scholarly journals Tim O’Brien’s “Bad” Vietnam War: The Things They Carried & Its Historical Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 1283
Author(s):  
Ramtin Noor-Tehrani (Noor) Mahini ◽  
Erin Barth ◽  
Jed Morrow
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Tim O'brien ◽  
Self Mutilation ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
The Us ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Almost All

Tim O’Brien was sent to Vietnam as a foot soldier in 1969, during the later part of the Vietnam War that can be called the “bad” or unwinnable war.  Based on his experience, O'Brien's writing about the Vietnam War in his award-winning fiction novels is always "bad," meaning that the war was terrible for American grunts like himself, his fellow soldiers, and Vietnamese civilians, with practically no good or inspiring stories. Nevertheless, O’Brien touches upon almost all problems of American soldiers in the Vietnam War, but not many peer-reviewed authors or online literary analysis websites could identify or discuss them all.  The purpose of this article is to discuss the war details in O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and its historical perspective, so that young middle and high school readers can understand the meaning behind Tim O'Brien's writing about the Vietnam War. The goal is to summarize the entire big picture of the Vietnam War and to help students determine whether American soldiers’ actions, as described by Tim O’Brien, were morally right or wrong and were legal or forbidden according to the US law of war. The war-related issues that O’Brien mentioned in this novel are: boredom and meaningless death, abusive violence  toward Vietnamese noncombatants, drug use, in-fighting, thefts within barracks, grief, rage, self-mutilation, mutilation of enemy corpses, and senseless animal and civilian killings.

Tim O’Brien’s “Bad” Vietnam War: In the Lake of the Woods & Its Historical Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. 1582
Author(s):  
Ramtin Noor-Tehrani (Noor) Mahini ◽  
Erin Barth ◽  
Jed Morrow
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Tim O'brien ◽  
Lake Of The Woods ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Post Traumatic ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Vietnam War Veterans

Award-winning author Tim O’Brien was sent to Vietnam as a foot soldier in 1969, when American combat troops were gradually withdrawn from the country. A closer look at his Vietnam war stories reveals that he indeed touched upon almost all issues or problems of American soldiers in this “bad” war; yet not many peer-reviewed authors or online literary analysis websites could identify and discuss them all. The purpose of this article is to address the war details in O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods and its historical perspective, so that middle and high school readers can understand the meaning behind Tim O'Brien's stories and know the entire big Vietnam War picture. Specifically, this article discusses the following issues that are raised by O’Brien in this novel: the Mỹ Lai Massacre and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Vietnam War veterans. In addition, the Mỹ Lai Massacre cover-up, forgotten heroes of Mỹ Lai, and soldiers’ moral courage are also presented.

scholarly journals Tim O’Brien’s “Bad” Vietnam War: Going after Cacciato & Its Historical Perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 1397
Author(s):  
Ramtin Noor-Tehrani (Noor) Mahini ◽  
Erin Barth ◽  
Jed Morrow
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Tim O'brien ◽  
English Curriculum ◽  
Friendly Fire ◽  
Almost All ◽  
War Stories ◽  
Wartime Experience

Being the only Vietnam War author on the English curriculum for American middle and high schools, Tim O’Brien skillfully mixes his real wartime experience with fiction in his various bestsellers and awarded novels.  All O'Brien's Vietnam War stories are always "bad," meaning that the war contains mostly sad and horrific experience for American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians. A closer look at O’Brien’s war stories reveals that he indeed touches upon almost all issues the American GIs encountered during this war; nevertheless, not all online literary analysis websites and peer-reviewed authors can identify or call them all out. To assist middle and high school readers in understanding the meaning behind Tim O’Brien’s Vietnam War stories, the war details in Going After Cacciato and its historical perspective are discussed in this article. The war-related issues that O’Brien touched upon in this novel are: lack of purpose, the lower standards of the American troops (McNamara’s morons), desertion, lack of courage, friendly fire, fragging their own officers, and contemptuous attitude toward the Vietnamese, the very people they came to help and protect.

