens men of the war carry. While his work is fiction, his stories speak of truth. In writing “The Things They Carried”, Tim O’Brien has found a way to express to the world the experiences and feelings that he and many men still carry with them today. If the returning Vietnam soldiers like O’Brien, had more support from the US, they may have had a better chance of psychological healing through open expression rather than hidden expression, such as O’Brien’s fictional book.American involvement in the Vietnam War lasted ten years (1965-1975). The war had originally started between the Vietnamese and the French. The Americans were asked by the Vietnamese for help in gaining rights to their country. The Americans denied their requests so the Vietnamese asked the communists for help and they accepted. The Americans began to fear the idea of the communists having more control than what they already had. That is why the Americans began involvement in the war.
Not all of the Americans were in agreement with fighting in this war. O’Brien was one who felt this way. Many people felt it was a communist act if they involved themselves.link This is where the anti-war movement came in. There were many protests going on during the 1960’s. In 1968 the My Lai Massacre occurred where according to The Great American History Fact Finder, “American soldiers invaded a hamlet in Vietnam and opened fire on about 350 unarmed Vietnamese civilians, mostly women, children and old men” (Yanak par 1). This outraged the protestors and brought on even more reason for people to feel anger towards the soldiers in the war. PHD James H. Willbanks wrote that the My Lai Massacre “spurred the antiwar movement to increase in size” (Willbanks par 29). The anger the American people felt towards the war made it hard for the soldiers to come home. Instead of feeling the pride a man should feel when returning home from war, the men felt shame.
Tim O’Brien was drafted in the Vietnam War in 1969, around the same time that the Americans found out about the My Lai Massacre. O’Brien did not want to go to the war. He said many years after the war, “I hated the war in Vietnam and didn’t want to go” (Naparsteck 4-5). Though he spent only one year in the war, he experienced many tragedies. Since then O’Brien has written many books about the war. The Things They Carried is a book of many short stories from the Vietnam War. They are fictional stories founded on some of O’Brien’s experiences. In the first short story, “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien talks about the many different things the men carried on their backs, both physically and emotionally. He spoke of how each man carried a certain amount of supplies and he gave the exact weight of each item. He wrote that helmets weighed 5 pounds, jungle boots weighed 2.1 pounds, and a jacket weighed 6.7 pounds (O’Brien 2-3). Then later in the story O’Brien spoke of how the emotions men carried weighed more than the items they carried with them by writing:
They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing-these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture
. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. ( 20)
. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier’s greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. ( 20) Through his fiction O’Brien was reliving his experiences and expressing the “emotional baggage” he still carries with him and the embarrassment he and many soldiers still bare.link The rest of the stories in his book go into great detail of the courage the men tried to show but did not feel and how the war has a way making a man lose a part of him-self. Men who left the war were never the same. The emotions they carried turned these men into different people.
Lack of emotional support can make it almost impossible for a person to heal from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.link Many of the men who returned from war had experienced things that they could not even try to explain. The horrors of the war were engrained in their minds and they had no sense of release. While in the war, men needed to show their bravery and when they left they were unable to express their emotions due to the harshness the American people showed. In one of O’Brien’s short stories he wrote, “It was not a war for war stories, nor for talk of valor” (O’Brien 143). Because of the My Lai occurrence, the men were called baby killers. linkThey were rejected by the American people and made to feel that this was not their home.
In the 2007 publication of The American Journal of Public Health, PhD Hans Pols and Stephanie Oak wrote, “soldiers entered and left the war as individuals instead of in close-knit units, returning to a polarized United States where they were often reviled instead of celebrated as heroes, in addition to suffering the pains of stigma” (par 26). They believed that the lack of support had contributed to the high levels of PTSD in US soldiers in the Vietnam War.
In the 2007 publication of The American Journal of Public Health, PhD Hans Pols and Stephanie Oak wrote, “soldiers entered and left the war as individuals instead of in close-knit units, returning to a polarized United States where they were often reviled instead of celebrated as heroes, in addition to suffering the pains of stigma” (par 26). They believed that the lack of support had contributed to the high levels of PTSD in US soldiers in the Vietnam War. Many of the men who fought in Vietnam still carry this emotional baggage and never speak of it. Others have found ways of dealing with their horrible experience through medications such as anti-depressants
. Some have committed suicidelink and some have ended up in mental institutes. Tim O’Brien found his release in his writings. There are the few rarities such as O’Brien that have found that sense of release. The shame embarrassment and horror these men felt has left many men speechless. Although some of these men have found a way to set free some of their burdens and have been able to live a semi-normal life they will never forget the things they saw in war. O’Brien proves this in his book through the very detailed way he describes the men and the experiences these men go through. Only a man who has seen what these soldiers have seen can conquer up a fictional book such as his. My husband’s grandfather served in the Vietnam War and he is one who never speaks of his experiences. President Bush, a few years ago sent letters and medals to the ones who served in this war for their bravery and commitment. His grandfather broke out in tears. He is a man that never cries. He finally got his recognition. Had the American people been more compassionate for these men who had been through so much pain and suffering, maybe the Vietnam soldiers would have dealt with their pain and suffering and had a chance at a normal life.
. Some have committed suicidelink and some have ended up in mental institutes. Tim O’Brien found his release in his writings. There are the few rarities such as O’Brien that have found that sense of release. The shame embarrassment and horror these men felt has left many men speechless. Although some of these men have found a way to set free some of their burdens and have been able to live a semi-normal life they will never forget the things they saw in war. O’Brien proves this in his book through the very detailed way he describes the men and the experiences these men go through. Only a man who has seen what these soldiers have seen can conquer up a fictional book such as his. My husband’s grandfather served in the Vietnam War and he is one who never speaks of his experiences. President Bush, a few years ago sent letters and medals to the ones who served in this war for their bravery and commitment. His grandfather broke out in tears. He is a man that never cries. He finally got his recognition. Had the American people been more compassionate for these men who had been through so much pain and suffering, maybe the Vietnam soldiers would have dealt with their pain and suffering and had a chance at a normal life.Works Cited
Naparsteck, Martin. “An Interview With Tim O’Brien.”Contemporary Literature, Vol. 32 No.1, 1991. 1-11 JSTOR. Web. 30 Nov 2010
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1990. Print
Pols, Hans, and Stephanie Oak. "War & Military Mental Health: The US Psychiatric Response in the..." American Journal of Public Health Vol. 97, No. 12. Dec. 2007: 2132-2142. SIRS Researcher. Web. 07 Nov 2010.
Willbanks, James H. "The Real History of the Vietnam War." Armchair General. Nov. 2007: 54-67. SIRS Researcher. Web. 07 Nov 2010.
Yanak, Ted, and Pam Cornelison. "My Lai Massacre.” The Great American History Fact-Finder. Dec. 1 1993: n.p. SIRS Researcher. Web. 07 Nov 2010.
photo sources: http://www.mainpoint.com/Aftershock/Stories.shtml, http://people.howstuffworks.com/protest8.htm, http://www.depression-guide.com/, http://www.sheribaker.com/Tapping-In-2010-01-06.html, http://www.mnwelldir.org/docs/mental_health/ptsd.htm
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