The Reality Of War And How People Deal With This Reality

Of course, war and the large military establishments are the greatest sources of violence in the world. Whether their purpose is defensive or offensive, these vast powerful organizations exist solely to kill human beings. We should think carefully about the reality of war. Most of us have been conditioned to regard military combat as exciting and glamorous - an opportunity for men to prove their competence and courage. Since armies are legal, we feel that war is acceptable; in general, nobody feels that war is criminal or that accepting it is criminal attitude. In fact, we have been brainwashed. War is neither glamorous nor attractive. It is monstrous. Its very nature is one of tragedy and suffering.

Tim O'Brien's “The Things They Carried” is a deeply moving story of war and what it does to the soldiers whomust endure it. There are many sources of comparison in the text—fromseveral different eras, and students might be asked to compare and contrastthem. How does the graphic horror of Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori compare with the long periods of tedium shattered by flashes of terror and death in this story? How do either or both compare with the ironic,almost detached (Chen, 77-98). Critics assert that the central theme of The Things They Carried is the relationship of storytelling to truth. In this vein, they often discuss O'Brien's interest in transcending reality to represent the truths of his traumatic Vietnam War experience as a defining characteristic of the book (Chen, 77-98). Commentators note that for O'Brien, the question of authenticity and verisimilitude when relating war experiences is ambiguous; instead, a story's authenticity is often based on its effect on the reader. As O'Brien states, a story is truthful if it “makes the stomach believe.” Reviewers assert that the stories address the effects of combat trauma and the struggle for redemption and recovery. The role of memory is an important theme in the stories in the volume. Another major thematic concern in The Things They Carried is cowardice: not only in combat, but also in the narrator's choice to participate in what he feels is an unjust war. Commentators have analyzed the representations of masculinity and femininity in the book. Exile and alienation also figure prominently in the stories, as returning American war veterans feel displaced from their old life and haunted by their wartime experiences (Chen, 77-98).

Yusef Komanuyakaa's poem "Facing It" is a brutal examination of the affects that war leaves upon men. The reader can assume that Komanuyakaa drew upon his own experiences in Vietnam, thereby making the poem a personal statement. However, the poem is also a universal and real description of the pain that comes about for a soldier when remembering the horror of war. He creates the poem's persona by using flashbacks to the war, thereby informing the reader as to why the speaker is behaving and feeling the way he is (Yusef, p. 1). The thirty-one lines ...