scholarly journals Dirty tricks on the underground press

1981 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-50
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Rips
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Freedom Of Information ◽  
Underground Press ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Us ◽  
Psychedelic Drugs ◽  
Us Constitution ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
The 1960S

What was known in the United States as the ‘underground press’ – self-published newspapers of the youth counterculture sold at street corners and around campuses in American cities during the 1960s and early 70 s – was once a significant network estimated at over 400 publications. Their hallmark was opposition to US involvement in the Vietnam War, criticism of the authorities, of uncontrolled technology and big business, advocacy of sexual freedom and artistic experimentation and, frequently, the advocacy of marijuana, LSD and other psychedelic drugs. Few of these publications have survived the past ten years, and their disappearance has been variously attributed to the cooling of radical interest after the American withdrawal from Vietnam, as well as to the vague and shifting nature of the ‘hippie’ scene. Complaints by their publishers during the early and mid-seventies that printers refused their business, that office rents suddenly doubled, that advertising was cancelled, that papers were lost – these were seen as local accidents and were rarely reported by the established media. Claims of official or officially-sanctioned harassment were dismissed – even by fellow radicals – as paranoid. Recent research by Geoffrey Rips of the PEN American Center has revealed the extent and variety of official pressure exerted against alternative publications during the Vietnam War period. Using evidence from government hearings like the Church Committee, which reported in 1976, actual FBI documents released to American PEN under the Freedom of Information Act, and other sources, Mr Rips argues that such harassment contributed materially to the closure of certain publications and in general terms constituted a gross infringement on the protection afforded to dissenting opinion and to a free press under the US constitution. We publish edited extracts here from Geoffrey Rips' report which will be published in full by the PEN American Center and the City Lights Press.

scholarly journals Keterlibatan Amerika Serikat dalam Perang Vietnam: Faktor Ideologi, Identitas, dan Idealisme

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 265
Author(s):  
Demas Nauvarian
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Analysis Method ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
Content Analysis Method ◽  
Primary Documents ◽  
The Us ◽  
Proxy War ◽  
The Vietnam War

This paper aims to prove the justification of US democracy in itsconsistency in the Vietnam War for two decades (1955-1975). This wasdone using the content analysis method of the US Department of Defense’sforeign policy documents in Vietnam - the Pentagon Papers - which werethe primary documents related to the process of making US foreign policyduring the Vietnam War. This was later matched with the view of DemocraticPeace Theory (Democratic Peace Theory) which has been widelyargued as the basis for policy making in the proxy war in the Cold Warera. This paper concludes that there are various other considerations,both rational and irrational factors, which were used by the United Statesin the Vietnam War

10. The Vietnam War

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Young ◽  
John Kent
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Basic Principle ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
Tet Offensive

This chapter focuses on the United States’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Lyndon B. Johnson inherited the Vietnam conflict in difficult circumstances. He had not been elected president in his own right and so, perhaps, believed that he should carry on with John F. Kennedy’s policies. It was unclear what exactly Kennedy would have done in Vietnam, but Johnson retained his predecessor’s foreign policy team and did not question the basic principle of America’s foreign policy, which called for communism to be resisted. The chapter first considers the escalation of US involvement in Vietnam during the period 1963–1965 before discussing the conflict between the US and North Vietnam in the succeeding years, along with the Tet offensive and its implications. It concludes with an assessment of Richard Nixon’s decision to restart large-scale US bombing of North Vietnam.

scholarly journals From the Green of Vietnam to Toes Painted with Nirvana

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 10-15
Author(s):  
Susan Straight
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
American Military ◽  
Vietnamese Women ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Nail Salons

Thousands of women who survived the Vietnam War, whose husbands were sent to reeducation camps after working with American military, now live in the US, where nail salons anchor almost every strip mall and flourish inside luxury malls as well. The history of how Vietnamese women came to work in the nail industry and how Americans became accustomed to manicures and pedicures is entwined with the loss of home and landscape.

Translating Philippine history in America's shadow: Japanese reflections on the past and present during the Vietnam War

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-245
Author(s):  
Takamichi Serizawa
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Allied Occupation ◽  
Southeast Asians ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Second World ◽  
Philippine History

In the 1970s, during and right after the end of the Vietnam War, more works by Filipino writers, especially historians, were translated into Japanese than works by any other Southeast Asians. In Southeast Asia, it was in the Philippines that the Japanese and the American forces had fought their fiercest battles during the Second World War. The Japanese translators who translated prominent Filipino nationalist historians such as Gregorio Zaide, Teodoro Agoncillo and Renato Constantino, had personally experienced war, defeat, and postwar life under the US-led Allied occupation of Japan. This article compares the original texts of some of these key Filipino works and their Japanese translations, and examines the ‘noises’ produced in the process of translation. This noise includes strategies such as the deletion and addition of information, opinions, and deliberate misreadings. This article suggests that these strategies reveal the translators’ views on the past as well as their contemporary experience of postwar Japan against the background of the ongoing Vietnam War.

scholarly journals Amerykańskie wojska inżynieryjne w konflikcie wietnamskim 1964–1975

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Pietrygała ◽  
Zdzisław Cutter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
The South ◽  
Direct Involvement ◽  
Us Army ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Vietnam War

The article focuses on the period of the Vietnam War, with particular emphasis on the role played by engineering troops (as a necessary component of individual tactical associations, and a guarantee of success of military operations conducted by the US army). The paper presents the engineering troops’ efforts to build military infrastructure, as well as the assistance provided to the South Vietnamese society. The article contains a list of all engineering units of the American army involved in the Vietnamese conflict, their organizational structure, personnel status, dislocation, as well as the scope of tasks assigned to them. In addition, it shows the cooperation between engineering units and civil contractors at the service of the army (especially in the period preceding the direct involvement of the United States in the war).

scholarly journals Australia – a strategic alliance of the US in the period of Vietnam War (1954-1975)

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. first
Author(s):  
Nguyen Minh Giang
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Strategic Alliance ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Military Politics ◽  
Education Science

Although located in a region having close historical-cultural relations with the area of Southeast Asia, Australia always considers itself and is considered a special outpost of the West in Asia-Pacific. Since World War II up to now, the strategic alliance between Australia and the US has been developed comprehensively and deeply. Particularly, with the purpose of getting the protection in terms of security from the US towards the Near-North region, it's obvious that Australia had to accept the fact that the number of killed and wounded soldiers, advisories, and military workers during the period of the Vietnam war was equivalent to that of the killed and wounded ones of the two World Wars when Australia participated along with the British troops. To illustrate the aforementioned content, this article focuses on analyzing some objective factors including the development of the movement of national liberation, the founding and rising of Chinese socialism, and the policies of Southeast Asia of the US during the period of post-World War II, along with some subjective factors influencing the founding and development of the strategic alliance between Australia and the US such as the national interest and the role of Australia during the Vietnam war, the economiccultural- political platforms of the US-Australia relations, and three-key factors expressing the depth of these relations including military, politics and diplomacy, culture and education, science and technology.

From Grief to Gratitude

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phuong Tran Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
American Nation

The 130,000 Indochinese evacuated out of Saigon and resettled in America were encouraged to become “good refugees” by forgetting past traumas in order to move forward, the same advice Americans were allegedly giving themselves. This chapter argues that the losers of the Vietnam War, both Americans and Vietnamese alike, affirmed the past not by forgetting it, but by rewriting it. Through camp newsletters and other primary sources, we get a close glimpse of the profound sense of guilt and dishonour that compelled the US to employ selective memory in the shaping of a new collective memory, so that the rescue of 130,000 refugees—rather than the war that killed millions of people—would come to define America. As a result, refugees entered a charitable sponsorship bubble that come to shape their expectations vis-à-vis a guilt-ridden American nation. Refugees were expected to be on their best behaviour—exemplified by gratitude and promises of assimilation—by a country compelled by guilt to be on its own best behaviour.

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